Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Lecture | Karen Adolph | How Behavior Develops from Perceiving, Planning, and Acting

Episode Summary

ORIGINAL FORMAT VIDEO https://youtu.be/K0OfaqHnq2A Lecture | Karen Adolph

Episode Notes

Karen Adolph | Psychology and Neural Science | New York University 

All behavior is movement—walking, talking, reaching, eating, looking, touching—all of it. Motor behavior is foundational for learning and doing in everyday life. Most important for functional movement is behavioral flexibility—the ability to tailor movements to local conditions. Where does flexible, functional behavior come from? I argue that complex, intelligent behavior emerges in real time and over development from immense amounts of varied, time-distributed, error-filled practice perceiving, planning, and acting in a changing body with changing skills in a changing world. Perception guides movement and movement gives rise to perceptual information. So planning involves obtaining information for perceptual systems and using perceptual information to decide what to do next.