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Manipulative competence in children with mental handicaps: theory, findings, and intervention
Author(s) -
Moss Stephen C.,
Hogg James
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
mental handicap research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.056
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1468-3148
pISSN - 0952-9608
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-3148.1988.tb00071.x
Subject(s) - competence (human resources) , psychology , cognitive psychology , motor skill , repertoire , motor learning , developmental psychology , social psychology , neuroscience , physics , acoustics
The article reviews studies carried out by the authors on fine motor skill development in children with mental handicaps. From a theoretical perspective, a distinction is drawn between the evidence for programmed movement in animals, characterised by rigidly invariant patterns of movement, and the concept of motor programming as applied to human motor learning. Some studies on human motor programming have suggested that skilled action is characterised by increasing predictability, and that children's motor learning is characterised by the development of a repertoire of stable units of action, called subroutines, which can be combined into longer action sequences. In a series of studies, however, the authors found little evidence for such an interpretation. Rather than showing increasing consistency as proficiency improves, repetition of a task by a skilled performer demonstrates a variety of distinctly different motor patterns. In accordance with this finding of variability in skilled action, an approach to the teaching of motor skills is presented which is based on the development of generalised competence through the application of general case instruction .