Nygren, Minna Orvokki; (2023) Landscapes of Affective Interaction: Young Children's Enactive Engagement with Body Metaphors. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Empirical research into embodied meaning making suggests specific sensorimotor experiences can support children’s understanding of abstract science ideas. This view is aligned with enactive and grounded cognition perspectives, both centred in the view that our ability to conceptualise emerges from our experiences of interaction with our environment. While much of this research has focused on understanding action and action processes in individual children or children in pairs, less attention has been paid to affective dimensions of young children’s group interaction, and how this relates to meaning making with body metaphors. Indeed, Gallagher describes how no action exists in a vacuum, but rather revolves around a complex web of affective-pragmatic features comprising a ‘Landscape of Interaction’ (2020, p.42). This research project addresses gaps in research in understanding young children’s affective engagement from an enactivist cognition perspective. It takes a Design-Based Research approach with an iterative design orientation to examine young children’s interaction with multisensory body-based metaphors through an embodied participation framework. A series of empirical studies with young children, aged 2-7 years, comprising of experiential workshops, build iteratively upon each other. A novel theoretically informed method, Affective Imagination in Motion, is developed involving several purpose-built multisensory body metaphors prompts to enable access to dimensions of young children’s affective engagement. This research makes theoretical and methodological contributions. It extends the theoretical notion of ‘affect’ from enactive and grounded cognition perspectives through identifying key interactive processes in young children’s engagement with multisensory action metaphors. In addition, the novel method offers a contribution as a way of ‘looking’ at affect within a group situation from affective-pragmatic and social embodiment perspectives. Finally, the research contributes to embodied learning design frameworks offering a guideline for designers wishing to inform their work from enactive cognition perspective.

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