Motor skills

Motor skill is when babies start to learn how to control movement of part of the body. This process involves the coordination of muscles.

Due to the immaturity of the human nervous system at the time of birth, children grow continually throughout their childhood years. Many factors contribute to the ability and the rate that children develop their motor skills. Uncontrollable factors include: genetic or inherited traits and children with learning disorders. A child born to short and overweight parents is much less likely to be an athlete than a child born to two athletically built parents. Controllable factors include: the environment/society and culture they are born to. A child born in the city is much less likely to have the same opportunities to explore, hike, or trek the outdoors than one born in the rural area. For a child to successfully develop motor skills, he or she must receive many opportunities to physically explore the surroundings.

Infantile: Early movements made by very young infants are largely reflexive. An infant is exposed to a variety of perceptual experiences through the senses. For example, very young infants have a reflexive response called "rooting". By slightly stroking the side of the infants face, the infant turns its head to that side,frequently resulting in the location of food. Gradually, the infant learns that certain involuntary, reflexive movements can result in pleasurable sensory experiences, and will attempt to repeat the motions voluntarily in order to experience the pleasurable sensation.

Milestone Developmental Stages;

Stress and arousal: stress and anxiety is the result of an imbalance between demand and the capacity of the individual. Arousal is the state of interest in the skill. The optimal performance level is moderate stress or arousal. An example of too low of arousal state is an overqualified worker performing repetitive jobs. An example of stress level too high is an anxious pianist at a recital.

Fatigue: the deterioration of performance when a stressful task is continued for a long time, similar to the muscular fatigue experienced when exercised for a rapid rate or lengthy period of time. Fatigue is caused by over-arousal. Fatigue impacts an individual in many ways: perceptual changes in which visual acuity or awareness drops, slowing of performance (reaction times or movements speed), irregularity of timing, and disorganization of performance.

Vigilance: the effect of the loss of vigilance is the same as fatigue, but is otherwise caused by the lack of arousal. Some tasks include jobs that require little work and high attention.

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