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> Anecdotally, when I watch a baby learn to walk, it doesn't really seem like they are trying a zillion things and picking the one that works. It seems much mor

> Anecdotally, when I watch a baby learn to walk, it doesn't really seem like they are trying a zillion things and picking the one that works. It seems much more like their instincts are telling them to move a certain way, and once they grow strong enough, it succeeds and they are walking. How much of that comes from seeing everyone around them walking? It seems hard to argue that horses don't have a genetic component, but I don't think Occam's Razor applies as well for humans when it takes 1-2 years of observing the world in order to start walking unsteadily.

bolzano 7y ago
The obvious counter to this argument is that blind babies follow roughly (often slightly delayed) the same developmental pattern and stages as sighted children, with the mostly likely cause of the delay being motivational rather than anything to do with processing visual imagery of what walking/crawling looks like. Both are usually crawling in 6-12 month range.
- munchbunny 7y ago
  I don't doubt your claim, but do you have the academic references for that covering the timeline of development milestones? I'd be curious to read more of this research.
  - bolzano 7y ago
    I'm not an expert in this area, though I do have a strong interest in more abstract child cognitive development not related to locomotion (Elizabeth Spelke and related work in particular). So I'm going by what is generally well known and accepted about visually impaired development (the time line and stages). Here are a couple of references below which might be helpful. Infant development is a pretty noisy process though which makes definitive statements difficult. [0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/dmcn.12860 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/dmcn.12860 [1] https://www.tsbvi.edu/curriculum-a-publications/1053-early-development https://www.tsbvi.edu/curriculum-a-publications/1053-early-d...

bolzano 7y ago

The obvious counter to this argument is that blind babies follow roughly (often slightly delayed) the same developmental pattern and stages as sighted children, with the mostly likely cause of the delay being motivational rather than anything to do with processing visual imagery of what walking/crawling looks like. Both are usually crawling in 6-12 month range.

munchbunny 7y ago
I don't doubt your claim, but do you have the academic references for that covering the timeline of development milestones? I'd be curious to read more of this research.
- bolzano 7y ago
  I'm not an expert in this area, though I do have a strong interest in more abstract child cognitive development not related to locomotion (Elizabeth Spelke and related work in particular). So I'm going by what is generally well known and accepted about visually impaired development (the time line and stages). Here are a couple of references below which might be helpful. Infant development is a pretty noisy process though which makes definitive statements difficult. [0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/dmcn.12860 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/dmcn.12860 [1] https://www.tsbvi.edu/curriculum-a-publications/1053-early-development https://www.tsbvi.edu/curriculum-a-publications/1053-early-d...