Exploration and Selection in the Early Acquisition of Skill
Section snippets
Development of Brain and Behavior
The lives of babies seem far removed from the concerns of neuroscientists. In a world measured in microseconds, microliters, micrometers, and microvolts, the endearing but clumsy and whimsical noodlings of infants bear little relevance. What we hope to show in this article, however, is that the behavior of human infants during their first years of life can both inform, and be informed by, contemporary advances in the brain sciences, as reported in many of the other papers in this volume. To do
Dynamic Systems Approach to Development
If not simply brain maturity, how then to conceptualize learning to walk and the acquisition of other skills, in light of the multiple interactions and the shifting and context-dependent nature of performance? Fortunately, about the time of work on the disappearing reflex, there was a growing interest in the works of the movement physiologist Bernstein (1967). Bernstein's insights had profound implications for understanding brain-behavior relations in the control of movement, and for its
Behavioral Dynamics of Learning to Reach
The question of the neural control of the trajectory of arm and hand for reaching is one that is currently generating much interest and controversy among cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, bioengineers, and computer modelers. The debate is unresolved: some claim that the central nervous system (CNS) plans reaches to be smooth and graceful by minimizing irregularities in the path of the hand (Hogan, 1984). Others see the CNS exerting control on the direction of the hand path (Morasso, 1981).
Infant Reaching and Neural Dynamics
The lesson from infant reaching is that this new behavior cannot have arisen from a dedicated reaching “device” in the brain, innate or prefigured, and awaiting autonomous, time-dependent processes of “maturation” for its liberation. Following Edelman (1987) and consistent with a dynamic, Bernstein-inspired approach, we suggest that infants begin life with a few simple biases, for example, to look at interesting visual events and to have interesting things in their mouths. They also arrive in
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, Grant RO1 HD22830, and by a Research Career Development Award (K02 MH00718) from the National Institute of Mental Health to Esther Thelen.
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Coordinated rhythms in animal species, including humans: Entrainment from bushcricket chorusing to the philharmonic orchestra
2023, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral ReviewsConvergence in myoelectric control: Between individual patterns of myoelectric learning
2021, Biomedical Signal Processing and ControlCitation Excerpt :Learning to produce the proper myosignal in these two muscles could be done by changing the activation patterns of the different synergies that these muscles are involved in or selecting the most appropriate synergies for activating those two muscles. The tendency observed, more synergies at first and less at the end of practice, seems to imply that individuals selected the most appropriate synergies from a range of potential candidates – the idea of selection from variation defended in other fields [49,50]. Nevertheless, we also observed that individuals modified the employed synergies [18–20].
How Perception and Action Fosters Exploration and Selection in Infant Skill Acquisition
2018, Advances in Child Development and BehaviorBare fingers, but no obvious influence of "prickly" Velcro! In the absence of parents' encouragement, it is not clear that "sticky mittens" provide an advantage to the process of learning to reach
2016, Infant Behavior and DevelopmentCitation Excerpt :Whether or not the infants’ goal was to “pick up” the toy or simply to touch it and reach for it, we cannot say. But, to think that infants require demonstration of the “sticky” mittens to discover the functionality of the mittens is contrary to everything Gibson (1988, 2000) – which Needham et al. cite extensively – and others (Adolph & Robinson, 2015; Thelen, 1995; Thelen & Smith, 1994) have said about the role of motor exploration on motor development and selection (see also Thelen & Corbetta, 1994, on this issue). Gibson particularly, stresses, among other things, the importance self-guided exploration, the importance of touch and direct sensory information for the discovery, selections, and differentiation of motor solutions (Gibson, 1988, 2000; Gibson & Pick, 2000; Pick, 1992).
Learning to reach with "sticky" or "non-sticky" mittens: A tale of developmental trajectories
2015, Infant Behavior and DevelopmentCitation Excerpt :According to Edelman and colleagues the generation of successful goal-directed movements does not occur via computational strategies by which the nervous system first computes a movement trajectory and then activates the behavior (e.g. Hollerbach, 1982). Rather, new behavioral solutions to a reaching task are discovered through the exploration of many different arm movements which ultimately will lead to the selection of the proper goal-oriented movement (Thelen, 1995; Thelen & Corbetta, 1994). This discovery process, according to Edelman, satisfies two tenets.