Motor Performance During Childhood

1. chapter4 Motor Performance During Childhood

2. Overview of the Chapter • Understanding how motor skills develop • Four guiding principles • Reflexes and reactions • Rudimentary movements • Fundamental motor skills • Proficiency barrier and transitional skills • Categories of skills: locomotor, nonlocomotor, object control • Modifying task demands

3. Use of Motor Skills • Motor milestones • Fundamental movement patterns • Skill for participation • Reasons to monitor motor skills • Unusual deviations should be referred for further evaluation • Base movement experiences on normal sequential development • Factors that emerge without or with practice • Motor skills are important in American culture

4. Four Guiding Principles • Children are not miniature adults • Age differences in skills • Why do skills change? • Boys and girls are more alike than different • Gender differences small before puberty • Opportunities for practice and encouragement • Good things are earned: Phylogenetic versus ontogenetic skills • No body is perfect: Practice and feedback are essential

5. Reflexes, Reactions, and Rudimentary Movements • Reflexes—Moro (startle) • Reactions—balance adjustments (figure 4.1) • Rudimentary movements—phylogenetic skills and motor milestones (see figure 4.2 on page 67 of the textbook) • Nature versus nurture (twin studies)

6. Figure 4.1 Developmental Motor Skill Acquisition Reprinted from Gallagher (1984).

7. Order for Motor Milestones • Child prone • Chin raised • Chest raised • Reaching • Sit with support • Sit on parent’s lap, grasp object • Walk when held by hand • Creep (continued)

8. Order for Motor Milestones (continued) • Stand holding on • Stand with help • Sit alone • Sit on chair • Pull to stand • Climb stairs • Stand alone • Walk alone

9. Results of Twin Studies for “Jimmy and Johnny” • Short-term benefit—trained twin performed skill earlier • No long-term benefit—untrained twin “caught up” • Skill acquisition was easier when taught at typical age • Infants and children can benefit from early training

10. Results of Deprivation Studies • Phylogenetic skills are influenced by genetics with little impact by practice • Phylogenetic skills develop without practice when children are given opportunity • Ontogenetic skills respond to practice but early practice produces only short-term benefits

11. Fundamental Motor Skills • Locomotor—general patterns emerge and are refined during childhood: running, walking, hopping, skipping • Manipulative skills—used to interact with an object: catching, kicking, striking, throwing • Nonlocomotor skills—bending, stretching, reaching • Intra- and intertask sequences

12. Learning Motor Skills • Proficiency barrier—children master most fundamental skills but need practice to move to the specific use of the skill • Transitional skills—practice helps children move (transition) through the proficiency barrier into sport-specific use of the skill: kicking a ball versus kicking a soccer ball on goal

13. Specific Sport Skills • Requires a lot of practice • Sports, dance, and gymnastics require combinations of skills in novel ways and often quickly • Bloom’s taxonomy (table 4.3)

14. Table 4.3 Taxonomy of Psychomotor and Cognitive Domains (continued)

15. Table 4.3 Taxonomy of Psychomotor and Cognitive Domains (continued)

16. Locomotor Skills • Walking and running • Transition from nonflight to flight phase • Running speed (figure 4.3) • Jumping, hopping, galloping, sliding, and skipping • Climbing

17. Figure 4.3 Running Speed During Childhood Reprinted from Espenschade and Eckert (1974).

18. Manipulative Skills • Catching • Striking and kicking • Throwing (figure 4.4): Explanations are evolution, sociocultural, practice • Speed–accuracy trade-off

19. Figure 4.4 Effect Size for Overarm Throwing Adapted from Thomas and French (1985).

20. Other Issues • Motor abilities • Genetic • Practice • Modifying task demands • Target size • Distance • Object size