Motor, Sensory, and Perceptual Development

1. Motor, Sensory, and Perceptual Development Motor Development Sensory and Perceptual Development Perceptual-Motor Coupling

2. Motor Development Dynamic Systems View • Seeks to explain how motor behaviors are assembled for perceiving and acting. • Motivation leads to new motor behavior; a convergence of: • Nervous system development • Body’s physical properties • Child’s motivation to reach goal • Environmental support for the skill

3. Motor Development Reflexes • Built-in reactions to stimuli: • Govern newborn’s movements • Genetically carried survival mechanisms • Allow adaptation to environment • Provides opportunity to learn • Some disappear (e.g.: grasping), some last throughout life (e.g.: coughing)

4. Sucking reflex Automatic sucking object placed in newborn’s mouth Rooting reflex Reaction when infant’s cheek is stroked or side of mouth touched Startle response in reaction to sudden, intense noise or movement Moro reflex Occurs when something touches infant’s palms; infant response is to grasp tightly Grasping reflex Motor Development Reflexes

5. Motor Development Gross Motor Skills • Motor skills that involve large-muscle activities (milestones achieved) • Infancy • Development of posture • Locomotion and crawling • Learning to walk • Help of caregivers important; cultural variation exists • More skilled and mobile in second year

6. Motor Development Milestones in Gross Motor Development

7. Motor Development Gross Motor Skills • Childhood • Improved walking, running, jumping, climbing, learn organized sports’ skills • Positive and negative sport outcomes • Movement smoother with age • Adolescence - Skills continue to improve • Adulthood • Peak performance of most sports before 30 • Biological functions decline with age

8. The Dos • make sports fun • mistakes are okay • Allow questions, show calm manner • Respect child’s participation • Be positive role model • Be supportive • The Don’ts • Yell or scream at child • Continue condemning • Point out errors in front of others • Expect instant learning • Expect child to be pro • Make fun of child • Compare child to other • Make sports all work Motor Development Guidelines for Parents and Coaches of Children in Sports

9. Motor Development Movement and Aging

10. Motor Development Fine Motor Skills • Involves more finely tuned movements, such as finger dexterity. • Infancy: Reaching and grasping • Size and shape of object matters • Experience affects perceptions and vision • Early Childhood: Pick up small objects • Some difficulty building towers • Age 5: hand, arm, fingers move together

11. Motor Development Fine Motor Skills • Childhood and adolescence: • Writing and drawing skills emerge, improve • Steadier at age 7; more precise movements • By 10-12, can do quality crafts, master difficult piece on musical instrument • Adulthood: • Speed may decline in middle and late adulthood, but most use compensation strategies • Older adults can still learn new motor tasks

12. Motor Development Handedness • Genetic inheritance proposed, unproven • Preference of using one hand over other • Right-handedness dominant in all cultures • Right hand preference in thumb-sucking begins in the womb • Head-turning preference in newborns • Preference later leads to handedness

13. Motor Development Handedness, the Brain, and Cognitive Abilities • 95% of right-handed primarily process speech in left hemisphere. • Left handed: • Are more likely to have reading problems • Show more variation • Have better spatial skills • More common among mathematicians, musicians, artists, and architects

14. Sensory and Perceptual Development What Are Sensation and Perception? • Sensation: • Occurs when information contacts sensory receptors. • Perception: • Interpretation of sensation.

15. Sensory and Perceptual Development The Ecological View • People directly perceive information in the world around them: • Perception brings people in contact with the environment to interact with it and adapt to it • All objects have affordances; opportunities for interaction offered by objects necessary to perform activities

16. Sensory and Perceptual Development Studying Infant Perception • Visual preference method: To determine if infants can distinguish between various stimuli. • Habituation and Dishabituation: • Habituation—decreased responsiveness to stimulus • Dishabituation—recovery of habituated response • Tracking —moving eyes and/or head to follow moving objects • Videotape equipment, high-speed computers

17. 20/600 at birth, near adult levels by 1 year Visual Acuity Sees some colors by 2 months, has preferences by 4 months Color Prefer patterns at birth; face scanning improves by 2 months Perceiving Patterns Depth Perception Developed by 7-8 months Begins by 4 months; all know visual cliff by 6-to-12 months Visual Expectations Sensory and Perceptual Development Infants’ Visual Perception

18. Size constancyRecognition that object remains the same even though the retinal image changes • Shape constancyRecognition that object remains the same even though its orientation changes Sensory and Perceptual Development Perceptual Constancy

19. Sensory and Perceptual Development Vision in Childhood • Improved color detection, visual expectations, controlling eye movements (for reading). • Preschoolers may be farsighted. • Signs of vision problems: • Rubbing eyes, blinking, squinting. • Irritability at games requiring distance vision. • Closing one eye, tilting head to see, thrusting head forward to see.

20. Sensory and Perceptual Development Aging Vision In Adulthood • Loss of Accommodation —presbyopia • Decreased blood supply to eye — smaller visual field, increased blind spot • Slower dark adaptation, decline in motion sensitivity • Declining color vision: greens, blues, vi • Declining depth perception — problems with steps or curbs

21. Sensory and Perceptual Development Glare Vision and Aging

22. Sensory and Perceptual Development Diseases of the Eye • Cataracts— thickening eye lens that causes vision to become cloudy, opaque, distorted • Glaucoma— damage to optic nerve because of pressure created by buildup of fluid in eye • Macular degeneration— involves deterioration of retina

23. Sensory and Perceptual Development Hearing

24. Sensory and Perceptual Development Hearing • Fetus hears in last 2 months of pregnancy • Newborns • cannot hear soft sounds well • display auditory preferences • sensitive to human speech • Infants less sensitive to sound pitch • Most children’s hearing is inadequate • OtitisMedia: middle ear infection

25. Sensory and Perceptual Development Hearing • Adolescence • Most have excellent hearing; loud sounds poses risks • Adulthood • Decline begins about age 40 • Males lose sensitivity to high-pitched sounds • sooner than females • Gender differences may be due to occupation • Treatment includes hearing aids

26. Sense Infants Older Adults Newborns feel pain; by 6 mos., can coordinate vision and touch Less sensitive to pain and touch in lower extremities Touch and Pain Can differentiate odors at birth; shows some preferences Loss of some sense of smell around age 60 Smell May prefer sweet tastes before birth; likes salty at 4 months Decline in taste of begins in 60s Taste Sensory and Perceptual Development Other Senses

27. Sensory and Perceptual Development Intermodal Perception • Ability to relate and integrate information about two or more sensory modalities, such as vision and hearing. • Exists in newborns; sharpens with experience in first year.

28. Sensory and Perceptual Development Perceptual-Motor Coupling • Explores how people assemble motor behaviors for perceiving and acting • Controversial for some researchers • Babies coordinate movements with perceptual information to maintain balance, reach for objects, etc. • Driving a car is coupling; declines in late adulthood