Read the text. Motor coordination is the product of a complex set of cognitive and physical processes that are often taken for granted in children who are developing

Motor coordination is the product of a complex set of cognitive and physical processes that are often taken for granted in children who are developing normally. Smooth, targeted, and accurate movements, both gross and fine, require the harmonious functioning of sensory input, central processing of this information in the brain and coordination with the high executive cerebral functions (e.g., volition, motivation, motor planning of an activity). Also required is the performance of a certain motor pattern. These elements must work in a coordinated and rapid way to enable complex movements involving different parts of the body.

Muscular tone refers to the basic and constant ongoing contraction or muscular activity in the muscles. It can be understood as a baseline or background level. Tone may be normal, too low, or too high. Hypotonic children appear floppy. For example, hypotonic babies have an appearance similar to a rag doll. Infants or young children who may be hypotonic have difficulty maintaining posture against gravity and prefer to sit, leaning against something, or they may prefer to lie on the floor. By contrast, when muscular tone is too high (hypertonic), children appear somewhat stiff and do not move in a smooth and natural way. Youngsters may move somewhat like a puppet or robot, and they lack the ordinarily smooth nature of movement in small motor acts.

Gross motor skills refer to the ability of children to carry out activities that require large muscles or groups of muscles. Muscles or groups of muscles should act in a coordinated fashion to accomplish a movement or a series of movements. Examples of gross motor tasks are walking, running, throwing something, jumping, standing on 1 leg, playing hopscotch, and swimming. Posture is an important element to consider in the assessment of gross motor skills. Adequate posture may make all the difference between being able or not able to execute a movement. This is particularly true in infants and young children. Children may be able to reach for a toy if sitting, but they may be unable to organize this movement if their trunk is tilted or straining to maintain a vertical position.

Fine motor skills consist of movements of small muscles that act in an organized fashion, for instance, the hands, feet, and muscles of the head (as in the tongue, lips, facial muscles), to accomplish more difficult and delicate tasks. Examples of fine motor activities are writing, sewing, drawing, putting a puzzle together, imitating subtle facial gestures, pronouncing words (which involve coordination of the soft palate, tongue, and lips), blowing bubbles, and whistling. Many children who have difficulties in their fine motor skills also have difficulties in articulating sounds or words.

Muscular strength refers to the intensity of the muscle contraction exerted voluntarily that may be required to carry out an activity. Some children who struggle with motor clumsiness appear weak and slender and may have an inadequate strength in their movements.

Shaking the child's hand and asking him or her to squeeze the clinician's hand are techniques to assess the child's strength.

Motor planning consists of the ability of children to imagine a mental strategy to carry out a movement or an action; for instance, how to get on top of a table, how to move from point A to point B and overcome some obstacle, how to execute a dance step, or learning how to skip.

When children have difficulties in motor planning, they carry out movements using odd strategies; for example is a child trying to get down from a chair without moving the trunk and preparing himself to go down and instead just letting himself fall.

Sequencing and speed of movements involves the order in which movements should proceed one after the other to accomplish a desired goal. Children with difficulties in motor skills often perform movements slowly as a result of their difficulty in organizing and coordinating motion. They may also rely on visual cues to perform the movement (e.g., in handwriting) more than other children do. The necessity to view the movement slows the performance. These children often have problems in other activities that might require sequencing, such as in reading, writing their ideas, or even continuous speech.

Sensory integration refers to functioning of the brain, i.e., how it manages input and produces output. Outputs include motor responses. The central concept is that children may struggle to integrate sensory input (e.g., visual, auditory, tactile, and proprioceptive cues) and develop aversions (e.g., to being touched, to being exposed to new sounds). Also, children may become overstimulated in any of these sensory channels, and their behavior and motor performance deteriorate in circumstances of overstimulation.

At the age of 3-5 years, many skills are acquired and refined with exposure to activities and games that require motor practicing. Children obviously vary in the speed of their development, and strict dates or milestones of age that are totally accurate cannot be established. By age 2 years, many children can make a brief 2-foot take-off jump if someone holds their hands. At 3-4 years, most children can hop on 1 foot; with the dominant leg, they can hop about 3 times. This hopping can be performed about 10 times in children aged 5-6 years. By age 5 years, most children can jump about 3 feet in distance and about 1 foot in height.

By the age of 4-5 years, most children have developed a clear hand preference or dominance. Lack of a hand preference may signal that the normal dominance and specialization of the brain hemispheres is not occurring. Such children do many things with either hand or with 1 hand or the other at different times. In some cases, true ambidexterity is present. However, in many cases, the brain is not developing an adequate specialization of neuronal pathways to control motor function with one hemisphere. In those cases, the clinician can observe hesitations and the inability to select one side, resulting in relative clumsiness in both limbs.

When one evaluates young children, a great deal of the neurologic examination can be carried out in the context of play. Evaluative play tasks, including hand shaking, squeezing the examiner's fingers to assess strength, throwing and kicking a ball, cutting something with a pair of scissors, drawing, coloring, tying shoes, and taking off or putting on a coat.

No single type of treatment can be applied to all children with motor coordination disorder, nor is 1 treatment successful with all. Clinicians typically attempt to (1) ascertain problem areas for a given child in a comprehensive fashion and (2) then design an intervention to promote optimal adaptive functioning or the acquisition of skills that are underdeveloped or affected or the amelioration of coordination difficulties.

Two general approaches are used to treat motor coordination problems in children. One approach is a modular approach (top-down approach), and the other is a more global or generalized approach (bottom-up approach).

The first approach usually involves gradually targeting certain problem behaviors and implementing step-by-step interventions to teach the skill and to practice it. This method tends to prevent failure and rewards the child, at least in the beginning.

The second approach is based on the theoretical assumption that the motor skills problem is just a manifestation of some underlying mechanism, e.g., sensory integration problems or insufficient or inaccurate kinesthetic perceptions. In this method, the therapist does not initially address the observable motor challenge. Rather, the expert focuses on how children manage their bodies, process stimulation (sensory information), and deal with problems. The expectation is that the improved sensory-motor functioning becomes generalized and eventually improves the motor skills. As children become comfortable with their bodies, they gain control of their motor (and other) functions.

Examples of this school of thought are the kinesthetic training approach, sensorimotor integration therapy, or sensory integration therapy. As with many other forms of intervention and therapy, evidence of the efficacy of these methods is limited, particularly over the long term or regarding the end result.

 

III. 1. Answer the questions:

1) How are motor skills important for our daily life?

2) How can you improve children's motor skills?

3) What part of the brain is most concerned with motor coordination?

4) What may cause delay in motor development?

5) What are the two main approaches to treating motor disorders?

2. Make the plan of the text. Here are the titles in the wrong order. Make the order correct:

1) Manifestations in preschool children

2) The main approaches to treating motor disorders

3) Sequencing and speed of movements

4) Motor planning

5) Fine motor skills

6) Muscular strength

7) Sensory integration

8) Gross motor skills

9) Motor coordination

10) Muscular tone

 

3. Say whether the following statements are true or false:

1) Motor skills relate to muscles and movement and include crawling, walking, running, handwriting, and speaking.

2) A modular approach is based on the theoretical assumption that the motor skills problem is just a manifestation of some underlying mechanism.

3) By the age of 2-3 years, most children have developed a clear hand preference or dominance.

4) Children with difficulties in motor skills often perform movements slowly.

5) The stages to motor learning are the cognitive phase, the associative phase, and the autonomous phase.

6) When children have difficulties in motor planning, they carry out movements using odd strategies.

7) Gross motor skills require the use of smaller muscle groups to perform tasks.

8) Activities like playing the piano and playing video games are examples of using fine motor skills.

9) The development of motor skill occurs in the motor cortex, the region of the cerebral cortex that controls voluntary muscle groups.

4. Find the synonymous words in the text:

- to execute a movement;

- dislike, antipathy;

- to damage;

- 30, 48 cm;

- ability to actually perform tasks well with either hand;

- body;

- improvement.