Desarrollo Motor

Motor Development
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Motor Development
Karen E. Adolph and Sarah E. Berger
To appear in W. Damon & R. Lerner (Series Eds.) & D. Kuhn & R. S. Siegler
(Vol. Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol 2: Cognition, perception, and
language (6th ed. ) New York: Wiley.

Contents
RECLAIMING MOTOR DEVELOPMENT ................................................................... 2
The FormalStructure of Movements ........................................................................... 2
Perceptual Control of Motor Actions ........................................................................... 5
Chapter Overview ....................................................................................................... 6
MOTOR DEVELOPMENT AS A MODEL SYSTEM.................................................... 7
Qualitative Changes .................................................................................................... 8
Emergent Developments.............................................................................................. 9
Developmental Trajectories ....................................................................................... 19Variability ................................................................................................................. 26
Time, Age, and Experience........................................................................................ 28
Movement is Ubiquitous ........................................................................................... 33
Summary: Models of Change.................................................................................... 35
MOTOR DEVELOPMENT AS A PERCEPTION-ACTION SYSTEM ........................ 37
Prospective Control ................................................................................................... 38
Centrality of Posture.................................................................................................. 43Perceiving Affordances ............................................................................................. 45
The Perception-Action Loop ..................................................................................... 56
Creating New Affordances for Action ....................................................................... 61
Summary: Getting into the Act.................................................................................. 63
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................... 65
FIGURE CAPTIONS ...................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................. 66Motor Development
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RECLAIMING MOTOR DEVELOPMENT
For many years, motor development has been the area of developmental
psychology that dare not speak its name. In lieu of “motor development”, researchers
have preferred terms like “perceptual-motor development”, “perception and action”, and
“motor skill acquisition”. Perhaps the eponym “motor development” does not sound
sufficientlypsychological whereas names like “perceptual-motor development” remind
readers that the adaptive control of motor actions involves proper psychological
processes such as perception, planning, decision-making, memory, intentions, motivation,
and goals.
Sure, every introductory textbook contains a chapter called “Motor
Development”, usually paired with physical growth. But, the textbookinventories of
infantile reflexes, motor milestones, and growth charts do not reflect the kind of work
that currently characterizes the field. Most of us do, in fact, study perception-action
coupling with the aim of understanding developmental changes in the perceptual,
cognitive, social, and emotional processes that contribute to the adaptive control of motor
actions. However, many developmental...