MOTOR DEVELOPMENT STAGES

Assist Prof Çiğdem YAZICI MUTLU

 Developmental Milestones
• Developmental Milestones across multiple
domains such as

– Cognition
– Motor
– Social-emotional
– Linguistic
 Cognitive Development
• Cognitive development refers to the progressive
and continuous growth of perception, memory,
imagination, conception, judgment and reason.

• According to Piaget, cognitive development is

based primarily on four factors:
– maturation,
– physical experience,
– social interaction
– general progression toward equilibrium
Jean Piaget and Cognitive Development
• One of the most popular theories of
cognitive development was created by
Jean Piaget,
• A Swiss psychologist who believed that
cognitive growth occurred in stages.
• Piaget studied children through to
their teens in an effort to determine
how they developed logical thinking.
• He attempted to document the stages
of cognitive development by observing
the memory processes of children.
• For Piaget, cognitive or intellectual development is the process of
restructuring knowledge.
• The process begins with a cognitive structure or a particular way of
thinking.

• This way of thinking is based on what the child currently knows and
his new experience.

• As the child encounters a novel experience, disequilibrium is

created.

• The child must compensate for this disturbance and solve the
conflict between what he currently knows and his new experience.

• Piaget referred to this process as adaptation.

 Piaget’s Cognitive Development Stages-1
• Sensorimotor: Ages birth-2
-the infant uses his senses and motor abilities to understand the world.
Reflex and first habits
Working memory/realization of object
İncrease physical mobility (sit, crawl,stant walk..)
Egocentric

• Preoperation Ages 2-7:

-the child used mental representations of objects and is able to use symbolic
thought and language
Thinking with symbolic functions
Have fantasies (to believe object is alive)
Learn speak, understand words
Drawing symbolic
Love to play pretend
More couries, ask question
Intuitive age
Still egocentric
 Piaget’s Cognitive Development Stages-2
• Concrete operation Ages 7-11:
-the child uses logical operations or principles when solving problems
Concrete cognitive operations
Learn to write
Rational judgement
Mentally manipulate information
Get to know ourself better

• Formal operation Ages 12 up:

-the use of logical operations in a systematic fashion and with the ability to use abstractions.
Abstract concepts
To understand our own identity and morality
Think about thinking itself
To plan ourlife systematicly and prioritize
Egocentric thought
Psychomotor Development
 1-Reflexive Movement Phase
• Babies come up with a generic ability to move various parts of their
bodies and a series of behavioral responses called reflexes.

• Reflexes are the first sources of information for the child. It carries a
food-providing feature such as protective and search / sucking
reflexes for the baby.

• Reflexes with the maturation of the nervous system, leave their

places to voluntary behavior.

• The actions they do are aimed at, but are rude and out of control.
– For example, when a baby wants to catch an object, the baby makes a rough
move that the whole body joins.
• Reflexive movement phase are explained two
consecutive phases;

Information gathering phase- (Information Encoding

Phase)
starts before the birth and continuous 4 months after
the birth.

Information solving phase- (Information Decoding

Phase)
Starts at 4 months after birth, voluntary movements
occur such as sitting, crawling, catching
 In the first year of life there are
milestones of the psychomotor
development!
• First Movements
• Sitting
• Crawling
• Sitting without support
• Independent walking
 2-Rudimentary Movement Phase
• Primitive movements are the first form of voluntary movements in the first
two ages.
• Baby movements reveal the importance of maturation sitting, crawling,
standing, in development.
• These movements, in the first two years of life, result in the development of
bone, muscle and nervous system, as well as the opportunities available to the
baby.

• Primitive movements depend on maturation and follow a predictable

sequence of occurrences.

• In normal conditions this sequence does not change, but their appearance
times, speeds may vary from child to child. These sources of individual
differences are inherited and environmental factors
 Rudimentary movements…
• Stability skills: such as control of head, neck, Control of
trunk , Sitting, Standing

• Manuplative skills: Reaching, Grasping, Releasing

• Locomotive movements: Horizontal Movement, Upright

Gait

• http://www.intrainer-buddy.com/rudimentary-
movement-phase-making-movement-meaningful/
 3-Fundamental Movements Phase
(2-7 years)
**Running, jumping, bouncing, tapping,
throwing, catching.

**After two years of age, basic movements

appear roughly.

**The child first strives to understand the

movement of his own body and to try it
Then they start to make their movements more coordinated and
controlled with control over their body.

At the end of the period, the child performs his or her advanced,
coordinated and controlled movements effectively in the
mechanical direction.

Basic skills are seen to have matured in the period of five to six
years.

It is important to have a good education in the maturation of the

child, to be encouraged and to have the opportunity to practice.
 Fundemental Movement Phase

• Locomotive Skills: Running, Jumping, Hopping,

Galloping
• Manipulative Skills: Throwing, Catching,
Kicking, Striking
• https://www.wslhd.health.nsw.gov.au/Healthy
-Children/Our-Programs/Munch-Move/Funda
mental-Movement-Skills
 Sports Related (Specialized) Movement
Phase
Elementary school kids show the basic skills they have achieved much earlier and
more accurately than they have gained new skills.

During this period, locomotor, manuplative and balancing movements are

combined and used in games such as rope skipping, high and low, or sports such
as football, basketball
The phases of sport-related movements are examined in three stages;
• transition to sports skills,
• application of sports skills, and
• lifelong participation in sports activities.
 Motor Development

Gross Motor Fine Motor

Development Development
 Gross Motor Development
• Movements involving large muscles such as
trunk muscles used for sitting upright and leg
muscles used for walking.

Fine Motor Development

• Smaller muscles such as those in the fingers or
tongue are used for fine motor tasks such as
writing or talking respectively.
Ex:
• The skill of walking can be expected to emerge
anytime between 8 months of age and 18 months of
age, with median age expected to be 12 months. That
is a wide window during which this skill may emerge.

• Thus a child who is not walking at 14 months is not

necessarily impaired in gross motor development,
although she should be evaluated carefully by a
specialist who could assess evidence of other skills
involving gross motor development
• Some gross motor skills should emerge earlier
in development such as crawling, walking with
assistance and then standing alone.

• If these skills are not yet present in a 14

month-old child, there may be greater cause
for concern.
 Social-Emotional Development
• A child must be interested in socializing and
communicating with others to be an effective
communicator.

• Difficulties with social interaction can

profoundly impair communication; indeed,
this problem is one of the hallmark features
with autism.
• In early infancy, we are most concerned with a
child’s connectedness with his world.

• This connectedness is initially expressed through

nonverbal modes, such as eye contact and facial
expression.

• The infant will produce a behaviour that elicits a

reaction in the environment. The infant will
respond to this reaction, thereby resulting in
learning.
• Self-regulation; development of regulatory
capacity evolves
– from control of physiological responses
– to control of emotional state and attention.

• The child’s ability to maintain homeostasis or

to keep everything in balance.
• When infants are first born they have little regulatory
capacity beyond keeping their physiological
responses(HR, body temperature) balance.

• These behaviour are not under the control of baby.

Initially, responses to stimulation in the environment
are not under the baby’s control, but rather occur
automatically, leading them to be called reflexive
responses.

• Ex: suck response when you touch on a baby’s

cheek.
• As the infant matures, these reflexes are
integrated as the infant’s ability to self-
regulate (ex:control of body) grows over time.

• The ability to self-regulate is very helpful for

learning process and is related to adaptation
process of cognitive development as Piaget’s
described.
• Our bodies are exposed to visual,auditory, tactile
and olfactory stimuli, as well as changes in
temperature, motion and balance.

• As we matured we learn to ignore certain stimuli

and to pay attention to others.

• This ability to discriminate between stimuli and

then determine which to ignore (or suppress)
and which to attend to, is at the core of
regulatory development.
• Sleep-wake cycles are good examples of the
development of regulation.
• In the first month of life infants sleep many hours per
day. They awaken briefly to feed and then fall asleep
again.
• After the first weeks of life, the infants are able to
maintain the awake state for a longer period of time,
which provides the baby to observe an environment.
• Although the sleep periods lengthen, they decrease
number, this is an example of the development of
regulation.
A strong social-emotional foundation
is key to the development of verbal
language behavior!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 Linguistic Development
• In the first two months of life, infants make
sounds for limited purposes. They may cry to
seek assistance, usually for fulfillment of a
physical need such as hunger or other
discomfort.
• When they are calm and in a regulated state,
they may make pleasure sounds; these noises
may sound like vowels, but are not yet true
speech sounds.
• As the infant approaches three to four months of age,
he produces cooing sounds, which approximate a
single syllable consisting of a consonant and a vowel.

• As the infant approaches 9 to 10 months of age, this

vocal pattern is called jargon. The jargon is often
accompanied by gestures and body movements as well
as changes in facial expression.

• Sometime 10 to 12 months of age, the first word

emerges but it is a simplified version because the baby
cannot say all of the sounds in the right sequence.