Life Span Motor Development

Make it easy for students with little or no background in the movement sciences to understand motor development across the life span. The fourth edition of Life Span Motor Development contains more than 130 video clips on an interactive CD-ROM, access to 28 downloadable laboratory activities, and other features that bring the subject to life. The inclusion of the labs and video clips into the textbook offering effectively replaces the learning activities guide from the previous edition, allowing students to have one book for all their coursework relating to motor development.

More reader friendly than ever, the widely used introductory text to life span motor development is an excellent resource that leads students through the principles, research, and applied practice of motor development from infancy to older adulthood. It will help students meet the minimum competencies identified by AAHPERD's Motor Development Academy as they prepare for the Praxis exam for physical education.

Life Span Motor Development, Fourth Edition, continues to present current topics in motor development from a unifying model of constraints approach.  Students learn to improve their problem-solving ability by looking not only at the individual but also at the environmental and task factors that may affect growth and motor development. In addition, a life span approach has been integrated throughout the text, illustrating the range of motor skills in humans ranging in age from infants to adults. 

In the fourth edition, the material has been streamlined into 17 chapters, and the following features have been added, making it more usable for teachers and students alike: 
· Inclusion of more than 130 video segments of developmental sequences on a CD-ROM that requires no registration or unlock code
· Web access to 28 hands-on laboratory activities that present opportunities for students to systematically observe motor development levels across a variety of skills
· Learning activities in every chapter that help students apply information to real-life situations
· Observation plans for assessing motor skills via developmental sequences

The following are popular features retained from the third edition:
· Real-life experiences that are applicable to each chapter's content
· Chapter objectives that list the most important concepts within the chapter
· A running glossary of terms in the margin throughout each chapter
· Assessment boxes to ensure that students learn about evaluation techniques and instruments in a consistent way
· Interactive reflection questions throughout the text to help students master the material and test their learning as they progress
· Concept elements that point out the theme of a discussion amid chapter details
· Summary and synthesis reviews that help students integrate the different concepts from each chapter into a constraints perspective
· Discussion questions that provide a quick review of topics covered in each chapter

This user-friendly textbook will appeal to students and help passive readers become more active thinkers who understand how to apply information to solve practical problems.

This book contains predominantly black-and-white illustrations, with some color illustrations.

Life Span Motor Development, Fifth Edition, is the only introductory textbook to use the model of constraints approach in discussing reasons for changes in movement throughout the life span. This fully updated edition presents the principles of motor development in an accessible manner for readers with minimal movement science background.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer:Erik H. VanIterson, MS, MA(UIC College of Applied Health Sciences)
Description:This book effectively integrates and applies the basic principles of motor control and human physiology to help explain how one's ability to control movement is affected across the course of the life span. Furthermore, it does a great job of sequentially reintroducing theories of motor control by providing sufficient real-world applications so readers may integrate the interactions of factors such as individual, environment, and task into the ability to affect motor development and learning. The previous edition was published in 2005.
Purpose:The purpose is to reintroduce the fundamental concepts of motor control and apply them to the changes in movement control that occur during the course of one's life. In doing so, the authors start from a strong foundation of motor control and effectively explain the theories behind motor development and learning from youth to late adulthood. They meet their purpose over the course of several sections that are necessary to tie together the relationships between the individual and the internal and external interactions that occur during development/adulthood that affect movement.
Audience:The audience may include students, educators, and practitioners in physical and occupational therapy, youth physical educators, and gerontologists.
Features:The first of the book's six sections is primarily a review of the principles of motor control, with the remaining sections covering motor development ranging from youth to the elderly. There is a significant amount of information covered in each section without going into great detail on the theory behind it. Consequently, readers should have more than a beginning understanding of motor control before using this book. Illustrations, side notes, and figures add a simplistic but effective learning component to each chapter without overwhelming readers.
Assessment:This book is especially useful for those who are interested in applying their knowledge of motor control and development to a real world setting. The updated references add value by illustrating the continuing growth and application of research being done in this area. This is a needed update of the previous edition, based on the updated references as well as on the return of the chapter on principles of motion and stability, which was omitted in an earlier edition.

Kathleen M. Haywood, PhD, is a professor and associate dean for graduate education at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, where she researches life span motor development and teaches courses in motor behavior and development, sport psychology, and biomechanics. She earned her PhD in motor behavior from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1976.

Haywood is a fellow of the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education and the Research Consortium of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance (AAHPERD). She is also a recipient of AAHPERD's Mabel Lee Award. In addition, Haywood has served as president of the North American Society for Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity and as chairperson of the Motor Development Academy of AAHPERD.

Haywood is also the coauthor of the first and second editions of Archery: Steps to Success and Teaching Archery: Steps to Success, published by Human Kinetics. She resides in Saint Charles, Missouri, and in her free time enjoys fitness training, tennis, and dog training.

Nancy Getchell, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of Delaware in Newark. She has taught courses in motor development, motor control and learning, research methods, and women in sport. For nearly 20 years, Getchell has focused her research on motor development.

Getchell currently serves as section editor for the Growth and Motor Development Section of Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport. She is a member of the North American Society for Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity, the International Society of Motor Control, and the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD). Getchell has also served as the chairperson of the AAHPERD Motor Development and Learning Academy.

In 2001, Getchell was the recipient of the Lolas E. Halverson Young Investigators Award in motor development. She earned a PhD in kinesiology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1996.

Getchell resides in Wilmington, Delaware, where she enjoys hiking, playing soccer, and bicycling.