Motor vs Cognitive Learning

Is learning cognitive stuff the same as learning motor skills?

When we speak of learning we tend to automatically think of cognitive learning: learning a language, learning knowledge, but motor skills are also essential. As I noted in this article, movement is considered by some as the primary function of the brain. The similarities and overlaps are dramatic, and we would be well advised to consider this relationship more often.

Watch a kid focusing, trying really hard to do something, and sometimes, often, you will see the tongue come out of the mouth. We all know this; we’ve all seen this. Nothing special right? In fact, it is very special, we just ignore it because it is considered normal. But why on earth would anyone want to stick their tongue out when the cerebrum needs to really focus. It shows that we have a clear connection between cognition and bodily movements.

Embodied cognition is the concept that the brain and body are interconnected and that we use our bodies to think. This was in the noughties quite a revolutionary idea and gained a following and become a movement, pun intended. This interest has subsided a little in recent years. My interest was also particularly high, especially after meeting Rolf Pfeiffer, Head of the Artificial Intelligence Lab in Zurich, at the time. He wrote a fascinating book “how the body shapes the way we think” with Josh Bongard.

What Rolf Pfeiffer showed was that intelligence is shaped in every single way by bodies and intelligent materials. This was a core focus of the AI lab in Zurich: how to replicate intelligence in different ways within robotics. This also shows that a processing approach to intelligence is misplaced. Everything we do has some relationship to the body in some way.