Periods of Motor Development, Essay Example

Introduction to socio-cultural factors as an environmental constraint

Socio-cultural factors pose a very significant environmental constraint on different periods of motor development. Some of these factors include family setting, influence of siblings; availability of toys for infants, availability of training programs for seniors, where an individual grows up, social economic status, among many others. Gallahue (2005) says that each of these factors imposes constraints to motor development during different pre-adapted, fundamental, task-specific, skilled and compensation periods.

 Socio-cultural factors in the pre-adapted period

The predated period, motor development in infants is affected by various factors. During this stage, motor development is characterized by postural control that involves many continuous and dynamic interactions between the sensory system and neuromuscular system. This interaction makes it possible for voluntary movements to take place, mainly in the first year of a child’s development. Nonetheless, socio-cultural factors have an imperative role to play in determining the motor changes that take place at this time.

Within the family setting, motor development among pre-adapted infants depends on whether their parents create opportunities for them to do so. Chambers (1991) observes that if a parent was encouraged to engage in many physical activities, he is highly likely to teach his children to do the same thing while they are in the pre-adapted period. Herkowitz (1980) believes that parental bias on the basis of gender makes children to develop motor skills in completely different ways. The response that a parent gives to a child determines the motor behaviors that will be emphasized. If girls are given negative responses for trying to engage in large, active motor activities, they are likely to get negative responses from family members. In many cultures, girls get positive responses whenever they engage in dependent, adult-oriented behaviors.

The socio-economic status of the setting in which the child grows up determines his level of motor development through the influence of economic privileges that come with being in an economically stable family. For instance, a child from a rich family can have someone employed to take care of all his needs, including those relating to motor development. Such a child is expected to be well nourished, furnished with expensive toys and given all the attention that a child needs. Such a child easily reaches more motor development milestones compared to her counterparts from poorer families.

A child who grows up in a setting where there are many siblings feels challenged and motivated to engage in various motor activities that other children engage in. He gets the drive to try out different things. Even if he does not succeed in most of them, he feels that there is something he should be able to do one day the therefore, he keeps trying to do it.

Socio-cultural factors in the fundamental period

Once a child has acquired the motor skills that are needed for purposes of self-feeding and walking, this marks the entry into the Fundamental period of motor development. Some of the motor skills learnt during this period include throwing, catching, kicking, skipping, hopping and striking. The greatest influencing factors during this period are peers and the family.

Children who are not exposed to peers develop these motor skills slowly. Children at this stage also need the guidance of their parents, who induct them into only those games they think are best suited to their socio-cultural grounding. Parents and peers influence the speed and direction of motor development during the fundamental period through the variations in games chosen, frequency of durations set aside for interactions and gender roles assigned to children.

Children who interact with peers with proper parental guidance as well as assistance from older members of the family attain full proficiency in this stage of motor development by the time they are six years old. Environmental factors such as where the children grow up and availability of appropriate toys greatly determines how these children’s motor skills develop.

If children are exposed to an environment where there are many learning activities going on and where teachers offer them fitness ideas and tips, they are likely to get motivated to do adventurous things with their physiques in order to do things that their peers, parents and teachers never thought that they could do.

When teaching support is provided to children aged between 4 and 6 years, there are very high chances that they will be completely experienced in throwing skills by the time they are six years old. Today, many post-primary education children seldom attain full proficiency in motor development largely because of constraints put on them by the immediate environment, be they in the form of lack of enough toys, lack of opportunities and facilities to engage in sports training or lack of assistance from teachers, peers and parents.

Socio-cultural factors in the task-specific period

Prior to puberty, there are no observable differences in the way boys and girls jump, kick and strike. However, a closer observation reveals that boys tend to outdo girls in terms of motor development at almost all ages. The proficiency of girls when it comes to task-specific activities tends to level out when they reach age 13. For boys, the motor development seems to continue taking place until they are in their late teens.

The influence of peers leads to a situation where children of the same age seem to excel in the same manner in different sports. Beck (2007), notes that the perception-action perspective that is appropriate in the performance of different specific tasks is determined largely by the environment. Children tend to perform physical activities the way peers do them. In the occasions where teachers are there to offer them guidance, they tend to stretch their motor abilities to the limits in order to excel in specific sports.

The influence offered in environments where many sporting activities are taking place is very profound. Children are forced to engage in information processing activities apart from motor activities. The wide variety of sports available give children an opportunity to develop their motor skills in different ways as they continue exploring which sports interest them most.

At this level, quality of coaching cannot be underestimated. Children have to be taught how to make specific movements in order to attain the right level of dexterity needed to perform well in particular sports. Young children tend to perform dismally in terms of accuracy whenever the tasks that they must accomplish become more and more complex. Therefore response complexity is one of the task characteristics that determine their performance in the task-specific period. The main role of teachers is to guide children in performing complex movements and making them aware of their movement errors so that they can improve on them with time.

The best learning environment is school. Here, the influence of peers is very profound. Children get advice from their teachers, who draw on the strengths and weaknesses of different children for illustration purposes.

Socio-cultural factors in the skilled period

During this period, individuals are motivated by the interests that they have already developed in certain sports. Using task-specific skills, an individual, probably in his teens or adulthood, feels free to explore unique ways of performing the same task in order to excel in competitive environments. The individual’s environment determines the nature of training opportunities that he gets.

At this level, training facilities and equipment are needed more badly than ever before. Without proper facilities, it may be difficult, if not impossible for one to engage in competitive sporting activities. The reasons for failure among people in the skilled period are not entirely physiological. At their age, these people have already developed certain psychological associations with certain sports. They have learned virtually everything about the sport and its socio-cultural associations either in the locality or globally. For them, it is not possible to excel in any sport without adhering to the socio-cultural features associated with it.

The skilled period is context-specific. Specific patterns of motor skills have to be modified in order to fit in with certain sports such as football. In football, one has to learn how to hit the ball as well as dribbling. Striking patterns are very important in games such as tennis, golf and baseball. These skills, though seeming physiological in nature, have socio-cultural associations that govern the way in which they are learned in terms of patterning and behaviors.

The skilled period marks the period when one’s level of performance is at the highest level. In order to maintain the continuum of skillfulness that shows a clear change towards improvement, then the appropriate sport-specific and environment-specific socio-cultural factors have to be put into consideration.

Socio-cultural factors in the compensation period

The compensation period refers to the time in human motor development when people have to compensate for the biological changes taking place in their physiques. One cannot remain in the peak of skillfulness forever. There comes a time when compensation strategies are needed in the course of one’s sporting life. Interruptions may come in the way of an athlete in the form of lack of fitness or injury. Additionally, people naturally get older and weaker.

New parenting roles may take a toll on one’s level of commitment to his favorite sport. Any sporting activities that such a sportsman engages in are for compensation purposes. If an individual’s socio-economic status changes dramatically, perhaps due sporting excellence, fame and the resulting riches, one may easily fall into fitness problems. This will lead to a drop in the skillfulness with which one used to engage in a certain sport during the peak period. Fitness problems may pose major problems to seniors who live in places where there are no places to work out or where no fitness programs for seniors exist.

References

Beck S. (2007).Task-Specific Changes in Motor Evoked Potentials of Lower Limb Muscles after Different Training Interventions, Brain Research, 1179(7), 51-60.

Chambers, S. (1991). Factors Affecting Elementary School Students’ Participation in Sports. The Elementary School Journal, 91(5), 413-419.

Gallahue, O. (2005). Understanding Motor Development: Infants, Children, Adolescents, and Adults (6th Edition), London: Routledge.

Herkowitz, J. (1980). Sex-Role Expectations and Motor Behavior of the Young Child, Journal of Research in Music Education, 28(3), 167-175.