Chapter 7 - Action, perception, and reference

Summary

This chapter examines some of the ways activity, action, embodiment, and situation have impacted accounts of conceptual development, perception, and linguistics and points out a few places where there is room for greater impact. The idea is that perception and action are interdependent and co-activated, which constitutes a departure from the older view that perception causes action. The chapter discusses that the causal connections established by organisms acting in the world allow for a way of thinking about reference, with or without representations. Theories of conceptual development generally start with a description of the capacities and propensities of prelinguistic infants. The interrelations between perceivers and the world were highlighted in J. J. Gibson's The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. The conclusion from several years of research is that during the first year of life infants begin to analyze the relational structure of human actions.