Physical and Motor Development in Child

Physical and Motor Development in Child!

Type # 1. Physical Development:

As has been stated earlier, development is unified and cumulative; hence the discussion of physical development cannot be restricted only to the growing in size.

Any develop­ment implies an all-round developmental behaviour pattern.

Yet the study of the significance of physical growth separately is to see how much does it contribute in total personality development of a person from childhood to maturity.

Physiological maturing prepares one to profit from experience. It is important in educational psychology because biological changes—especially in the nervous system— influence what one can learn in future. Children who differ in rate of maturing have different experiences and develop different personalities.

Children grow at different rates and develop different physiques. The direct effect of these differences is seen in the child’s ability to play games—solitary or cooperative. The indirect social and psychological effects are even more impor­tant, e.g. physical immaturity, poor coordination, or biochemi­cal abnormalities can interfere with any type of social learning.

The child who tires readily, for example, will have a shorter span of concentration, will be more upset by difficulty and will be less willing to persevere.

Physical superiority helps beneficially the development of personality and it has been noticed that physically competent children gain social assurance, are more confident and have positive self-concept. The child with a slight physique or poor coordination finds himself mostly unwanted when his playmates are choosing teams.

Physical strength’ and stature are particularly important to the boy whose personality affects all of his social relationships.

Stronger boys are generally superior in spirit and appearance and more masculine which attract other people’s attention. One’s attitude toward one’s physical endowments is an element in self-confidence at all ages. A large portion of adolescents are at some time disturbed about one or another physical characteristic.

Tallness in girls, shortness in boys, fatness in either sex lead the list of causes of discontent, in general. Hence, there bubbles up a craze for body building, preparation for good look, attractive appear­ance because body builds are associated with self-image.

In spite of all the facts stated above, physical superiority does not necessarily lead to superior development of persona­lity. Sometimes the large boy is overbearing and unpopular. A relatively small adolescent who is attractive and mature may be popular among his peer group. What is most important is that the effect of a physical characteristic depends upon meaning attached to it by the person and the group.

Patterns and Trends in Physical Growth:

Even casual observation reveals that the first two and three years of development are of very rapid growth for the human organism. In order to know the characteristics of these periods of life it is important firstly to identify general principles that can adequately characterize and summarize growth and secondly, to collect normative data regarding the development of particular body parts and functions.

Viewed in its larger perspective, bodily growth occurs through approximately the first twenty years of life in humans. The entire span of overall growth period can be divided into three major subdivisions—infancy and early childhood (upto the fifth year of life), middle and late childhood (upto the age of twelve) and adolescence (upto the age of twenty or little more).

Growth is more rapid and more likely to show spurts during both the infancy-early childhood period and the adoles-cente period than during middle childhood.

The Growth Systems (Physical):

The first trend that is noticeable in the early physical growth period is the increasing size of the body. Different body parts show somewhat different growth patterns relative to the age of the child. Various organ systems or tissues show respective and regular growth pattern contributing to the increase of the size.

The ‘body-size’ category, which includes the skeleton, muscles and internal organs, show more rapid growth during the first and third developmental period of early life than in the middle childhood.

The ‘lymphatic system’ (thymus, lymph nodes, and intestinal lymphoid mass) reaches an adult level by seven years of age and is even larger during preadolescence before the growth stops, and gradually declines. Similarly, the neural system (head, brain, spinal and intricate nervous network) is almost fully developed by the age of six.

In contrast, the reproductive organs grow very slowly until adolescence, at which point their growth is propelled.

The general principle of early development is that development proceeds cephalocaudally—that is, from the cephalic or head region to the caudal or tail region. A fetus is remarkably top heavy and the neonates less so and, until middle adolescence, the proportions of adulthood is not apparent.

The early growth and development shows that the functioning of the organism appears in keeping with this direction of physical growth. Infants are able to lift their heads within the first weeks of life but cannot stand until the end of the first year.

The second general principle of the development is that growth proceeds from the proximal or center axis of the body to extremities or more distal regions. This ‘proximo-distal’ pattern of development is also reflected in the youngster’s behavioural competence.

The most intriguing facets of body growth is that there are large individual differences in the ‘rate’ at which growth occurs. This fact has potential implications for the develop­ment of social behaviour. All these are maturational effect of growth which takes place normally as a rule of nature.

Type # 2. Motor Development:

The issue of motor development is important to the educational psychologists as it paves the way for later smooth learning on the part of the child. As the child grows physically he or she develops the ability to know and manipulate the environment which is also an indication of rapid growth.

This type of motor development is often referred to as perceptual- motor development because it involves many complex perceptual and cognitive processes.

Two general principles of motor development in a child are two closely related processes known as “differentiation” and “hierarchic integration”. The term differentiation refers to the facts that the child’s physical development is characterised by an increasing degree of control and specificity in its motor functions.

Varieties of developed motor activities and control are manifested by the young infants very quickly during the growth process which indicate growing motor coordination. First they show good control over arm movements, then hand movements, and, finally, finger movements and so on with increased coordination, increa­singly differentiated control over the exercise of other body parts.

The individual movements over which the child gains mastery are then “put together” that is, ‘integrated’, into more complex and sophisticated organisation of behaviour. This process is called the “hierarchic integration”: implying that individual parts of the child’s new motor competence are integrated into larger and more coherent whole units of motor behaviour.

Thus, the process of ‘differentiation’ leads to the process of ‘hierarchic’ integration to complete the growth process in the motor development.

Maturation and Learning:

The total physical development of a child is influenced by two factors—one maturation and the other learning or experience. The two factors, though labelled separately, as a matter of fact are interwoven to cast influence on the growing process.

Maturation refers to the changes that primarily represent an unfolding of the nature of the capacities of the organism (and the species) that are at least relatively independent of special environmental circumstances, training or experience.

Maturation is a concept more important than mere chronological aging. Maturation implies the changes involving improvement of behaviour from earlier to later stage of development. This means that maturation takes place automatically as an organismic process in its natural way—in a species-specific way, following two general principles of differentiation and integration.

Similarly, the ‘learning’ factor, which is a product of experience, contributes to the environmental influence.

The relative importance of the two factors need not be discussed in the present section—that the processes involved in the two factors act together and contribute jointly to form new behaviours. Therefore, this dichotomy appears to be quite simple and it is an agreed fact that a child’s’ behaviour develops through the interaction of his biological and genetic make-up as well as his social and environmental influences.

Maturational and learning factors combine for the develop­ment of various kinds of behaviour in a child again through the same process of differentiation and integration.

Growth indicates improved motor performances with age. Growth is more than enlargement. Parts of the body change in relative size, glands and their secretion take on new functions and innumerable changes take place in the body’s microanatomy and biochemistry. Change in height and weight is most striking in early adolescence.

Adolensence sees great increase in height and weight, change from childish to adult body proportions, change in the sexual organs, change in the glandular functions and change in voice.

The child, in effect, acquires a new body, which can do new things and admits him to new social relationships. These biological changes extend over several years. It is customary to consider the appearance of adult sexual characteristics (primary and secondary) at the start of adolescence.

This development is known as ‘puberty’, is dramatically signalled for the girl by the first menstruation (menarche), and less suddenly for the boy by the appearance of pubic hair and breaking of voice. The child does not leap into adolescence; the physical and behavioural changes are gradual.

As to the size, height grows rather steadily during childhood, slowing a bit before the spurt at puberty. In middle childhood, the average for the two sexes on most physical measures are about the same. In adolescence the males become taller, heavier, and stronger than females.

The second trend is the ‘timing’ of adolescent changes. Girls enter the adolescence cycle ahead of boys. The peak growth for the girls come somewhere between age 10 and 15 and most often at about 12—two years ahead of the average boy. The more rapid growth for girls presents special problems during Grades V-VTII.

Physically, the typical girl at this time is as mature as the boy two grades ahead. But as growth is influenced by environmental conditions also, the rate of growth and maturing age differs from culture to culture and from country to country (due to the influence of varying climate and weather).

The third prominent trend is individual difference. Both before and after puberty, persons of the same age and sex differ markedly. Some girls enter adolescence at relatively lower age and some do not make the transition until few years later. Among boys even some high school juniors are still children—physically.

But, on an average, most traits that concern teachers have something like a ‘normal distribution’ following a normal statistical curve. The curves become non-normal only as students begin to bump against the upper end of the scoring scale. Both physical and mental measures are likely to have somewhat symmetrical distributions, high in the middle, when the scale is open-ended.

Provided the measures of individual differences are distributed normally, two mistakes the teachers can avoid are:

(1) To consider only the deviations, i.e. individual attention to be paid just to the students who are advanced or who are behind the groups only. The normal curve warns us to consider that, superiority is as common as inferiority,

(2) To think of “superior’, “normal” or “inferior” groups as distinct. Statistically considered, nearly all the qualities of the students which are of concern to the teachers have continuous distribution. The general curve shows no gaps in the height distribution, for example, separating “tall” from normal, nor even in the mental distribution, between “bright” and “normal” or “dull”. Whenever exceptional children are selected for special treatment, the dividing line is arbitrary. Considerable variations remain within each group. Therefore, the teacher should be cautious to employ only statistical norms because the normal distribution is definitely a useful working concept, but not an exact law.

The child who is advanced in some physical characteristics has a good chance of remaining above average. But, equal differences in size may not be equally important. Being 10 cm (four inches) above the average height may be much more distressing for a girl of 14 than being 10 cm (four inches) below average.

On an. average, though the physical growth is more or less consistent, but in spite of this consistency, some children spurt in size or strength and others grow normally. Again, illness or emotional upset may impair not only physical development but all learning and social adjustment.

Despite the consistency, there are early maturers and late maturers in physical characteristics. What is of importance is that they do not differ in success per se, but they differ as persons. The personality effect in the early maturers become far smoother socially each success adds confidence and prestige, which helps them further.

Neural Maturation:

The neurophysiology and biochemistry of the brain and nervous system change as the child grows older and the changes do influence his or her performance and learning. But knowledge about the internal changes is not so readily available for us as to reach some definite conclusions about their effect.

The teacher needs only to be aware of the significance of neural development and of the interpretations of the physiological findings thereupon. It is important to know that the brain changes in size and structure and permits precise control of motor responses through nerve-cell.

The microanatomy also changes: nerve-cell endings branch, strengthen and lengthen, more fibers connect the trunk with the brain, and, in general, the system becomes more complexly connected. As the brain changes, new performance becomes possible, hence intellectual growth, even after schooling begins, is probably biological in part.

The maturational process implies the changes to be unfolding of pre-patterned structure that help development, given normal health, nutrition and stimulation. Formally speaking, a maturational process is one where the ‘timing’ of emergence of some characteristics, and form are primarily controlled by genes.

But secondarily—and no less importantly, every physical and behavioural characteristic depends to some extent on diet, exercise, material care and other aspects of environment.

It is important for the educationist to note that if under normal conditions brain structures unfold in some largely predetermined manner, this should influence the timing of instruction. Neurological studies of humans establish the role of stimulation during the formative period in promoting even biological maturing.

Though biological maturing is automatic, however, it becomes improved and varied when earlier stimulation has been provided.

Limited amount of stimulation has as much effect as massive stimulation which perhaps overload a child’s behaviour. Burton White’s view is that the initial information-processing activities of the child are “plastic”. Adjusting environment in the cradle days gives the parent a first opportunity to educate the intellect of his child.