Embodied Cognition and Education: How Does the Sensorimotor Experience Stimulate the Learning of Reading-Writing?

Several teaching methods intuitively include the sensorimotor exploration into learning. In order to develop an evidence-based teaching practice, the aim of this synthesis is to demonstrate the role of sensorimotor exploration on the learning of reading and writing, taking into account the diversity of environments (materials and tools). By means of training devices aiming at the association of audio-visual and sensorimotor explorations of letters, studies in psychology, neuropsychology and neuroimaging show that motor processes contribute to the visual recognition and production of letters and words in children with a neurotypical development, children in difficulties or in adults. Consequently, in the field of education, the embodied approach of cognition makes it possible to account for the development of processes in reading-writing where sensorimotor action (kinaesthetic, writing) contributes to learning letters. Indeed, enriched encoding of the letter by the sensory-motor experience facilitates recall through activation of cognitive states of associated prior experiences. Finally, studies also show that the type of action produced by the subject and the level of prior knowledge contributes to the emergence of multimodal knowledge.