{"id":371,"date":"2025-03-19T08:30:03","date_gmt":"2025-03-19T08:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mariaortegagarcia.com\/?p=371"},"modified":"2025-03-19T08:36:52","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T08:36:52","slug":"what-birds-taught-me-about-embodied-cognition-and-experiential-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mariaortegagarcia.com\/es\/spanish-blog\/what-birds-taught-me-about-embodied-cognition-and-experiential-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"What birds taught me about embodied cognition and experiential learning"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\tSelvas tengo en el coraz\u00f3n; \u00e1rboles gruesos prietos de ramas; yuyos, retamas, flores de malv\u00f3n, p\u00e1jaros en las ramas, todo eso tengo en mi coraz\u00f3n.\u00a0\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u2028\u2013 Alfonsina Storni<\/cite>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Una chica de ciudad<\/i>. I once was a city girl. Coming from a small Spanish city, I grew up seeing only pigeons and storks around. The\u00a0Plaza Mayor<\/a>\u00a0was infested by temerarious, dirty pigeons fed by the old men who would sit in the benches throwing crumbs absentmindedly to those aviary pests. I don\u2019t remember seeing many storks flying around though, but their huge nests on top of\u00a0San Lesmes bell tower<\/a>\u00a0were a reminder of their existence.<\/p>

The names of birds in Spanish were empty words, devoid of real meaning to me. I knew names of birds that I identified as birds but had no idea of what kind bird they were because I\u2019d never seen them in real life.\u00a0Vencejos, tordos, chochines, herrerillos\u2026<\/i>\u00a0(Note: at the end of the post there is a list and translation of all the bird\u2019s names that appear in this article) were words I knew belonged to the category of birds, although I don\u2019t even remember where I learned that information.\u00a0Ciencias naturales<\/i>\u00a0(natural sciences) subject in school, maybe? In any case, those words had no meaning. Had I been ambling around in a forest and saw a \u201cvencejo\u201d perched on a branch in front of me, I\u2019d had no idea what that bird\u2019s name would have been.\u00a0There was no connection between the word and the reality of it.<\/b><\/p>

Of course, I had some images in my mind, I knew what a\u00a0loro<\/i>\u00a0was because I had seen funny videos of parrots cursing, or I intellectually knew what a\u00a0cuervo<\/i>\u00a0or a\u00a0b\u00faho<\/i>\u00a0were. But they were like the concept of \u201cpeace\u201d or \u201cangels\u201d, notions that are either abstract or something I can understand but I don\u2019t really grasp because I\u2019ve never experienced through my senses.<\/p>

Names like\u00a0garza<\/i>\u00a0o\u00a0herrerillo<\/i>\u00a0were just that. Names. I had not the faintest idea of what they looked like, how they lived, their habits\u2026<\/p>

Other names like\u00a0urraca<\/i>,\u00a0gorri\u00f3n<\/i>\u00a0or\u00a0golondrina<\/i>\u00a0were more familiar, not because I had seen any of their specimens in real life, but because I had read poems about them, so I knew that people normally like \u201cgorriones\u201d and \u201cgolondrinas\u201d.<\/p>

Volver\u00e1n las oscuras golondrinas<\/em>
en tu balc\u00f3n sus nidos a colgar,<\/em>
y otra vez con el ala a sus cristales,<\/em>
jugando llamar\u00e1n<\/em><\/p>

\u2013 B\u00e9cquer<\/p>

Or the opposite, the bad image \u201curracas\u201d ge as thieves that steal any type of shiny things. Had I ever seen any urraca? Nope. Did I dislike them just because of that passed on idea? Yep.<\/p>

But at least, urracas had a deeper meaning.\u00a0They meant something beyond the word itself because I had experienced them through someone else\u2019s artistic expression or through folklore.<\/b><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

Experiential Learning<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

It was when I moved to Ireland that the name and the related object, in this case, bird, started to be connected. And then seagulls also started to be a part of my experiential knowledge. I knew what they looked like, and the noise they made. I learned what it means to see them in large numbers squawking away inland as harbingers of storms or bad weather.<\/p>

Then, when I moved away from Dublin city to a small town in the south-east of Ireland, to a house with a little garden, things started to change.<\/p>

Blue tits, sparrows, wrens, robins, magpies, crows and ravens are a daily occurrence.<\/p>

By virtue of seeing them repeatedly and having been given their names, I (my brain) developed the connection between the real instance of the bird and its English name. No study involved.<\/p>

Now, I can distinguish them and we have even struck up a relationship. Crows craw \u201chello\u201d every morning when they alight on the telegraph pole near my house, or when I pass by any green area in the neighbourhood. I learn how they gather and fly together to find a suitable tree for the night. I am friends with the single robin that visits us regularly to have breakfast and lunch from our feeder and I can now spot robins easily. I learned that, unlike the sparrows, robins are territorial, so they defend their space ferociously. And I am delighted that my garden is part of a tiny Robin territory.<\/p>

A tiny blue tit and a bunch of sparrows visit every day and flutter about (revolotear<\/i>) the garden. They search for insects or get peanuts from our feeder. The birds are now the avian side of our family. My heart melts remembering the warm evening nights last summer when they, the sparrows, would have daily dust baths on the swept pile of dry dirt in one garden corner.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

Experience is embodied cognition.<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

The birds I am sharing my life with, exist in English in my mind despite me being Spanish. Despite my ample vocabulary of birds in Spanish and despite these words living in my brain before the English version. When I see a \u201cpasser domesticus\u201d (specific name for sparrow or gorri\u00f3n) my brain recognizes the type of bird and it gives me a name: \u201csparrow\u201d, not \u201cgorri\u00f3n\u201d.<\/p>

Because the key to learn something, anything is to experience it, to live it. We cannot experience or live without our bodies. Our minds are not isolated, they are embedded in our bodies, through which we perceive and act.\u00a0It is through perception and action that our brains store information.<\/b><\/p>

Let me support this idea with an article that appears in NCBI National Center for Biotechnology Information) entitled:\u00a0\u201cEmbodied Learning: Why at School the Mind Needs the Body\u201d<\/i><\/a>\u00a0written by Manuela Macedonia:<\/p>

\u201cIn fact, neuroscientific studies have demonstrated that processing of objects, spatial information, music, faces, flavours, odours, and also mere thinking of these concepts evokes sensorimotor responses, i.e., body-related activity in the brain. This relies on prior experience connected to manipulating objects, moving around, eating and smelling things. Areas and brain structures involved in the process wire together to networks of neurons that represent and store the information.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

May my heart always be open to little<\/i>
<\/i>birds who are the secrets of living<\/i>
<\/i>whatever they sing is better than to know<\/i>
<\/i>and if men should not hear them men are old<\/i><\/p>

\u2013 e.e.cummings<\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Selvas tengo en el coraz\u00f3n; \u00e1rboles gruesos prietos de ramas; yuyos, retamas, flores de malv\u00f3n, p\u00e1jaros en las ramas, todo eso tengo en mi coraz\u00f3n.\u00a0 \u2028\u2013 Alfonsina Storni Una chica […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,14,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-371","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spanish-blog","8":"category-education","9":"category-psychology","10":"czr-hentry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mariaortegagarcia.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mariaortegagarcia.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mariaortegagarcia.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mariaortegagarcia.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mariaortegagarcia.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mariaortegagarcia.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":377,"href":"https:\/\/mariaortegagarcia.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions\/377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mariaortegagarcia.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mariaortegagarcia.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mariaortegagarcia.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mariaortegagarcia.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}