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Karen Adolph runs the Infant Action Lab at NYU, where she studies how our motor behaviors develop from infancy onward. We discuss how observing babies at different stages of development illuminates how movement and cognition develop in humans, how variability and embodiment are key to that development, and the importance of studying behavior in real-world settings as opposed to restricted laboratory settings. We also explore how these principles and simulations can inspire advances in intelligent robots. Karen has a long-standing interest in ecological psychology, and she shares some stories of her time studying under Eleanor Gibson and other mentors.

Finally, we get a surprise visit from her partner Mark Blumberg, with whom she co-authored an opinion piece arguing that "motor cortex" doesn't start off with a motor function, oddly enough, but instead processes sensory information during the first period of animals' lives.

• Infant Action Lab (Karen Adolph's lab)
• Sleep and Behavioral Development Lab (Mark Blumberg's lab)
• Related papers
  • Motor Development: Embodied, Embedded, Enculturated, and Enabling
  • An Ecological Approach to Learning in (Not and) Development
  • An update of the development of motor behavior
  • Protracted development of motor cortex constrains rich interpretations of infant cognition

Read the transcript.