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Academic Goals
Learning Goals for Psych 437: Motor Development
Frank Smoll
The goal of this course is to understand the process of motor development from conception through adolescence, including the interactions between biological, psychosocial, and environmental factors affecting motor development of children and youth. By the end of the course, students will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:
1. Developmental principles and processes
- The nature of human growth and development
- Natural laws pertaining to developmental structure and function
- Theories of development
- The regulation and modification of biophysical and psychosocial development
2. Normal patterns of physical growth
- Differential growth and morphogenesis
- Endochondral ossification and bone growth
- Age-related changes in body size, proportions, and composition
- Sex differences in somatic growth
- Physiological maturity and its influence on growth
- Endocrine and environmental factors affecting growth
- Interrelations between somatic growth and psychosocial development
3. Development of fundamental motor skills during infancy, childhood, and adolescence
- Reflexes and their relevance for volitional motor control
- Emergence of phylogenetic and ontogenetic motor patterns
- Acquisition of mature form in fundamental motor skills (developmental processes and sequences)
- Influence of environmental enrichment and deprivation of opportunity
- Age trends in performance of fundamental motor skills and modifying factors
- Gender differences in motor development
- Physiological maturity and its influence on motor development
- Interrelations between motor development, growth, and psychosocial development
- Developmental theories concerning how and why new behaviors emerge and change over time
- Research designs and methods used to study motor development
- The application of critical thinking skills to educational policies and practices regarding motor development
4. Methods and techniques used to evaluate maturation, body size, and physique
- Anthropometry (measurement and recording techniques)
- The concept of developmental age, including procedures for assessment of physiological maturity
- Theoretical bases of constitutional psychology
5. Play behavior and developmental status
- The nature and significance of children's play, including consideration of play forms, socialization factors, and developmental trends
- Biological and psychosocial aspects of sport competition for children and youth
- The application of critical thinking skills to educational policies and practices regarding play
