The role of embodiment in conceptual development

ABSTRACT

It is well established that sensory experience is influential in children’s early concepts. Opinions diverge, however, on the role of sensorimotor experience in conceptual development beyond infancy. In this paper I review theories of embodied conceptual development, which hold that sensorimotor experience continues to be important to children’s concepts beyond the first two years. In evaluating those theories, I describe studies that have examined embodied effects in children’s conceptual and language processing, and suggest that many unanswered questions remain. One of the biggest challenges for embodied accounts of conceptual development is to explain how abstract concepts are learned and represented. I review the proposals that have been offered to explain development of abstract concepts, and argue that by tackling this challenge we will gain insight about the viability of models of embodied and grounded cognition more broadly.

KEYWORDS:

• Embodied cognition
• concepts
• conceptual development
• sensorimotor
• abstract concepts

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Discovery Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada [RGPIN/217309-2013].