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...
Gross motor development is the review of the child’s capability to move in a consistent man...
Motor skills are motions carried out when the brain, nervous system, and muscles work together. The body must effectively use mind/body connection and awareness of their surroundings for the muscles and bones to develop fine and gross motor skills. Both of these motor skills start out as reflexes, the body has not learned them but they are uncontrollable movements. That is then later learned and perfected making large and...
Edmonds, Molly. "Discovery Health "Are teenage brains really different from adult brains?"." HowStuffWorks "Learn how Everything Works!". N.p., 26 Aug. 2008. Web. 16 Oct. 2011. Print
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...
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...
Vasconcelos, O., Rodrigues, P., Barreiros, J. & Jacobsohn, L. (2009). Laterality, developmental coordination disorders and posture. In L. P. Rodrigues, L. Saraiva, J. Barreiros & O. Vasconcelos (Eds.) Estudos em desenvolvimento motor da criança II (pp.19-26). Escola Superior de Educação, Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo.
An adult person who is illiterate and tries to read shows profound changes in deep brain. It came from a study where researchers helped illiterate woman from North India to read. In addition, the illiterate woman had scanned their brain before and after learning to read. The researchers found a big change in the brain after the women learned to read. They conclude that the brain of an adult is not flexible. The plasticity still actives in adult age.
The physical size of the brain changes over time.Regions of the brain continue to mature all the way through a person’s early 20s. In the text “Teens and Decision Making” they had explained that long ago, researchers thought that the brain reaches its maximum size between.
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
Oswalt, A., (2008). Early childhood physical development: gross and fine motor development. Retrieved from http://www.bhcmhmr.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=12755&cn=462
Office of Head Start by the University of Cincinnati. (2012). Physical and Motor Development [Video]. Available from the University of Cincinnati.
As a person grows old, it is inevitable to have both physical and cognitive changes happen throughout their lifetime. In an average life span, a person’s physical and cognitive changes will normally vary depending on what age group they are in. For example, it is said that from birth to age five, a child will absorb more information including how to talk, language, form relationships, and fine motor skills than any other age. It is also said that that most rapid decline in physical ability is in older adults ranging from a loss in eyesight to severe dementia.
Playing ball games, dancing, running, and climbing all help to develop body movement, strength, flexibility, and co-ordination skills.
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