Perceptual Motor Behavior And Educational Processes

Foreword / Leon J. Whitsell -- Preface -- Perceptual-Motor Behavior and Education -- Movement and the Human Personality -- Movement and the Intellect -- A Three-level Theory of Perceptual-Motor Behavior -- Some Social Dimensions of Physical Activity: Recent Trends in the Literature -- The Complexity of People -- The Independence and Interdependence of Visual Perception and Movement in Infants and Children -- Research Guidelines -- Research in Human Movement -- New Perspectives Upon Man in Action -- Movement Activities in General Education -- The Use and Misuse of Movement in Education -- Ego Growth and Movement Efficiency -- The Gender Identification of Children -- Personality in Movement -- Why Johnny Can't Right ... Write ... -- Special Education -- General Considerations -- Kinesiology and Special Education -- On the Threshold -- We Learn of Vision from the Sightless, and the Retarded Teach us About Cognition -- Blind Children and Youth -- The Development of Perceptual-Motor Abilities in Blind Children and Youth -- Mobility Research at UCLA -- A Summary and Implications of the Findings -- The Educability of Dynamic Spatial Orientations in Blind Children -- The Clumsy Child Syndrome -- Principles of Perceptual-Motor Training for Children with Minimal Neurology Handicaps -- Hyperactivity and Education for Purposeful Behavior -- The Mentally Retarded -- The Role of Motor Activities in Programs for Mentally Retarded Children -- Some Perceptual-Motor Characteristics of Children and Youth with Downs Syndrome -- The Orthopedically Handicapped -- The Use of Perceptual-Motor Activities for Orthopedically Handicapped Children -- Screening Test for Evaluating the Perceptual-Motor Attributes of Neurologically Handicapped and Retarded Children -- A Mobility Orientation Test for the Blind.

Three main topics are covered in this book, namely, learning, memory, and perception. The first section consists of seven papers and is devoted entirely to the learning of motor skills. The papers summarize the current state of perceptual- motor learning in general and highlight specific topics of interest to the informed reader. The second section is divided between movement memory and perception. In recent years there has been a decline in the popularity of movement memory as a research topic. However, some recent advances in cognitive science, and parallel distributed processing in particular, may now provide the basis for a renewed interest. The topic of perception never enjoyed the popularity that motor skill learning and/or memory for movement did. However there is now a clearer understanding of the perceptual processes and invariances that affect how we perceive the world. Others, like the renewed interest in signal detection theory and quantal reaction time, serve notice that the perceptual part of perceptual motor-skills is here to stay.

Improvements in task performance following practice can occur as a result of changes in distinct cognitive and neural processes. In some cases, we can improve our performance by selecting a more successful behavior that is already part of our available repertoire. Skill learning, on the other hand, refers to a slower process that results in improving the ability to perform a behavior, i.e., it involves the acquisition of a behavior that was not available to the controller before training. Skill learning can take place both in the sensory and in the motor domains. Sensory skill acquisition in perceptual learning tasks is measured by improvements in sensory acuity through practice-induced changes in the sensitivity of relevant neural networks. Motor skill is harder to define as the term is used whenever a motor learning behavior improves along some dimension. Nevertheless, we have recently argued that as in perceptual learning, acuity is an integral component in motor skill learning. In this special topic we set out to integrate experimental and theoretical work on perceptual and motor skill learning and to stimulate a discussion regarding the similarities and differences between these two kinds of learning.

Information Processing in Motor Control and Learning provides the theoretical ideas and experimental findings in the field of motor behavior research. The text presents a balanced combination of theory and empirical data. Chapters discuss several theoretical issues surrounding skill acquisition; motor programming; and the nature and significance of preparation, rapid movement sequences, attentional demands, and sensorimotor integration in voluntary movements. The book will be interesting to psychologists, neurophysiologists, and graduate students in related fields.

A guide that outlines a 32-week programme of sequential station activities that will help pre-school and young school aged children in various stages of development, particularly those who are lagging behind in their perceptual-motor skills. It provides what you need to create a perceptual-motor learning laboratory for your students.

"Offers a new approach to the understanding of the development of motor skills in children. It goes beyond the description of the repertoire of motor skills, so common in current literature, to analyse their causes. The book aims to bridge the gap between theoretical and applied interests to provide the teacher, psychologist and the therapist with the framework for the analysis and treatment of perceptual-motor development and dysfunction in children aged five to twelve years. The authors adopt the process-orientated approach to the study of motor behaviour, examining the underlying psychological and physiological processes that are common to many different types of everyday activities. They illustrate how process-orientated analysis leads to an understanding of the factors that determine motor behaviour, and form the basis for individual differences. The need for standardised tests to diagnose motor dysfunction is stressed and the authors critically review those tests currently available. They go on to describe the construction and implementation of their own tests for kinaesthetic sensitivity and perceptual-motor abilities, and show how the training of kinaesthetic perception abilities improves motor control"--Back cover.