Working in Movement

Babies don't know how to do much of anything when they are born, but as they get older, they can do quite a lot. Does this happen because some "developmental process" unfolds, or do they simply learn how to do things? That's perhaps an oversimplification, but the debate on nature vs. nurture is long standing and deep. In the movement education practices, we tend to lean pretty heavily on the nurture side. That is, we learn how to use ourselves thanks to our amazingly adaptable nervous system. Though the nervous system contains so much potential, it is the learning, the interaction between self and environment, that makes it all go.

One proponent of learning I hadn't heard of until today was Elizabeth Bates, a researcher on the development of language. She died recently in California, where she was the director of the Center for Research in Language at the University of California at San Diego. Her obituary was in the New York Times today.

Some quotes:

Dr. Bates thought all development, including the acquisition of language, rested on a foundation of general mental abilities. For example, humans drive cars not because their brains contain car-driving modules but by using various visual, motor and focusing skills, which are parts of the brain's wider repertoire.

She studied infants born with extensive damage to the brain's language areas and found that their language abilities developed normally. In recent work, she found that there was a significant overlap in areas of the brain involved in processing language and areas involved in processing environmental sounds like trains whistling, cows mooing and doors slamming. She concluded that all these areas were specialized for meaningful sounds, not just language.