No abstract

Embodied, embedded, extended and enactive (4EC) perspectives on cognition have gained epistemic legitimacy during the last 25 years in the international arena. They have encouraged new ways to understand the mind. Mexico has not been an exception; rather, it has the potential to provide a fertile ground for the development of 4EC perspectives, as shown by the variety of contributions in this special issue. In this editorial introduction, we discuss recent concerns about a lack of coherence in the inter-relations between these perspectives, and we propose that it is more appropriate to view 4EC as an emerging pluralistic research tradition that shares crucial commitments. Furthermore, we show that this pluralistic tradition has been gaining ground in the specific research context of Mexico, because of the country's distinctive historical, scientific and philosophical development. We finish by describing the promising research potential of the current heterogeneous explanations as evidenced by the papers in this issue.

The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical and formal framework to understand how the proprioceptive and kinesthetic system learns about body position and possibilities for movement in ongoing action and interaction. Whereas most weak embodiment accounts of proprioception focus on positionalist descriptions or on its role as a source of parameters for internal motor control, we argue that these aspects are insufficient to understand how proprioception is integrated into an active organized system in continuous and dynamic interaction with the environment. Our strong embodiment thesis is that one of the main theoretical principles to understand proprioception, as a perceptual experience within concrete situations, is the coupling with kinesthesia and its relational constitution—self, ecological, and social. In our view, these aspects are underdeveloped in current accounts, and an enactive sensorimotor theory enriched with phenomenological descriptions may provide an alternative path toward explaining this skilled experience. Following O'Regan and Noë (2001) sensorimotor contingencies conceptualization, we introduce three distinct notions of proprioceptive kinesthetic-sensorimotor contingencies (PK-SMCs), which we describe conceptually and formally considering three varieties of perceptual experience in action: PK-SMCs-self, PK-SMCs-self-environment, and PK-SMC-self-other. As a proof of concept of our proposal, we developed a minimal PK model to discuss these elements in detail and show their explanatory value as important guides to understand the proprioceptive/kinesthetic system. Finally, we also highlight that there is an opportunity to develop enactive sensorimotor theory in new directions, creating a bridge between the varieties of experiences of oneself and learning skills.

La experiencia empática es un proceso relacional y resonante en la interacción afectiva y habilidosa entre cuerpos. El objetivo de este trabajo es proporcionar un marco teórico que se sostiene del giro afectivo y de la cognición 4e para defender este punto de vista, destacar la importancia del sentir de los cuerpos en coordinación y posibilitar llevar estas conceptualizaciones al campo educativo. Se aborda fenomenológica y ecológicamente la experiencia relacional que deviene en el tiempo: la experiencia empática primaria. Se consideran superados retos adicionales, y se argumenta que promover la emergencia de estos fenómenos en el aula o fuera de ella estimula aprendizajes afectivos significativos.

El aprendizaje a través del juego es una habilidad importante para toda la vida, y el aprendizaje socio-emocional es una práctica pedagógica creciente. Cuando juegan, los estudiantes a menudo manejan conflictos y construyen conocimientos socioemocionales con otros miembros del grupo. Los estudiantes en entornos lúdicos y colaborativos tienen la posibilidad de aprender la habilidad de regular eficazmente las emociones prosociales, tanto a nivel individual como grupal. En este artículo, se introduce un marco epistémico ecológico enfocado en las affordances y la escala de análisis relacional persona-ambiente, para argumentar sobre el diseño de entornos de aprendizaje con una diversidad de juegos que posibiliten el desarrollo de una educación socioemocional. Se exploran ideas de la psicología del desarrollo y de la educación, combinando elementos clave de la teoría de construcción de nichos, para dar cuenta de entornos lúdicos que fomenten una ética del bienestar dentro de comunidades de aprendizaje. Se sostiene que este enfoque puede proporcionar mejores oportunidades para el aprendizaje y el desarrollo del bienestar emocional en diversas poblaciones, y en particular en aquellas donde existan condiciones de violencia y acoso escolar.