PSYC2002 Study Guide - Final Guide: Handedness, Sensory Neuron, Proprioception
Psychomotor Development
• Motor skills - broad range of diverse behaviours:
o Gross motor skills – involving large-muscle activities, eg: movements of arms, jumping,
o Fine motor skills – involving more finely tuned movements, eg: movement of fingers when
writing or mouth when speaking,
• Movements of which we are mostly implicitly aware - posture, facial expression.
• Most are complex, intentional and under precise control of higher level brain circuits → "psychomotor
skill".
• Even seemingly simple movements, eg: picking up a mobile phone are complex:
o Integrate visual and proprioceptive (kinaesthetic + vestibular) input.
o Formation and transport of "grip".
o Execution at appropriate location with appropriate pressure.
• But carried out rapidly, precisely without "thinking".
How do babies learn these complex behaviours?
• Successful achievement of motor milestones indicates typical perceptual and cognitive development.
• Many development disorders are often preceded or accompanied by motor difficulties.
o Eg: ADHD: deficits in gross motor skills (clumsiness).
o Eg: Foetal alcohol syndrome: tremors, difficulty mastering complex movements.
• Motor problems are warning signs of future or current problems.
Developmental Trajectory
• Reflexes overlaid by voluntary rudimentary movements by 6 months:
1. Stability movements: gaining control of head, neck and trunk.
2. Manipulative movements: reaching, grasping and releasing.
3. Basic locomotor movement: crawling and walking.
• These enable children to control their interactions with their environment, thereby providing further
opportunities to develop, eg: object manipulation.
2-6 years
• 3 sets of fundamental movement skills refined:
o Locomotor - walking, running, hopping
o Manipulation - throwing, kicking, catching
o Stability - bending, turning, balancing
• Develop motor schemas or "basic movement chains", eg: catching a ball.
• Young children repeat basic movement patterns many times in different situations until they can
produce well adapted, fast, accurate movements under most circumstances → automated.
• Handedness established.
Adolescence
• Dramatic body schema update.
• Streamlining connection: frontal and multimodal association cortex.
o Strategic responses (predicting where serve will land).
o High level spatial awareness (passing in football).
• Myelination → faster transmission of information between different areas of the brain.
o Sensory receptors (eyes); somatosensory cortex; frontal motor programming centres.
o Hemisphere to hemisphere
o From brain to muscles (less change)
• Early adulthood: muscles stronger, responses faster. But only up until 30 yrs.
Theories of Motor Development
Maturation (Gesell)
• Observations: children develop motor skills in relatively fixed order in relatively limited, similar time
span.
o Preterm babies not advanced.
o Post-term babies may be a little advanced.
o Diverse cultural backgrounds, same sequence of milestones.
• Motor development occurs through the unfolding of a genetic plan, i.e. maturation.
• "Environmental fators support…ut do ot geerate the progressio of developet".
• Individual children may vary in the rate of development but not in the sequence in which motor
milestones are reached.
• Problems:
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