In experiments with both infants and robots, scientists recently discovered that bodily posture affects both learning and memory in young children, unveiling a new link between the body and the brain.
Perhaps most interesting about this study, though, is that researchers didn't just study infants, but also used robot models simulating infant behavior. By doing so, they witnessed how body position plays a role in how infants learn a new word for an object and then successfully remember that word later.
"A number of studies suggest that memory is tightly tied to the location of an object," says Linda Smith, a professor in the Indiana University Bloomington College of Arts and Science. "None, however, have shown that bodily position plays a role or that, if you shift your body, you could forget."
The study began with robots programmed with an ability that allowed them to map a name to an object while assuming a specific posture. For example, a robot saw an object on its left, and then a different object on its right, with researchers telling the names of each object. Researchers took away both objects and commanded the robot to assume the posture it had when looking at the object on the left. Researchers put both objects out again in their first locations, without words, and then moved them to different locations and gave the words for those objects again. This taught the robot to reach for the object associated with a certain word, and a certain posture, which it did successfully many times.
However, when researchers moved the objects where the robot did not have to assume a certain posture to reach for it, the robot didn't recognize the object when named.
Researchers finalized their results by doing the same experiment on infants aged 12 to 18 months. The results were the same and indicated that posture made a difference in how they connected words with objects.
"These experiments may provide a new way to investigate the way cognition is connected to the body, as well as new evidence that mental entities, such as thoughts, words and representations of objects, which seem to have no spatial or bodily components, first take shape through spatial relationship of the body within the surrounding world," says Smith.
Of course, this connection between mind and body could exist in adults, as well as infants, but we need further research to distinguish that link. This research could, though, provide new ideas for working with children who have problems with motor coordination and cognitive learning.
