All children have their own unique ways of interacting with their environments, connecting with people around them, and learning about their world. Babies take in information from their senses and use this information to respond to people and events. Children's daily experiences facilitate integration of their senses. These early sensory…

Two important components of skill learning are the learning process itself (motor acquisition) and the ability to transfer what has been learned to new task variants (motor transfer). Many studies have documented age-related declines in the ability to learn new manual motor skills. In this study, I tested whether the degree of savings at transfer…

The primary purpose of the present study was to determine whether recent findings documenting the benefits of text-related motor activity on young children's memory for reading passages [Glenberg, A. M., Gutierrez, T., Levin, J. R., Japuntich, S., & Kaschak, M. (2004). Activity and imagined activity can enhance young readers' reading…

This study investigated the role that visual tracking plays in coupling rhythmic limb movements to an environmental rhythm. Two experiments were conducted in which participants swung a hand-held pendulum while tracking an oscillating stimulus or while keeping their eyes fixed on a stationary location directly above an oscillating stimulus. It…

Primates, including humans, communicate using facial expressions, vocalizations and often a combination of the two modalities. For humans, such bimodal integration is best exemplified by speech-reading--humans readily use facial cues to enhance speech comprehension, particularly in noisy environments. Studies of the eye movement patterns of human…

This paper offers teachers basic information about sensory integration and suggests strategies for managing classrooms which include children with sensory integrative dysfunction. The first section looks at what sensory integration is, noting especially the roles of the three "near senses": the vestibular system, the proprioceptive system, and the…

Elementary school physical education in the 1950s espoused the aims of complete education through programs which emphasized mastery of skills in games, sports, dance, and similar activities. Since the middle of the 1960s, movement education has gained in popularity as both a methodology and as a program focusing on learning through efficient…

Simple observation of dance movement, while very useful, can lead to misconceptions, about the physical realities of dance movement, that make learning difficult. This gap between reality and understanding can be reduced by the application of biomechanical techniques such as cinematography, electromyography, and force-plate analysis. Biomechanical…

The 33 lesson plans are intended to enhance the sensorimotor intelligence period of severely/profoundly handicapped children. It is stated that the conceptual framework of the "Stimulating Our Senses" (SOS) program is based on the description of sensorimotor intelligence by J. Piaget and attempts to strengthen growth and development in…

Several studies have shown an improvement in the performance of motor skills following imagined performance of the skill, or "mental practice." One unresolved issue has centered on whether the effect being observed is in fact a practice effect. As one alternative, the effect may be a simple instance of planning when to use a skill, or…

The study of human movement is presented from an integrated perspective influenced by the fields of motor learning, experimental psychology, neuropsychology, kinesiology, biomechanics, and human factors engineering. The level of presentation is directed toward upperclass undergraduate and graduate students in physical education and others pursuing…

It was discovered a few years ago that a child's capacity for academic learning was partially dependent on visual and audio perception. It was also found that the development of perception in these sensory modalities was sometimes deficient. Educators immediately began to devise programs for perceptual-motor training, but ignored the role of the…

In this speech, the author expresses concern for the child who does not seem able to perform. The author states that there is an orderly acquisition of sensations, skills, and/or patterns that we move through in the process of learning, and that the acquisition of more advanced skills is predicted on the assumption that earlier sensations, skills,…

A sample of 247 Educationally Handicapped (EH) children at ages 6-10 was investigated to determine the role of static balance impairment in learning disabilities and the possibility of improving reading through balance training. Significant correlations between balance ability and reading level were found in only about 40% of the sample,…