Discuss developmentalist Arnold Gesell's view on motor skills development in infants. How does Arnold Gesell's view differ from Esther Thelen's dynamic systems theory on motor development?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Developmentalist Arnold Gesell (1934) thought his painstaking observations had revealed how people develop their motor skills. He had discovered that infants and children develop rolling, sitting, standing, and other motor skills in a fixed order and within specific time frames. These observations, said Gesell, show that motor development comes about through the unfolding of a genetic plan, or maturation.

Later studies, however, demonstrated that the sequence of developmental milestones is not as fixed as Gesell indicated and not due as much to heredity as Gesell argued.

According to Esther Thelen's dynamic systems theory, infants assemble motor skills for perceiving and acting and that perception and action are coupled. According to this theory, to develop motor skills, infants must perceive something in their environment that motivates them to act and use their perceptions to fine-tune their movements. Motor skills assist infants in reaching their goals. When infants are motivated to do something, they might create a new motor behavior. The new behavior is the result of many converging factors: the development of the nervous system, the body's physical properties and its possibilities for movement, the goal the child is motivated to reach, and availability of environmental support for the skill.