Motor Development Basics
This refers to a continuous process of change in movement abilities throughout the lifespan.
What is motor development?
This model explains how movement is shaped by personal, environmental, and task-related factors.
What is the Constraints Model?
This perspective believes motor development is mostly driven by genetics and biological processes.
What is the maturational perspective?
This skill involves using arms and legs to perform actions like jumping and running.
What are gross motor skills?
This motor milestone usually happens between 3 and 6 months and allows infants to move from back to front.
What is rolling over?
This motor process is about gaining skill through practice and results in relatively permanent changes.
What is motor learning?
Type of constraint including a student’s age, body type, or past experience.
What is an individual constraint?
This theory highlights how children perceive, process, and respond to stimuli to guide movement.
What is the information processing perspective?
This type of assessment uses charts and checklists to compare children to developmental norms.
What is a standardised assessment?
This skill involves moving using hands and knees and appears around 7–12 months.
What is creeping?
This term refers to how the brain and body control movement.
What is motor control?
Type of constraint that includes rules, playing surfaces, or cultural expectations.
What is an environmental constraint?
This 1980s perspective focuses on affordances and the interaction between the person and their environment.
What is the ecological perspective?
This assessment is commonly performed by occupational therapists to assess tasks like writing or buttoning clothes.
What are fine motor skill assessments?
This is the name for when a baby moves while holding on to furniture.
What is cruising?
This type of skill involves large muscle groups and actions like walking or jumping.
What are gross motor skills?
This constraint refers to the goal of the activity, equipment used, and the specific task requirements.
What is a task constraint?
This theory sees motor development as patterns emerging from constraints interacting in self-organising systems.
What is the dynamical systems approach?
This kind of report from a parent or teacher helps identify motor delays.
What is an observational report?
This jump-based movement typically appears between 2 and 3 years old.
What is jumping?
This development factor describes how the body becomes functionally ready over time.
What is maturation?
These are the three key types of influences that interact to shape how motor skills are developed and refined, forming the basis of the Constraints Model in motor learning.
What are constraints (individual, environmental, and task constraints)?
This perspective links movement closely with how infants see and sense their environment.
What is the perception-action approach?
This term describes when a child shows much faster or more refined motor skills than typical for their age.
What is advanced motor development?
This movement involves using one foot and typically develops between ages 3 and 4.
What is hopping?