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Piagetian Argumentative Essay

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Embodied cognition is a field of study that posits motor experience can relate to gains in conceptual knowledge (Wellsby & Pexman, 2014). The theory shares its roots with early Piaget type of ideas—specifically relating to the sensorimotor stage of development. This stage focuses on the physical interactions an infant has with the world and how the infant understands the world through those interactions (REF). A Piagetian perspective does not answer every question regarding embodied cognition. However, it does start a line of questions surrounding how influential motor experience is on other systems, including the use of language. There is a range of perspectives in embodied cognition, ranging from cognitive skills always stemming from an embodied experience, to the two systems being dichotomous. There is not a lot of support on either end of the spectrum defining the extremes of embodiment, so a middle ground has been proposed (Meteyard, Cuadrado, Bahrami, & Vigliocco, 2012).
The current field of embodied cognition in adult studies relies heavily on the empirically proven phenomena of the motor cortex engaging when an adult …show more content…

The results of Yu and Smith’s study also demonstrated that the infant displayed higher levels of word learning when the object was labeled as the infant held and looked the object (Yu & Smith, 2012). Yu attributes these findings to the infants isolating objects out of a cluttered environment. Further, it is though that this act of interacting with the toy that will lead to greater word learning due to the object being held having an isolated view. Yu coins this as “embodied attention”. It is the infant who selects objects in their environment to interact with, and the infant in turn will learn these label mappings

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