The body posture of children in the early stages of life is crucial for the acquisition of new knowledge, according to the latest study by Indiana University (USA) and published in the journal Plos One .
It is a new approach that investigates the relationship that cognitive objects such as words or memories have with the position of the body. “This study shows that the body plays a very important role in the first years of learning , and shows how children use the position of the body in space to connect ideas,” explains Linda Smith, co-author of the study.
To carry out the experiment, the researchers had the participation of both an android robot (in which cognitive processes arise from physical limitations and the capabilities of the body as a learning method) both as children, examining the role of the position of the body with respect to the brain’s ability to “map” the names of objects , finding that consistency in posture and spatial relationship with respect to the object whose name was spoken out loud were crucial to correctly connect the object with its Name.
“A large number of studies suggest that memory is closely linked to the location of an object. None, however, have shown that body position plays a role, ”explains Smith.
Thus, in the experiments, the robot was programmed to assign a name to the objects through the association of a posture. The experiment was then repeated with children between 12 and 18 months of age. The results were practically identical: the role of posture was crucial in connecting with the names of the objects.
These results “may provide a new way to investigate the connection between cognition and the body ; as well as new evidence that mental entities such as thoughts, words or representations of objects – which appear to have no spatial or bodily component, first take shape (in our mind) through the body’s spatial relationship with the world around us ”, clarifies Smith.
