Karen Adolph explains how we develop our ability to move through the world

In this episode, Paul Middlebrooks talks with Karen Adolph, professor of applied psychology at New York University, about her long-standing research to understand how people learn to move the way they do. With a background in ecological psychology and a keen interest in development, Adolph studies infants’ actions in natural settings and while they are performing skilled tasks to assess how human behaviors and cognition are shaped by our changing bodies and the environment.

Middlebrooks and Adolph discuss the historical and current ways babies are studied in and out of labs, the importance of variability in baby’s actions across development, how modern technology and artificial intelligence are affecting her research, and how her insights might help build better AI and robotics. Plus, Mark Blumberg, University of Iowa Distinguished Chair in psychological and brain sciences, makes a surprise visit to discuss how, early in development, the motor cortex doesn’t have a motor function but instead receives sensory information from ongoing behavior.

Read the transcript.