ABSTRACT
Although we commonly tie human learning to specific environments and tasks – school and reading, job training in the workplace, actors learning lines at a rehearsal, and so forth – learning happens everywhere, involves mundane actions and perceptions as well as specific tasks, and occurs throughout a person’s lifetime. Children learn interpersonal skills and language, teens learn emotional control and group norms, young adults typically learn parenting and intercultural strategies and older people must learn to accept the limits of their bodies and their social authority. Genetic evolution has primed our body-minds to learn, and all cultures depend upon learning to survive and flourish. Cognitive scientists seek to understand learning in all of these contexts. As the chapters in this part explore, learning often involves embodied accounts of empathy, memory, consciousness, play, imagination and the emotions. Within enactivism, learning occurs all the time; it is a normal part of the perception-action cycle.
