Motor Learning
What is motor learning?
It is the application of the most effective teaching principles to enhance motor learning in general and transfer in particular. Physiotherapists need to give instructions, share knowledge, and provide or ask for feedback to help the children.2, 3 More about motor learning.
Why is motor learning important for children with DCD?
Children with DCD have impairments that impact their capacity to acquire, and make motor skills automatic. More about the importance of Motor Learning
More about motor learning
- It is a set of processes associated with practice or experience leading to relatively permanent changes in the capability for movement. 2
- It builds upon the close-loop theory (which compares movements, detect errors and foster improvements for next tasks), the schema theory (which recognizes similitude in movements over time) and the dynamic system theory (which sees movement as emerging from the interaction of three general systems: the person, the task, and the environment). 4
Importance of Motor Learning
Children with DCD have impairments that impact their capacity to acquire, and make motor skills automatic. Contrary to typically developing children who improve the accuracy and fluency of their motor skills with practice, children with DCD remain much longer in the initial stages of learning. Specific strategies are needed to help them learn motor skills.
Key features of motor learning will include working on:
- Movement synergies, coordinative structures, generalized motor patterns that are refined through performance of the task
- Refinement of timing, sequencing, and force to help improve motor performance
- Acknowledging the importance of the stage of learning, and the type of task, practice, and feedback
Some key motor learning principles for interventions include:
- Verbal instructions: therapists provide relevant information about the task and its component parts to facilitate understanding of the task with the goal of improved task performance.
- Practice: therapists alter the amount, structure, and schedule of the practice to provide the appropriate degree of challenge.
- Verbal feedback: therapists pay attention to the form and the frequency of the feedback to promote cognitive effort and learning in addition to motor performance 5
Question for Reflection
In the videos in the section "Are some approaches better?", identify some examples of motor learning principles used by the therapist.
Click here for some examplesIn the videos in the section "Are some approaches better?", identify some examples of motor learning principles used by the therapist.
Some examples of the utilization of motor learning principles in the video include:- Verbal instructions: The therapist explained the activity with the sword [stick], indicating that the purpose was to practice small jumps ("what I want you to do this time, its to stand on this "X" [...] and I will move the sword under your feet [...] Try to stay on the "X" ). She also summarized the different steps Max had been practicing before integrating all of the steps into skipping.
- Practice: The therapist broke down the skipping activity into different steps to provide the appropriate degree of challenge while practicing (e.g. small jumps and arm movements). While practicing small jumps, the therapist modified the structure of the practice and started counting, so it would be easier for Max to know when to jump. For tumbling, the therapist taught the mother how to provide support to Max during his practice at home.
- Verbal feedback: After practicing jumping on the “X”, the therapist told Max that he was jumping too high (not practical for skipping rope and he might get exhausted). While practicing doing small jumps on the “X”, the therapist encouraged the child ("good"). She also stopped to provide feedback ("you are moving out of your "X").
