The Association between Motor Action and Thinking in Developmental Perspective

Consideration on internalization theory of motor action

Abstract

The aim of this article is to consider the association between motor action and thinking via the internalization theory of the motor action, and to propose a novel idea about the mechanism of that association. According to Piaget’s internalization theory, which insists on the association between them, a mental image which is a lower cognitive core unit is composed of an internalized motor action, and an operation of thinking which is a higher cognitive core unit is composed of a systematic internalized motor action. The former of these components seems to be reasonable, but the latter does not, because the internalized motor action, i. e. motor representation is unsystematic.

However, related data suggest that a higher motor representation whose intrinsic attribute is abstraction emerges in the latter period of development, and is closely associated with higher spatial cognition. Therefore, we term the higher motor representation “abstract motor action (AMA)”, and characterize AMA as voluntary motoric operation on images. And functions of AMA in the higher spatial cognition are proposed to be the following:

1) Higher spatial representation is composed of AMA;

2) Process of AMA is equivalent to process of the operation of spatial thinking;

3) But AMA is unsystematic, therefore, it doesn’t formulate a system of the operation of spatial thinking, but it executes the operation of spatial thinking;

4) Space is a fundamental category of thinking, therefore, AMA may be involved in all kinds of the operations of thinking through the operation of spatial thinking.

Another means of the operation of spatial thinking is language. Then the next research task would be to clarify interrelations between AMA and language in the operation of spatial thinking.