How our hands shape our minds: Six developmental pathways

Abstract

In the current, empirically grounded paper, we first explore the ways in which manual actions, that is actions performed with hands and arms such as reaching, grasping, and manipulating objects, shape the mind. Based on recent empirical research, we suggest six embodied developmental pathways which solve unique challenges faced by infants and children during development. I) Co-opted motor simulation allows action anticipation, II) interactive specialisation allows executive control to emerge from reaching and grasping. III) Active exploration and IV) error based-learning facilitate cognition and perception. Action based social interactions facilitate V) language development and VI) gesture comprehension. These pathways exemplify how manual actions and the underlying neural processes controlling actions are used by the infant to structure the world and develop cognitive capacities and learn from interactions with the physical and social world. Through an individual difference, correlational approach, we note that these abilities and processes measured in infancy have long-term associations with cognitive and perceptual development into childhood and beyond.

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“…Vice versa, the development of motor skills is strongly influenced and refined by perceptual, cognitive, motivational skills as well as by cultural and historical differences in child-rearing practices (Adolph & Hoch, 2019). And vice versag the acquisition of new motor skills lays the cornerstone for the emergence and refinement of skills in other domains (Soska et al, 2015; for overviews, see Campos et al, 2000 andGredebäck et al, 2021). For example, changes in locomotion result in changes in perception: Crawling infants' look down at the floor to a great extent.…”