Extended Skill Learning.

Within ecological and enactive cognitive science, skill learning is often viewed narrowly as bodily change over time or broadly as change in the animal–environment system. The authors argue for the broader view, rejecting the narrow one. They claim the proper unit of analysis is activity, not the body, and that learning involves establishing and adaptively organizing enabling constraints on that activity. Using examples of maintaining upright posture and walking, they show how environmental structures (e.g., furniture for support) play a constitutive role that changes over development. This extended approach unifies ecological and enactive theories and may ground a radically embodied account of higher cognition.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Within the ecological and enactive approaches in cognitive science, a tension exists in how the process of skill learning is understood. Skill learning can be understood in a narrow sense, as a process of bodily change over time, or in an extended sense, as a change in the structure of the animal-environment system. We propose to resolve this tension by rejecting the first understanding in favor of the second. We thus defend an extended approach to skill learning. An extended understanding of skill learning views bodily changes as being embedded in a larger process of interaction between the organism and specific structures in the environment. Such an extended approach is committed to the claims that (1) the appropriate unit of analysis for understanding skill learning is not the body but the activity and (2) learning consists in the establishment and adaptive organization of enabling constraints on that activity. We focus on two example cases: maintaining upright posture and walking. In both cases, environmental structures play a constitutive role in the activity throughout learning, but the specific environmental structures that are involved in the activity change over time. At an early stage, the child makes use of an environmental "support"-for example, holding onto furniture to maintain upright posture. Later, once further constraints have been established, the child is able to let go of the furniture and remain upright. We argue that adopting an extended understanding of skill learning offers a promising strategy for unifying ecological and enactive approaches and can also potentially ground a radically embodied approach to higher cognition.