Origins and Early Development of Human Body Knowledge

This Monograph examines the development of infants'
and toddlers' knowledge about human bodies. The concept
of the human body is highly complex and operates on
several levels of knowing. We move our bodies and recognize
similar movements in the bodies of others, we have
expectations about how bodies are typically built, and we
have detailed knowledge about internal and external parts
of the body and their functions. In the work presented
here, the authors explore how these aspects of body
knowledge originate in the first few years of life, and report
a series of studies that documents the development of
infants' and toddlers' knowledge about the structure of the
human body. Results from the studies indicate that infants'
knowledge about the structure of the human body is
initially highly schematic, becoming more detailed and
specific in the second year of life.