Embodiment in Children’s Choice
Abstract
In the traditional framework of cognitive psychology, the brain—viewed as a device for manipulating arbitrary symbols—remains the organ of decision making. However, the dimension of embodiment should not be ignored in investigations of decision-making processes in tasks involving a motor response. Experimental research in developmental psychology has shown that perceptual-motor constraints affect the explicit choices infants and toddlers make in some tasks. In these situations, the ability to make action choices that were previously thought to be highly abstract now appears to be attributable to an embodied-cognition approach. These developments concerning embodiment in children’s choice, and their implication for our understanding of human voluntary action, form the subject of this article.