Test 1 Flashcards
What is the main point of this course?
Constraints-based approach to understanding the development and regression of motor skills across the
lifespan
What is the point of studying motor control?
Motor Control
– Understanding how the nervous system controls muscles to permit skilled and coordinated movements
What is the definition of coordination?
What is the problem with understanding coordination?
Coordination involves bringing body
parts into a functional relationship in
order to achieve a task goal
* The problem of understanding
coordination is that redundant
biomechanical degrees of freedom
create an infinite number of possible
movements
What is the difference between motor control and motor learning?
- Motor Control
– Understanding how the nervous system controls muscles to permit skilled and coordinated movements - Motor Learning
– Changes in skilled and coordinated movements that are related to experience and practice
What kind of process is motor development?
What is the definition of functional capacity and what kind of process is it?
- Development is a continuous process of change in functional capacity
– Functional capacity is the ability to successfully interact with the world
Represents a cumulative process
– development is always occurring, but the amount of change may be more or less noticeable at various points in the lifespan
How is motor development related to age?
What kind of change is involved in motor development?
How does motor development occur?
- Development is related to, but not dependent on age
- Development involves sequential change
- Development occurs through maturation and growth of all body systems AND its interactions with environment and task
What is the difference between physical growth and physical maturation?
What is the definition of aging?
- Physical growth: quantitative
increase in size or body mass (Timiras,
1972) - Physical maturation: qualitative
advance in biological makeup (Teeple,
1978) - Aging: process occurring with
passage of time, leading to loss of
adaptability or full function and
eventually to death (Spirduso, 1995)
How does motor progress change through life?
Looks like a bell curve
(participant throws a ball slow as a child, throws it fast as a young adult and throws it slow again as an older adult)
What is the difference between universality and versatility?
Universality vs Variability
– Individuals show a great deal of similarity in the course of development
* Common developmental stages based on shared characteristics
* Typical or average behaviours can be useful for tracking developmental change
* BUT, variations from the average
* Individuals can also skip ‘milestones’ (i.e., follow different pathways in development).
What is the debate between nature and nurture?
- Nature vs Nurture
– Contributions of genetics and environmental factors - Nature = genetics
- Nurture = environment
How does walking progress through the first year of life?
starting at 2 months-prone, chest up, use arms for support, roll over
starting at 3 months-support some weight with legs
starting at 5 months-sitting and standing without support
starting at 6 months-pull self to stand
starting at 7 months-stand using furniture for support
starting at 10 months-standing alone easily
starting at 11 months-walk alone easily
What is an example of evidence for both the nature and nurture argument?
nature-young child who was a musical prodigy
nurture-10,000 hours of deliberate practice rule
What are 2 things that motor development affects?
Are the terms growth, maturation and aging synonymous?
- Development is an ongoing process that occurs throughout the lifespan
– Motor Development affects motor control - Bernstein’s degree of freedom problem
– Motor Development affects motor learning
– No, the terms growth, maturation, and aging each have their own meaning
What is the difference between longitudinal and cross-sectional research?
Longitudinal research
– Same individuals are observed over a long period of time (e.g., at 5, 10, 15 and 20 years old)
Cross-sectional research
– Different individuals of various ages are observed at the same point in time (e.g., in 2010 groups of children born in 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005 are observed)
What is a cohort?
What is the cohort effect?
- Cohort: a group whose members share a common characteristic, such as age or experience
- Cohort Effect: motor differences that can be explained by a common characteristic other than developmental change
How have researchers attempted to
classify and explain patterns of
developmental change?
(6 theories)
– Maturation of the CNS
– Normative Descriptive
– Biomechanical Descriptive
– Information Processing
– Dynamic Systems
– Perception/Action
Who was the maturational perspective strongly influenced by?
What did it primarily focus on?
What did Gesell believe about individual variation?
- Strongly influenced by the works of
Gesell and McGraw. - Focused primarily on the individual – biological and genetic factors
- Gesell – individual variation has more to do with genetic heritage than environment
What body system did proponents of the maturational perspective think was primary attributed to?
How did they believe growth and maturation occurred?
- Motor development is primarily attributed to growth and maturation of the central nervous system (CNS)
– Other body systems are relatively unimportant
– Growth and maturation of the CNS triggers the emergence of new skills
What experiment did Myrtle Mcgraw complete and what were the results?
- Co-twin experiment
- Results – Dependent on type of
motor skills - Researchers have challenged
results
The ecological perspective believed that the interrelationship of 3 variables drove development; what are they?
What are the 2 major branches of the ecological perspective?
Individual
Environment
Task
- Two major branches
1. Dynamic systems
2. Perception–action
Who was the dynamics systems theory proposed by?
How was the concept of constraints relevant to their theory?
- Theory was advocated in early 1980s by
Kugler, Kelso, and Turvey (among others) - Body systems spontaneously self-organize (not driven by thought process of CNS)
– Organization is driven by constraints
– Constraints are channels by which movement can occur; they both encourage and discourage certain
movement patterns
What is the normative descriptive period?
Which development perspective was this period influenced by?
A movement concerned with standardized tests and norms that would describe children’s average performance in terms of quantitative measures on motor performance tests
(ex. they described the average running speed/jumping distance/throwing distance of children at specific times)
They were influenced by the maturational perspective but
they focused on the products
(scores,outcomes) of development rather that on the developmental processes that lead to these outcomes
What is the biomechanical descriptive period?
They made careful biomechanical descriptions of the movement patterns that children used for fundamental tasks and were able to identify the course of sequential improvement that children followed in attaining biomechanically efficient movement patterns.
What is the information processing perspective?
Focused on environmental or behavioral causes of development, they believed the brain acts like a computer that takes in information as an input to later process it and output a movement.
This perspective emphasized the formation of stimulus-response bonds, feedback and knowledge of results.
What was the progression in motor learning perspectives between information processing, biomechanically normative and normative?
Normative was first
Moved on to biomechanically normative after normative
Information processing is the newest perspective
What is the dominant perspective used by motor researchers?
What is involved in this perspective?
What is different between this perspective and the maturation perspective?
Ecological perspective is the most common perspective used now
Focuses on the interrelationship between the individual, the environment and the task and all constraints must be considered in order to understand the emergence of a motor skill
(ex. body type, motivation, temperature, ball size)
The ecological perspective considers motor development to be caused by the development of multiple systems whereas the maturational perspective only considers one system(the CNS)
What are the 3 stages of prenatal development?
Germinal
Embryonic
Fetal
What are the characteristics of each month of development, from 1-9?
Month 1:
-Vertebral column forms; heart forms; small buds for arms and legs form; other body systems begin
Month 2:
Eyes and nose forms; limbs become longer; fingers and toes begin to form; ossification begins at end of the month
Month 3:
Eyes and nose further develop; ears begin to form; ossification continues
Month 4:
Hair begins to appear on head; continued development of body systems; joints begin to form
Month 5:
Head becomes less disproportionate; lanugo develops; rapid development of body systems continues
Month 6:
Eyelids separate, eyelashes form; nails growing; vernix covers skin
Month 7:
Most body systems fully developed; premature birth possible(age of viability)
Months 8/9:
Subcutaneous fat is shedded; lanugo is shed
What are 6 ideal factors for a fetus?
1.Absence of abnormal genes
2.Adequate supply of oxygen
3.Adequate supply of nutrients
(vitamins/minerals)
4.Absence of disease
5.Absence of chemical substances
6.Absence of maternal stress
What body system is most important in the maturation perspective?
What are the 2 branches of ecological perspective?
– Maturation perspective
* CNS
– Ecological perspective
* Dynamic systems + Perception-action
What is the major theory behind the dynamic systems perspective?
How do body systems develop according to the dynamic systems perspective?
- Body systems spontaneously self-organize
(not driven by thought process of CNS)
– Organization is driven by constraints
– Constraints are channels by which
movement can occur; they both
encourage and discourage certain
movement patterns - Body systems develop at different rates.
– Movement only emerges when all systems are at necessary point of development
– Slowest system is called the rate limiting system
Who is the leader behind the perception-action perspective?
What is an affordance in this theory?
How does this effect motor development?
- Based on the work of J.J. Gibson (1960s and 1970s)
– Direct perception - An affordance is the function an environmental object/terrain provides to an individual (as perceived within their individual constraints)
- The characteristics of an object/setting define its meaning to the individual and how they can act with(in) it
– Graspability, catchability, climbability,
“snowboardability”
How do objects function according to the perception-action perspective?
Object functions are perceived based on the individuals’ dimensions (i.e., are body scaled) rather than the object’s actual properties
What are the 3 types of constraints according to newell’s model of constraints?
- Individual constraints
(structural/functional) - Task constraints
- Environmental constraints
What is the definition of a structural constraint and what are 2 examples of structural constraints?
How do these change with time?
(subtype of individual constraint)
Structural Constraints
* Related to the body’s physical structure
– ex. hinge structure of the
elbow constrains movement to one plane
– Ex. Cardiorespiratory system development
- Structural constraints may change with growth and aging
What is the definition of a functional constraint and what are 4 examples of functional constraints?
How do these vary between individuals?
(subtype of individual constraint)
Functional Constraints
* Related to behavioural function.
Examples are
– motivation, attention, previous experience, knowledge
- Functional constraints may vary widely between individuals