An Approach to Information-Processing of Movement Coordination in Children's Motor Development

Abstract

It is the aim of the present paper to make clear those levels of those four systems, that is, the perceptual, central nervous, motor and feed back systems, in the information-processing which reflect the chain and interaction of them in children's motor development. Three variables were selected and used for locating the information-processing in children's movement coordination: 1) The response velocity in the tapping test 2) The number of correct-error responses in the discrimination test 3) The execution time and the number of error responses in the diagram-pursuit task with Two Hands Coordination. The results obtained are summarized as follows; 1) The X^^- of the response velocity in the tapping task were 44.6 times per 20 seconds. And the correlation between the response by the left hand and that by the right one was highly significant in the value (r=0.884). 2) In the discrimination test, the X^^- of the number of the correct responses were 7 per 30 seconds, the SD was as high as 3.7. It may be said that there are some significant differences in the discrimination ability of children at the age as early as 5 years old. 3) In the Two-Hands Coordination task, the relation between the movements of the left and the right hand are recognized by children at the early stage of trials. It was found out, however, that it is difficult for children to coordinate their both hands in the diagram-pursuit task, though the execution time tends to be shorter, and the number of errors to decrease. These results may suggest that the movement coordination which reflects the organization of the four systems in the information-processing should be used as a marker indicating the motor development in children.