The Road to Walking
I created this critical commentary for my graduate theories of human development class at the University of Rochester. The professor asked us to read "The road to walking" by Adolph and Robinson (2013) and provide a critical commentary, which I have provided below.
The Road to Walking: A Critical Commentary
After reviewing the road to walking (Adolph & Robinson, 2013) I was struck by the incredibly high degree of variability involved in the development of our ability to walk. Older metaphors used to communicate locomotion development, like the “March of Progress” iconography, appear lacking when compared with today’s more richly nuanced understanding. The March of Progress displays a clear start point, milestones, and a clear end point, which appears no longer valid in the face of this modern understanding.
It has become clear to me after reviewing Adolph and Robinson that progress in the development of walking is much more discontinuous than I had originally expected. Examples such as babies growing as much as 1.65cm in some days, but then remaining constant for potentially weeks, is a fascinating finding. Furthermore the role of the environment, the immediate and cultural and how it impacts the active learning the task of walking and how this can dramatically change the development timeframes.
Babies seem incredibly active in this road to development. They experiment by taking in information and then exploring their environment. Then adapt skills that they personally invent in order to interface with their world. Concepts like “crawling” being a core milestone seem antiquated when we learn about all the different ways babies invent to propel themselves and comparing to other cultures or instances where our milestones like crawling are bypassed altogether.
From reading Adolph & Robinson’s work I was left with an impression that nurture may play a much larger role in the development of capabilities. Especially when comparing the techniques of childcare in Africa, such as exercise routines which enable walking on average months earlier, or in China, where walking is delayed when some caretaking methods are deployed. Even features like alternating leg movement in the womb which at first look may be seen as natural, appear also as adapted behaviors, bringing them closer to nurture in some ways. The paper does not look at genetics and I would be interested in further research into the role of genes in the development of walking, I believe this would add more details on the role of nature.
Plasticity was evident to me in several ways. For example the way infants responded to their particular environments, training opportunities afforded to them changed the way they develop. Toddlers experiment, creating new movements or even by carrying objects local to them and transporting them around their environment. Locomotion is intricately tied to a complex system of social and cognitive interaction. Flexibility and finesse are trained and fine tuned over a span of time. Plasticity seems to be a capability available to all, yet it is unique for each individual in its deployment.
Exploring this topic has definitely shifted my thinking. I now see learning to walk as a more personalized, unique process without a clear or fixed start or end date, created by a variety of experiments conducted by infants to invent their way of walking.
