Motor Development: Biological Aspects of Brain and Behavior

Abstract

Developmental psychology has a long history of linking motor development to enhancement in perceptual and cognitive abilities. Because of the haphazard appearance of the very first movements, the human infant is often thought to be born with an immature brain. However, behavioral and brain research shows that infants have advanced brains that are ready to learn even before birth. The infant brain doubles in both size and weight during the first year of life. During infancy, nerve cells increase dramatically in number, they become more specialized, and up to a thousand new connections per second are formed between them. The foundation for the brain’s infrastructure is formed during the first thousand days of life. Different neural networks are formed in response to the quantity and quality of experiences a child is exposed to. In addition, the growing brain is open and moldable, it can adapt to the changing conditions surrounding it, and the brains of infants and small children show the most plasticity. Developmental neuroscience research suggests that as soon as babies start crawling at around 9 months of age, they undergo remarkable development of prospective control and timing skills at both the brain and behavioral levels when dealing with visual motion. Only a few weeks after crawling onset, infants process visual motion faster and more efficiently, and they differentiate between motion speeds and directions. Stimulating the development of motor skills that allow babies to start exploring their surroundings by themselves earlier is therefore likely to facilitate brain development.

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“…Perkembangan motorik pada anak-anak merupakan aspek penting dari keseluruhan perkembangan mereka (Agustina et al, 2022;Fatmawati, 2020;Multahada et al, 2022;Van der Meer & van der Weel, 2022). Ini melibatkan perkembangan dari gerakan sederhana dan tidak terampil menjadi keterampilan yang lebih kompleks dan terorganisir, yang menunjukkan pertumbuhan fisik anak dan kontrol atas otot (Fatmawati, 2020;Van der Meer & van der Weel, 2022). Plastisitas otak pada bayi dan anak-anak memungkinkan mereka untuk beradaptasi dengan lingkungannya, sehingga menekankan pentingnya stimulasi keterampilan motorik sejak dini (Multahada et al, 2022).…”

Play it by Ear: A perceptual algorithm for autonomous melodious piano playing with a bio-inspired robotic hand

“…In human development and artistic expression, motor behavior is intricately intertwined with perception(1; 2; 3; 4; 5). This fundamental notion is well-established in psychological and psychophysical studies.…”

Handedness as a major determinant of lateral bias in human functional cradling

“…Most infants are born in a left position and show a right supine head turn preference, naturally leading to newborn infants viewing the right hand more than the left. Before the onset of reaching, infants spend hours looking at their hands, and so they should, for many lessons in practical optics need to be learned familiarizing themselves with their own body and learning about how far they can reach, what is within reach and out of reach, and whether a toy is too big for their hand to grasp, in terms of their affordances for manipulation (Van der Meer & Van der Weel, 2019, 2022). It turns out that the hand that is viewed more is also moved more (Michel & Harkins, 1986; Van der Meer, 1997; Van der Meer et al., 1995).…”