Introducing Motor Development
Maryam nezakat Alhosseini, Ph. D
Associate professor of motor behavior, Sports Sciences Faculty, University of Isfahan
Movement is the basis of life. Everything that people do in their daily activities, sports, games and work places is dependent on movement. These movements do not occur in a vacuum but in the environment. Every movement is made to accomplish a goal; in other words, a specific task, and each goal or task has its own characteristics and demands.
Our current movements are a modified form of the early movements that we made as a child. Early life begins with body control, grasping skills, and continues with locomotor skills (such as creeping) and manipulative skills (such as throwing and catching balls). The basic skills in childhood are refined and combined to create more complex motor skills. Adolescents continue to acquire these motor skills, increase the quality of their movement and their ability to adapt to the environment or simply the ability to perform and achieve different environmental goals.
As children grow, their perceptions of the world deepen and their mental capacities increase. They also learn social skills by making new relationships. In the meantime, the motor functions must adapt to these changes and even change if necessary. Motor skills are completed in late adolescence and youth. Elite athletes are great examples of developing motor skills.
These motor changes are very significant in early life but do not stop as we get older. Adults try to execute new skills in a new way, but generally new or old motor skills require a series of new changes and adjustments because the person is physically, mentally, cognitively and socially changed. In summary, over the years, motor patterns are constantly changing. These changes are related to ages. Observing and evaluating how these changes occur over life are the basis for studying motor development.
It is interesting to know that there are quantitative and qualitative changes in movements during the elderly which are investigated by motor development specialists because they are interested in studying movement changes throughout life, from birth to death. For example, there may be similar motor behaviors in two stages of life: childhood and the elderly (reaction time is slower in both children and the elderly), but the processes or the factors that cause such behaviors to be similar are quite different, so the goal of growth specialists is to study changes in motor behavior over life.
Motor development specialists have found that motor development over life is influenced by the specific demands of a task, the physical, cognitive, and psychological characteristics of the individual and the environmental conditions that he or she experiences. These three factors (individual, task, and environment) exchange with each other. In fact, they not only have influence on each other (interaction) but also may be modulated by each other (exchange). The environment refers to opportunities for practice, encouragement, motivation, education, motor experiences, as well as the family, social, and cultural environment that the child experiences. This note is an introduction to the series of notes we will have on the relationship between motor development and competence and social competence of children and adolescents in the future.
Refrences:
Haywood, Getchel (2019). Life Span Motor Development. Human Kinetics, Inc.; Seventh edition (May 17, 2019)
Gallahue, Ozman (2006). Understanding Motor Development: Infants, Children, Adolescents, Adults. McGraw-Hill.
Payne, Issacs (2017). Human Motor Development: A Lifespan Approach. Taylor & Francis
