Abstract Motor behavior is a sub-discipline of kinesiology that focuses on the understanding of how humans control the way they move around and why they move in said manners. Motor behavior has three main sub-divisions: motor development, motor control, and motor learning. The focus of this paper will be the study of motor development as one ages. Motor development is an ever-changing characteristic process that occurs from birth all the way to death. Many researchers divide motor development into three sub-categories: the cognitive stage, associative stage, and the autonomous stage. Each stage occurs at a different point in one’s life and develops at different rates as well. This study explains the development and various age ranges in which …show more content…
New skills are learned regularly throughout the human lifetime and are enhanced over time with repetition. Starting with childhood, one learns basic skills such as crawling and walking. As a person ages and reaches young adulthood, they begin to build on those basic skills and combine them with others to learn new skills including running and playing sports. However, as one ages and reaches late adulthood, some skills may also begin to deteriorate. With age, the body begins to degenerate causing difficulty performing tasks which were once not very difficult. Tasks such as running become increasingly challenging. Without the routine practice of the skill, the body begins to forget how to perform these tasks, resulting in the decline of motor …show more content…
According to Hermundur Sigmundsson, a professor at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, young adulthood is considered to be the age range of “19-25” years old. In a study of “Motor Performances Across the Life-Span, Sigmundsson noticed that “motor performance increased from childhood to young adulthood” (Sigmundsson). During their research to discover as to why motor performance increased greatly from childhood to young adulthood, Sigmundsson and his colleagues discovered that the study of Elizabeth Sowell and other researchers had observed that “white [brain] matter volume follows an inverted U shape, with low white matter volume in both children and old adults” (Sigmundsson). From this, Sigmundsson and his colleagues deduced that higher levels of white brain matter correlated with increased levels of motor behavior. As a result of the human brain developing from childhood to young adulthood and degenerating from young adulthood to late adulthood, it is easy to see the reasons for a heightened level of motor behavior in young adulthood as opposed to the other two life
Learning is one of the things that help us survive. Darwin taught us that learning is the survival mechanism that we use to survive in our ever-changing environments. Our brains are designed to learn. They are plastic, meaning they can adapt, change and grow. In our brains there are neurotransmitters, and neurotrophins. They both have a role in turning different circuits on off, and getting different signals to different parts of our bodies. Some neurotrophins are called factory, and one of those is BDNF, or brain-derived neurotrophic factor. This chemical has been called, fertilizer for neurons. Exercise has been shown to increase BDNF leve...
Piaget proposed that cognitive development from infant to young adult occurs in four universal and consecutive stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, and formal operations (Woolfolk, A., 2004). Between the ages of zero and two years of age, the child is in the sensorimotor stage. It is during this stage the child experiences his or her own world through the senses and through movement. During the latter part of the sensorimotor stage, the child develops object permanence, which is an understanding that an object exists even if it is not within the field of vision (Woolfolk, A., 2004). The child also begins to understand that his or her actions could cause another action, for example, kicking a mobile to make the mobile move. This is an example of goal-directed behavior. Children in the sensorimotor stage can reverse actions, but cannot yet reverse thinking (Woolfolk, A., 2004).
Subject engages in many physical activities and the objective physical description is healthy. I have seen the subject using gross motor skills in activities such as riding a bike, playing basketball, soccer, and tag. These exercises are gross motor because they use large muscles like those in the legs, and arms. I have also seen the subject displaying fine motor skills. Fine motor skills are the opposite of gross motor, instead of utilizing big muscles they utilize small muscles like the ones found in the fingers. Examples of fine motor are calligraphy, drawing a picture, playing with play dough, and playing with cards. Both types of activities are good for the physical development, and health of a child. Gross motor activities involve more muscles, and help in keeping fit. Fine motor activities target small muscles like the fingers so that you can better...
Further research indicates that a person's intellectual capacity is at its greatest during these years. So much so that it could be compared to that of a full grown adult. The brain acts as a sponge soaking up all the information around it, learning as much as it can. “Adolescents and adults seem to engage different parts of their brain to different extents…” Thought the intellectual ability of a teen can match that of an adult does not mean that they think and interpret things the same. While performing tasks such as solving different problems and test, studies show that, when compared side by side, teens use different parts of the brain to different extents then the adult. This is due to the fact that the brain is still “Under Construction”. Therefore teen must use different parts of the brain for the same task as not all aspects of the brain are ready to handle some tasks, causing different results in different emotional and behavioral responses. This indicates the teen brain is still maturing
Parkinsons disease Learning is defined as, a change in the capability of a person to perform a skill that must be inferred from a relatively permanent improvement in performance as a result of practice of experience (Magill 247). For healthy people to learn a skill, they must show improvement, consistency, stability, persistence, and adaptability. However, for patients with Parkinsons Disease, it is not as simple. Bradykinesia, the slowed ability to initiate and continue movements, is a well-recognized side effect of Parkinsons Disease. In Rostami and Ashayeris study, Effects of motor skill practice on reaction time and learning retention in Parkinsons Disease, they investigated whether or not short-term practice could improve Bradykinesia. Patients with Parkinsons Disease frequently spend more time not only initiating voluntary movements, but also more time carrying out the voluntary movements. Thus, the study gathered 9 patients (7 males and 2 females) with Parkinsons Disease and 9 controls (7 males and 2 females) that were healthy and disease free. The participants were instructed to look at their monitor and to carry out a hand-to-mouth reach when prompted by the random stimulus on the monitor. The researchers used the Kinemetrix 3D Motion Analysis System and three markers that were positioned on the lateral aspect of the wrist, elbow, and shoulder joints to record and analyze the movements in three-dimensional space. Though all of the participants were right-handed, they were all instructed to use their left hand to complete the task because in all of the participants the left arm appeared to be more bradykinetic. The purpose of this study was to see if reaction time coul...
Beginning at birth and lasting for the first 24 months of a child’s life, the sensorimotor stage is a period of rapid cognitive growth. The infant has no concept of the world around him, other than what he sees from his own perspective and experiences through his senses and motor movements. One of the most important developments in
Creative new training methods, developed by coaches, athletes and sport scientists, are aimed to help improve the quality and quantity of athletic training ( Kellmann, 2010, p.1). However, these methods have encountered a consistent set of barriers including overtraining ( Kellmann, 2010, p.1). Due to these barriers, the need for physical and mental recovery in athletics brought an increasing attention in practice and in research ( Kellmann, 2010, p.1).
The human brain is the most complex organ in the known universe. It controls everything in the human body and has produced marvelous ingenuity. The basic size, shape, and location of the human brain does not vary much from person to person. But the way in which humans use their brain varies greatly. Learning is defined as “the act or process of acquiring knowledge or skill” or “the modification of behavior through practice, training, or experience” (Dictionary.com, Year?). The different sections of the brain can impact how and individual will learn and in what manner they will be most comfortable learning.
A newborn child’s physical and motor development is an evident progression throughout their first years and later in life. A child’s motor development is more of a slower progress, from going to gross motor skills to more fine motor skills in a few months while physical development is an apparent process. The environment affects children in their physical and motor growth, as they learn and adapt to new stimuli everyday as they develop. Separately, these developments start at different times, but function hand in hand as a child grows. Physical development is apparent at conception, early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence; while motor development
play a large part in our health and our developmental status. The role of age
Casey, B. J., Jones, R. M., & Hare, T. (2008). The adolescent brain. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1124, 111–126. Eaton Reyna, V.F. and Rivers, S.E. (2008).
When he was on the playground he climbed all over the play set that the school offered. Also he consistently ran all around the playground using his legs as the main muscle group to complete this task. Next he sat down for snack time at which point he began using those large muscle groups. When him and his friends were playing he got on all fours and crawled all around the room. Some other gross motor skills that he exhibited were done so as he was standing. Another was building blocks up. It took his fine motor skills to be able to grip the blocks but his gross motor skills to be able to stack the clocks. At one point the child went and put rings on a stick as part of a game reiterated his acceleration is developing essential gross motor skills. During the time slot where the child was sitting to eat his food he had good posture. In Children’s Santrock talks about how posture is something that is developed and is a dynamic development. When babies are first born they are incapable of holding posture. It is important to note that when the child was walking and running both of those actions are considered milestones for gross motor skill development. (Santrock, J. (2015). Children (13th ed.). Madison, Wis.: Brown & Benchmark.)Also when the child was waking up from nap time shortly after I arrived he rolled over in his bead which also is an important milestone in development for children.( Santrock, J. (2015). Children (13th ed.). Madison, Wis.:
Mastering fine motor skills is a very important process needed for physical and cognitive development. It is during early childhood that most children develop these skills, however there are many children that do not. A young child’s fine motor skills are developed through a vast array of activities that aide the child in doing little things such as grasping a toy as an infant, and buttoning buttons as a toddler or tying shoes when they are a preschooler. Fine motor development is the development of the small muscles in the hands and fingers. Many crucial daily activities depend on strong motor skills, such as writing, using eating utensils and getting dressed, among other things. Without fine motor skills a child will have difficulties preforming
Physical and motor development are two similar but different areas that describe child development. Physical development encompasses all of the various changes a child's body goes through. Those changes include height, weight, and brain development. Motor development is the development of control over the body. This control would involve developing reflexes such as blinking, large motor skills like walking, and fine motor skills like manipulating their fingers to pick up small objects like Cheerios. It is important to objectively study physical and motor development in children to gain knowledge on what characteristics are considered typical for each age and stage of development. This will enable me to be aware of when a child or children are developing at an irregular pace, and devise recommendations or find experiences and other resources that can aid in stimulating their development and to work towards closing achievement gaps. This particular assignment was to observe the selected child and reaffirm the importance of studying physical and motor development, and to develop ideas on how to involve it in my work as an early childhood professional.
My gross motor skills at this age actually began to improve and I began to develop at a somewhat normal rate. My parents put me in dance class at age four. Dance was something that I really excelled at, and it helped me to develop better muscle coordination so that I was not quite as clumsy as before. This also helped me begin develop later motor skills at a normal