Embodiment in Human Activity: A Cultural-Developmental Perspective – Commentary on Anna Shvarts, Daniel D. Hutto, Blandine Bril, Cristine H. Legare and Mona Baniahmadi, and Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda

For over a century, research on mind, body, and culture has proceeded along largely independent trajectories. Traditional cognitive psychology isolated cognitive processes within tightly controlled laboratory paradigms, while cultural anthropologists documented rich cultural practices without capturing participants’ moment-by-moment cognitive processes. Developmental psychologists, meanwhile, often oscillated between cross-sectional studies and longitudinal analyses, typically with participants in contemporary Western societies, without developing theoretical vocabulary for understanding the cultural-historical genealogy of problems children encounter in everyday collective practices.The five essays in this special issue – by Anna Shvarts (2025), Daniel D. Hutto (2025), Blandine Bril (2025), Cristine H. Legare and Mona Baniahmadi (2025), and Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda (2025) – aim to bridge these disciplinary divides. Each foregrounds embodiment while engaging with three interwoven temporal dimensions (Saxe, 2012): microgenesis (the real-time coordination of perception, action, and feedback as individuals engage in activity), ontogenesis (continuity and discontinuities in cognitive development across the life course), and sociogenesis (the production, transformation, and spread of ideas, artifacts, and practices over cultural histories).Although none of the authors explicitly organizes their contributions around these three mutually entangled timescales, all illuminate these temporal dimensions in important ways. In my analysis of these essays, I use this tripartite framework to tease out convergences and divergences across this remarkable collection of work.Well before the rise of embodied cognition, Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky offered frameworks that located the genesis of knowledge in bodily action. Although their intellectual projects diverged, both theorists viewed sensorimotor coordination as the foundation of later cognitive processes.In his “genetic epistemology,” Piaget observed his three newborns engaging with their surroundings through biologically given reflexes like grasping, sucking, and looking. Through what he described as “circular reactions” – repetitive cycles of action first on the body, then with external objects, and finally through organized explorations – infants develop, differentiate, and elaborate schemes (elementary cognitive structures) that give rise to mental representation, or the semiotic function. Crucially, for Piaget, the semiotic function did not supplant action but reorganized it, permitting action at a distance in space and time through symbol use. Subsequent developments led to the child's reconstruction of reversible logico-mathematical operations, and in adolescence, combinatorial reasoning detached from immediate experience. Throughout, cognitive structures remain grounded in actions that once unfolded in the sensorimotor present and later in “re-presentations” – establishing a genealogical tie between body and mind.Working in revolutionary Russia, Vygotsky emphasized not the epistemic subject (Piaget) but the historical subject who participates in and transforms cultural-historical developments (language, tools) to organize themselves and their interactions with their surroundings. For Vygotsky, early practical intelligence – the infant's purposive preverbal thought or problem solving – becomes gradually reorganized as young children first begin to use social speech and gesture acquired through participation with adults and adult guidance; with development and interaction with others, children turn social speech inward to become speech for themselves (“egocentric speech”) and later, through further re-mediation, verbal thought. Thus, Vygotsky argued for a “genetic law of cultural development,” positing that every higher psychological function appears twice: first inter-psychologically in social interaction with more capable others, then intra-psychologically as internalized action. Embodied action in practical activity thus becomes mediated action that extends and transforms bodily capacities.Contemporary enactivism, ecological psychology, and dynamical-systems theory have revitalized these foundational approaches to development. Eleanor Gibson’s treatment of affordances (Gibson & Pick, 2000), Esther Thelen’s attractor landscapes (Thelen & Smith, 1994), and Anthony Chemero’s radical embodied cognition (Chemero, 2009) all argue that development involves a re-tuning of organism-environment couplings in embodied activity. However, significant theoretical tensions remain within this shared framework. Contemporary scholars continue to debate fundamental questions about the role of representations (whether to eliminate, minimize, or pluralize them), the extent to which cultural practices and their normative dimensions drive development, and which methodological approaches best serve empirically grounded research.These ongoing debates notwithstanding, a crucial methodological continuity links contemporary embodied cognition to its classical predecessors. The genetic method pioneered by both Piaget and Vygotsky – their systematic tracing of how higher order cognitive structures and functions emerge from and maintain connections to bodily engagement – remains foundational to current scholarship. This developmental approach, which grounds complex cognition in embodied origins while tracking developmental transformations, provides the essential theoretical bridge connecting their seminal contributions to today’s embodied cognitive science.Before turning to detailed analyses, a brief overview may orient readers. Shvarts, trained in mathematics education, mobilizes eye-tracking and dynamical-systems modeling to reveal functional synergies in mathematical tasks. Hutto, a philosopher, advances radical enactivism through rejecting stored mental content in favor of embodied habits embedded in normative practices. Bril, an anthropologist of skill, analyzes tool use and dance through constraint-led ecological dynamics. Legare and Baniahmadi, cognitive scientists, theorize cumulative cultural evolution by integrating developmental psychology with anthropology and biology. Finally, Tamis-LeMonda, a developmental psychologist, analyzes fine-grained naturalistic data to chart dense microgenetic activity during infancy across cultures. Each essay thus exemplifies a distinct methodological approach – laboratory microanalysis, philosophical argument, kinetic field studies, comparative synthesis, and naturalistic observation – yet all converge on bodies in context.Anna Shvarts’ essay provides a sophisticated framework for understanding mathematical cognition that integrates microgenetic, ontogenetic, and sociogenetic processes through embodied, sensorimotor activity. Her work demonstrates how these temporal dimensions operate both independently and in dynamic coordination through “intercorporeal functional dynamic systems.”Shvarts’ eye-tracking studies demonstrate how cognition unfolds through real-time coordination of perception and action rather than internal representational processing. In her Cartesian coordinate study, participants consistently show “a strong preference for vertical/horizontal saccades over oblique ones (approximately 4:1 ratio)” when locating points on coordinate planes. These saccadic eye movements create perception-action loops that directly couple with mathematical artifacts.These microgenetic processes exhibit both stability and flexibility. While the vertical-horizontal bias persists across expertise levels, expert mathematicians demonstrate adaptive flexibility, such as employing diagonal saccades when locating points like (−4, −4) by using (−2, −2) as an intermediate fixation.Most striking is the intercorporeal nature of microgenetic processes. Shvarts documents “perfect temporal synchrony,” where students’ gazes locate graph vertices precisely when the corresponding name is pronounced as if lecturer and listeners formed one body. When such synergies stabilize, they may re-enter future tasks as bodily dispositions or expectations about tool affordances.Shvarts shows that her framework reveals how ontogenetic development occurs as a progressive construction of functional dynamic systems rather than by accumulating abstract representations. Primary school children initially ignored axes, instead scanning points diagonally without a systematic relationship between eye movements and coordinate structure. Through teaching, new functional perception was established – children learned to find correct coordinates while simultaneously showing vertical-horizontal eye movements.Expertise differences reveal ontogenetic development patterns. Novices focused on graphs, while experts generally relied on formulas. Shvarts argues these findings show that development involves learning to perceive new affordances within the same mathematical environment. Over repeated episodes, these patterns become attractors in the learner’s ontogenetic landscape.Shvarts illuminates sociogenetic processes through analyzing how mathematical artifacts emerge historically. The historical development of Cartesian coordinates exemplifies this process – “developed historically, evolving from Ptolemy’s 2nd-century mapping grids” through various transformations until “the familiar rectangular system with negative values stabilized only by the 18th century.”Crucially, Shvarts demonstrates how sociogenetic processes operate through artifact design that aligns with bodily capacities. The preference for vertical-horizontal movements reflects alignment between cultural mathematical tools and “anatomical constraints to cultural artifacts.” This suggests that successful mathematical artifacts evolve to fit human sensorimotor capabilities while extending cognitive possibilities.Daniel Hutto’s essay on radical enactivism presents a fundamental challenge to traditional cognitive science with implications for understanding developmental processes. His radical enactivist framework reconceptualizes how temporal dimensions operate and interact in cognitive development and learning.Hutto’s framework indicates that microgenetic processes operate through direct organismic responsiveness to cultural practices and environmental couplings rather than representational mediation through “brain-bound” information processing. His approach prioritizes cultural practices, with individual agency subordinated to everyday cultural processes. This challenges assumptions that cognitive development requires building increasingly sophisticated internal models of others’ intentions, mathematical relations, and physical reality.Hutto’s treatment of ontogenetic development fundamentally rejects the notion that learning involves constructing internal conceptual representations. Children learning mathematics do not internalize representations of numerical concepts nor construct such representations independently; rather, they become increasingly skilled at participating in mathematical practices – manipulating symbols, following procedures, and responding appropriately to mathematical contexts.For Hutto, learning occurs through “loopy, dynamical processes that span the brain, body, and environment through which the learner is enculturated into a practice over an extended period.” This process does not require prior conceptual understanding; instead, adequate performance emerges through sustained engagement with cultural practices under appropriate constraints.Hutto argues that problem-solving procedures take form through enculturation into culturally evolved practices rather than accruing privately stored content. Children learn what counts as valid by participating in normative practices – the teacher’s nod, the worksheet’s red mark, and the peer’s puzzled look. Normative practices and their reflections in public evaluations represent sociogenetic products, refined across generations of practitioners.Importantly, Hutto claims that cultural practices do not simply provide content for pre-existing cognitive mechanisms; they constitute the very structure within which cognitive capacities emerge. Teachers and cultural environments “selectively modify specific bodily, environmental, and task constraints” to shape learners’ emerging capacities.Hutto’s analysis implies that sociogenetic processes have temporal depth extending beyond individual lifespans. Mathematical practices represent historical accumulations of cultural innovation that provide normative structure within which individual learning occurs. Children learning arithmetic participate in practices embodying centuries of mathematical development, but this participation does not require internalizing representations of mathematical history or theory.Blandine Bril’s essay on action-in-context provides sophisticated analysis of motor skill learning that offers rich insights into how microgenetic, ontogenetic, and sociogenetic processes operate both independently and in dynamic interaction. Her functional approach to understanding complex motor skills reveals how learning unfolds across multiple temporal dimensions.Bril’s analysis documents microgenetic processes through detailed examination of how learners discover and master task constraints in real time. Her nut-cracking studies provide compelling evidence. Children engage in extensive exploration based on prior experience when first encountering the task. Three-year-olds display varied actions, most ineffective, like shaking or throwing the nut. Each exploratory action represents a microgenetic episode where the child tests potential solutions against task constraints.Microgenetic processes often involve discovering task constraints and navigating through them. Each moment of activity provides immediate feedback about whether the learner’s current strategy successfully addresses functional demands, creating rapid cycles of hypothesis testing and refinement.Bril’s work documents ontogenetic development through changes occurring within individuals over extended periods as they progress from novice to expert. Her analysis reveals how ontogenetic processes involve qualitative reorganizations of understanding, not merely quantitative improvements.The nut-cracking research demonstrates clear ontogenetic progressions. Children aged four and older generally succeeded, but their behavior reveals systematic developmental changes. The progression shows three phases: “(1) The discovery of the efficient action; (2) The discovery of the affordances of the tools; (3) The progressive control of the functional parameter, i.e., the kinetic energy.”Importantly, these phases constitute a developmental sequence, with each successive phase building upon prior accomplishments. The sequence thus points to both continuity and discontinuity as prior achievements interweave with and become integrated into subsequent ones.Bril’s cultural research powerfully illustrates sociogenetic processes through analyzing how cultural practices, appropriated across generations, support learning environments and developmental pathways. Her pivot-turn comparison between French classical ballet and Korean dance provides a clear example. Despite addressing identical mechanical constraints, the two traditions have developed markedly different esthetic solutions reflecting deep cultural-historical influences.These esthetic differences reflect sociogenetic processes that have evolved over centuries. Classical dance “originated in medieval Italy and was introduced to France in the 17th century” with “strict codification,” while Korean dance “has no academic convention that strictly defines the positions.” These traditions create different “fields of promoted actions” that channel learning in culturally specific directions.Cristine Legare and Mona Baniahmadi’s examination of cumulative cultural learning provides analysis of how developmental processes operate across multiple timescales. Their framework illuminates how temporal dimensions interact dynamically to produce the remarkable human capacity for cultural appropriation and innovation – what they describe as “the transmission, retention, and refinement of knowledge across generations.”Legare and Baniahmadi reveal microgenetic processes through detailed examination of diverse learning strategies children employ in moment-to-moment interactions with their cultural environments. Their framework identifies five key strategies – exploration, observation, participation, imitation, and instruction – each involving real-time embodied cognitive activity.Children’s exploratory behavior emerges from immediate interactions between their curiosity, environmental affordances, and surprising outcomes. Each moment of exploration involves real-time hypothesis generation and testing, with children restructuring or updating their understanding as they proceed.The flexibility of microgenetic processes becomes evident as children dynamically shift between learning strategies. Rather than rigidly applying single approaches, children move between strategies based on immediate situational demands.The authors identify several key cognitive capacities that develop ontogenetically to support cultural learning: cognitive flexibility, theory of mind, norm psychology, and prosociality. Each capacity follows its own developmental trajectory while remaining integrated with cultural practices. The authors argue that with development, children become better able to seek knowledge from others, supporting the historical reproduction of knowledge.The authors’ analysis of cumulative cultural learning illuminates sociogenetic processes – how cultural knowledge is preserved, modified, and transmitted across generations. Their framework reveals how historical cultural development creates contexts within which individual learning occurs while remaining responsive to innovation and adaptation.The authors cite Tomasello”s “ratchet effect,” a process maintaining cultural continuity while enabling adaptive change: once an innovation is culturally ratified – inscribed in tools, or instruction – to knowledge systems their own historical individual learning or essay advances an important research framework of focused on development and its embodiment in activity. 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