Motor development as foundation and future of developmental psychology

The study of how infants and children come to control their bodies is perhaps the oldest topic in scientific developmental psychology. Yet, for many years the study of motor development lay dormant. In the last two decades, however, there has been an enormous resurgence of interest. As at the time of the very beginnings of our field, the contemporary study of motor development is contributing both empirically and theoretically to the larger questions in development and especially to our understanding of developmental change. In this essay, I trace the course of the changing fortunes of motor development, evaluate where we have been, what we are doing, and speculate on some critical issues for the future. The purpose of this essay is to comment on the general themes and influences that have been a part of motor development’s “rise-fall-and-rise-again” history. For a more comprehensive review of substantive topic areas in motor development, readers are referred to the authoritative treatment recently published by Bertenthal and Clifton (1998) and to the excellent monograph by Goldfield (1995).