Motor Development and Motor Learning
This domain tests how movement emerges across the lifespan and how learners acquire and refine motor skills. Expect questions on developmental sequences, constraints, Fitts and Posner stages, Gentile's taxonomy, practice conditions, feedback, and transfer.
Core rules and concepts
- Newell's constraints interact: individual (body size, maturation, motivation), task (rules, equipment, goals), and environment (space, surface, gravity).
- Motor development moves from reflexive and rudimentary phases to fundamental motor skills-locomotor, manipulative, stability-then specialized sport skills. Fundamental patterns develop through initial, elementary, and mature stages.
- Fitts and Posner: cognitive (conscious, error-prone), associative (refining), autonomous (automatic).
- Practice design: massed vs distributed; blocked vs random; constant vs variable; whole vs part. Random and variable practice often improve retention and transfer but depress immediate performance.
- Feedback: intrinsic vs extrinsic; knowledge of results vs knowledge of performance; bandwidth, faded, and delayed feedback support self-regulation. Learning is inferred from relatively permanent change, not one-day performance.
Worked example
A 7-year-old throws with no step and a rigid arm. The teacher should recognize an elementary throwing pattern, not a discipline problem. She reduces ball size, cues “step with the opposite foot and turn the hip,” and uses variable targets at short distances. She gives one cue at a time and fades feedback as accuracy improves. Assessment is retention after two weeks, not immediate hit rate.
Traps
Equating improved performance in practice with learning; overloading beginners with feedback; ignoring task and environment constraints; assuming all children of the same age are at the same developmental level.