development and learning: an historical perspective on acquisition of motor control

Infant Behavior & Development 26 (2003) 441–448

Development and learning: An historical perspectiveon acquisition of motor control

Herbert L. Pick Jr.∗

Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, 51 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA

Received 17 January 2002; accepted 31 January 2002

Abstract

A historical overview on infant motor development is provided, using the concepts of learning anddevelopment as a vehicle to travel from Darwin, through the 20th century till today. The differenttheoretical perspectives are highlighted with attention to how the two concepts are treated.© 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Newborns of most animal species are not nearly as motorically skillful as mature individ-uals. This is even true of precocial birds and other animals who are able to locomote at birth.Historically, such facts were noted by researchers and even casual observers of behavior. Intrying to explain the change researchers wrestled with various dichotomies: nature–nurture,heredity–environment, instinct–learning, etc. On one side was something inborn in the organ-ism, on the other side was something acquired through experience. The dichotomy focusedon here is similar, that of development and learning. Again, development implies somethinginborn, and learning implies acquisition through experience. I think the use of the term devel-opment has a further emphasis, namely that even though something may be inborn, it changeswith growth and age. At least in that sense it is similar to maturation and is the sense in whichit will be considered here.

In trying to present an historical perspective, one is faced with a question of where to start.Here, one possibility is to start with Socrates and his trying to convince a student that he didn’thave to learn; he already knew. He simply had to think and remember. . . This is a strange formof maturation or at least an anti-learning perspective, but it wasn’t concerned with questionsof motor development, and anyway it is probably too far back to start. Another possibility isto begin with Descartes. I understand that in between his invention of analytic geometry and

∗ Tel.: +1-612-624-2062; fax:+1-612-624-6373.E-mail address: [email protected] (H.L. Pick Jr.).

0163-6383/$ – see front matter © 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2002.01.001

442 H.L. Pick Jr. / Infant Behavior & Development 26 (2003) 441–448

his analysis of the mind–body problem, he wrote a book called theDevelopment of the Fetus.(This is said to have been done during the year that his illegitimate child was born.) However,Descartes is still too far back to begin.

Probably a good temporally more proximal place to start is with Charles Darwin and his closefollowers. In the latter half of the nineteenth century Darwin’s ideas and writings had the sig-nificant and important impact on physiology and psychology of putting animal and man on anevolutionary continuum. Studies of animal behavior and physiology could be relevant to under-standing human functioning. Following closely after Darwin,Romanes (1884)distinguishedbetween habit and instinct in animal behavior. Although his work was not mainly focused onmotor behavior it did contrast development (instinct) and learning (habit). Cf (Gottlieb, 1997).A widely cited researcher of that period,Spalding (1873, 1954), conducted experiments todetermine whether relevant prior experience was necessary for birds to begin to fly. He raisedbirds without the opportunity of flying until they physically matured to the point that naturallygrowing birds would be flying. When released these birds flew with little or no delay.

Such experiments made such an impact on William James that after discussing them in hisPrinciples of Psychology (originally published in 1890), he made the following comments:

In the light of this report one may well be tempted to make a prediction about the human child,and say that if a baby were kept from getting on his feet for two or three weeks after the firstimpulse to walk had shown itself in him—a small blister on each sole would do the business—he might then be expected to walk about as well, through the mere ripening of nerve centers asif the ordinary process of ‘learning’ had been allowed to occur during all the blistered time. Itis to be hoped that some scientific widower, left alone with his offspring at the critical moment,may ere long test this suggestion on the living subject. (James, 1950, pp. 406–407)

Another reseacher of the same era as Spalding was William Preyer, a German physiologist,who worked mostly in the late eighteen hundreds. Preyer did much of his research on themotor development of animals: studying chick embryos in the egg, squirming of frog embryos,newborn guinea pigs, etc. Preyer also observed his own child and wrote a book,Die Seele desKindes (1882). One observation he made relevant to later work on motor development ofchildren was that there were very large individual differences in rate of motor development inchildren but the order or sequence “is the same in all individuals and that is the important matter.”

Notwithstanding James’ remarks no one undertook to vary the experience and environmentof the human infant to test his hypothesis. However, Preyer’s animal research was an earlycontribution to a line of research sometimes called experimental embryology in which motordevelopment of very young animal organisms was observed and manipulated, specifically to testin a systematic way the kind of hypothesis that Spalding had investigated and James proposed.

Early in the twentieth century a number of researchers engaged in such experimental em-bryology. Prominent among these was Coghill, a neuroanatomist at the Wistar Institute inPhiladelphia. Coghill’s research included studies of the neural anatomical development in am-blystoma (salamanders) and related it to their behavioral development (e.g.,Coghill, 1914,1929). He described the course of development of swimming movements which started withhead turns and then body coiling proceeding in a cephalo-caudal direction. The coiling rateincreases in rapidity so that one coil is not completed before the next wave begins and results inforward locomotion. Of particular interest to the theme of this paper are his observations that

H.L. Pick Jr. / Infant Behavior & Development 26 (2003) 441–448 443

these movements develop along with growth of the nervous system and are well coordinatedbefore they can be elicited by any external stimulation such as tactual probing with a stylus.This led Coghill to conclude when discussing the relation between development of the nervoussystem and the amblystoma behavior:

The relation that is found to exist between the structural development of the nervous systemand the development of the organism to perform particular acts makes it necessary, in thepresent state of our knowledge, to distinguish sharply between the process by which the animaldetermines what acts it can do and the process by which it determines when and to what extentit will do them. (Coghill, 1929, p. 86)

Coghill goes on to say that whether a muscle contraction occurs depends on the develop-mental mechanics of the muscle system and is not related in any causal way to the value of thebehavior it produces. In a series of studies the psychologist, Leonard Carmichael, continued thisline of research investigating more experimentally whether motor experience contributes to thedevelopment of locomotion in amblystoma.Carmichael (1926, 1927)raised amblystoma eitherin tap water or a solution of chlorbutanol (chloretone). The latter is an anasthetic drug underwhich morphological growth occurs in the absolute absence of observable external movements.The organisms grow to the point when they appear to be better physically developed than thetap water controls were when they had begun to swim. When the chloretone ambystoma areplaced in tap water they begin to make movements in just a few minutes and in less than thirtyminutes are making coordinated swimming movements, in many cases indistinguishable fromcontrol organisms who have been swimming for five days (Carmichael, 1926, 1927).

It was in this context, and particularly with issues of learning and development in mind, thata number of researchers began studying the motor development of young children. Amongthe most well known were Arnold Gesell, Myrtle McGraw, and Mary Shirley. They workedtoward the realization of a test of William James’ hypothesis with children.

Gesell, with training in education, psychology, and medicine took a biological perspectiveon development of children and was very influenced by Darwin and Coghill. His biologicalperspective included the view that the structure of behavior mirrored the organization andstructure of the nervous system. Gesell pioneered the use of movie recording in assessing thedevelopment of normal children. In fact he was widely known for the norms he collected. Forexample, in one study he assessed the behavior of 107 infants at 15 ages from birth to 56weeks of age (Gesell & Thompson, 1934). Gesell may have been the first major researcherto use the co-twin control paradigm to study the relative effects of development and learningin children (Gesell & Thompson, 1929). One of a pair of twins (Twin T) was given specialtraining in locomotor skills, especially climbing and in prehension at 46 weeks of age. Theseskills were allowed to develop on their own in the other twin (Twin C). The locomotor skillsdeveloped much more rapidly when training was introduced after seven weeks for Twin C.Prehension developed at about the same rate for both twins not withstanding the special traininggiven Twin T. Such results, Gesell’s general biological orientation, and his heavy emphasis onage norms gave a strong maturational developmental cast to his writing and to his influenceon the field. However, he recognized that there must be a learning or experience componentin development and occasionally took pains to acknowledge it. Consider, for example, hisstatement: The heredity and environment of an organism can be completely separate only in


analytic thinking, for in actual nature such separation would lead to instant death, even thoughthe philosopher making the analysis might himself survive (Gesell, 1933). SeeThelen andAdolph (1992)for an excellent description of the Gesell’s research and impact on the field.

McGraw was also greatly influenced by Coghill. Indeed he was an advisor on her researchprojects. McGraw also undertook a co-twin control study. Her study of Johnny and Jimmy isa classic, probably the best known of investigations using this paradigm (McGraw, 1935). Thedetailed reports of the development of motor skills, both trained and untrained in these twoboys makes fascinating reading, even after this long a time interval. Starting at age of 20 daysJohnny was given systematic stimulation several times a day and around nine months periods oftraining in climbing inclines, climbing off a stool, and seemingly more complex skills like rollerskating and riding a tricycle. McGraw distinguished between “phylogenetic” actions which allchildren of the species acquire and “ontogenetic” actions which are not obligatory for allchildren. Actions like creeping, crawling, standing erect, walking, etc. fit into her phylogeneticcategory, and climbing up inclines, skating, riding tricycles, etc., she placed in the ontogeneticcategory. The phylogenetic actions were achieved at approximately the same ages. For exampleboth babies took a few steps alone at nine months but didn’t achieve independent locomotiontill about 16 months at about the same age “despite the daily exercise of Johnny” (p. 84).

Johnny mastered some of the ontogenetic actions, e.g., stair climbing and climbing offstools, in relatively short periods of time, and he learned to skate but did not learn to ride thetricycle. Mcgraw’s explanation for that failure was that her training involved strapping the feetto the peddles with the aim of making the task easier. However, this constraint took away thepossibility of Johnny’s exploring the task. McGraw’s conclusion was that the training contextneeds more study. The field, in general, and the general public concluded, as with Gesell, that atleast phylogenetic skills depended more on development and maturation. A careful reading ofMcgraw, as with Gesell, finds a much more balanced view of the relative roles of developmentand learning. For example, “But the daily practice in stepping movements from the time Johnnywas 20 days old was not without some effect. There developed a conditioned response in thelower extremities. . . ”. And she concludes:

The extent to which exercise of an activity may alter the development of a particular behavior-coursein infancy is contingent upon the following conditions: (1) the neuro-structural level at whichthe activity is controlled; (2) the state of plasticity or fixity of the behavior-course at the timeincreased exercise is introduced; (3) the state of fixity attained by the behavior-pattern at thetime the factor of special exercise is withdrawn, and (4) the phylogenetic origin and importanceof the behavior-pattern. (p. 309)

(For an excellent discussion of Gesell’s research and impact on the field seeThelen andAdolph (1992). Similarly, Bergenn, Dalton, and Lipsitt (1992)provide an excellent treatmentof McGraw’s research and theoretical ideas. Also seeDalton (1996)andThelen (1996)for anexchange of views about McGraw’s perspective on development and learning.)

Shirley (1931, 1933)did not undertake a manipulation of experience to investigate the rela-tive importance of maturation and experience. Rather in a careful and systematic examinationof motor development during the first two years of life she observed the sequence and ageof achievement of various motor skills in general domains like eye coordination, posture andlocomotion, fine motor manipulation, motor play. Echoing Preyer’s suggestion (above) about


the ontogenetic order of actions, she found the ordinal sequence of 42 individual behaviors inthese categories to be relatively invariant. And she suggested several criteria for asserting adominant role of maturation: (1) consistent sequential order of achievement in spite of vari-ation of environment, (2) sequential order invariant across different rates of achievement, (3)achievement not dependent on training or opportunity for incidental practice, (4) conformityof functional development to biological structural changes, and (5) sudden appearance of newachievements. She interpreted her observations to largely conform to these criteria and thusalso came down on the side of maturation.

Notwithstanding the caution of these investigators in promoting a strong maturationist view,their work was widely interpreted in that direction. On the other hand there were researcherswho tended to emphasize the learning side of this dichotomy. Very prominent among these wasKuo who studied avian motor development (e.g.,Kuo, 1924, 1932). The complex and maturebehaviors of birds at hatching were often regarded as independent of experience and henceinstinctive. However, Kuo emphasized the fact that these birds had a considerable period ofintra-egg experience that could and should not be disregarded. His careful research indicatedfirst of all, that every manifestation of so-called instinctive behavior had an intra-egg courseof development which could be traced. Secondly, it was possible to manipulate the intra-eggexperience and produce changes in the so-called instinctive behavior. For example, prior tohatching while still in the egg, chick legs are folded on the breast of the chicken. This postureis carried over to post hatching when chicks sit in a similar position. Kuo suggested that withmost chicks in this posture the body weight exerts pressure on the legs, allowing the plantarsurface of the feet to be stimulated by the ground. This elicits an anti-gravitational extensorthrust, enabling the chick to stand and subsequently walk. Kuo observed chicks with abnormalposture in the egg in which legs were not folded on the breast. This incorrect posture carriedover post hatching, and the chicks did not ever stand and locomote.

With attention on movement and environment in the egg, Kuo’s observations included de-tailed functioning of the “embryonic musculature” cataloging the kind and time of head move-ments, beak movements, tail movements, etc. These were more reminiscent of the observationsof Coghill than the more functional behaviors focused on by Gesell, McGraw, and Shirley. Inthe physiology literature of that era two researchers, Paul Weiss and Nicolai Bernshtein1 sug-gested taxonomies of behavior that might have been useful in addressing issues of developmentand learning.

Weiss was a physiologist/embryologist who explicitly called attention to the development/learning dichotomy although the terms he used werepreformist andheuristic (Weiss, 1941).Orthopedists had established that in humans, in cases of paralyzed muscles, it was possible tosubstitute healthy muscles for the affected one. Recovery of motor control could then occur, butthe timing pattern of the substitute muscle had to be modified from its original source timing.Such recovery with modification of timing pattern was manifest in humans. Weiss investigatedthe adjustment of amphibia, particularly salamanders, to transplantation of muscles, musclegroups, and entire limbs. In the case of salamanders no adjustment of timing occurred. However,he reported that they could be trained to some extent to move in a functional way althoughtheir pattern of coordination is not modifiable. (Similar observations have been made withrats.) Weiss suggested that a way of thinking about such patterns of adjustment is to considera hierarchy of levels of motor control. His taxonomy consisted of six levels: (1) neurone,


(2) muscle, (3) muscle group, (4) organ, (5) organ system, and (6) organism as a whole.Adjustment to experimental (or natural) modifications of aspects motor performance might bemade at almost any level. A crude example would be that if one were a patient with a paralyzedmuscle in the right arm and a transplanted muscle were substituted one could learn to innervatethat muscle (level 2) at the appropriate time to produce the desired movement or one couldproduce the desired result in a completely different way by producing the same functionalmovement with the left arm (level 6). In any case this perspective suggested that the questionof development vs. learning might be contingent upon what aspects or levels of the motorsystem were the focus of attention.

Bernshtein similarly proposed a taxonomy of levels with a somewhat different emphasis.He was an anti-Pavlovian Soviet/Russian physiologist and has been considered to be an actionphysiologist in so far as his focus was on more functional aspects of motor control. In analyzingmotor performance he also proposed a taxonomy of levels which partially overlapped with thatof Weiss. However, where they separated, Bernshtein’s moved in the direction of function.So, for example, Bernshtein’s initial level (A) is roughly equivalent to Weiss’ muscle level,but Bernstein focused on the most primitive function of muscles and that he suggested wasto maintain body tonus. Any executive movement of an organism presupposes having somegeneral state of tonus. His second level (B) focuses on joint/muscle relations and is the levelat which the relation between one body joint and another is regulated. Thus, this level hasto do with intra-body spatial organization. The third level (C) involves the relation of thebody to external space. Level (D) is finally concerned with objective actions, the organizationof movement in relation to objects. (There was a fifth level that was subsequently added-asymbolic level.) So, for example, in order to write with a pencil, one has to start with a certainlevel of body tonus (A), assume an appropriate relation between parts of the body (B), positionthe body appropriately to pick up the pencil (C), pick up the pencil (D), position it appropriatelyon the page (C), and form the letters (C) and (D). Although Bernshtein did not explicitly addressthe development vs. learning dichotomy it is easy to gain the impression that he would havetaken a perspective similar to that of Weiss, that learning of a motor skill as opposed to itsmaturation might well depend on what level of the motor system was being addressed. Nomatter how he would have come down on this question, it seems like the early psychologicalresearchers of motor development might have benefited by thinking more in terms of suchanalytic descriptions of motor behavior.

Behaviorist learning theories were rapidly developing during the 1920s through the 1940sat the same time as the research of Gesell, Mcgraw, Shirley, Weiss, and Bernshtein were mostactive. This so-called stimulus–response (S–R) perspective, by definition emphasized learning,but most of these learning theorists and empiricists took little interest in development. Whatis also interesting from the point of view of the present discussion is that the S–R researcherspaid relatively little attention to analysis of the stimulus or of the response. In their defense,they were mainly focused on the link or association between the stimulus and response and itsrelation to reinforcement. Often stimuli and responses were simply defined and/or selected forexperimental convenience.

In a critique of how the stimulus was regarded in psychology, in general, JamesGibson(1960)described some of the definitions used by learning theorists. For example, Hilgard andMarquis in 1940 suggested that the stimulus is in some sense an occasion for the response


and Neal Miller and John Dollard in a circular way suggested that a response is any activitywhich can become functionally connected with an antecedent event and a stimulus is anyevent that can be connected in this way. In fact, Gibson raised the general issue of whether,in S–R analyses, stimuli and responses were defined independently of one another. Of course,S–R experimentalists did define responses operationally independently of stimuli. But again intheir selection of responses to use in learning experiments, they used actions like bar presses,maze direction choices, choices of buttons to press, directions in which to move a limb, etc.,all movements which could be easily and reliably measured. They did pay attention to thenature of the response sometimes in analyzing what was learned as in investigation of responsegeneralization. The aspects of the response focused on for this purpose were often charateristicssuch as reaction time, rate, amplitude, duration, etc. rather than the detailed structure of theresponse.

After the Second World War the S–R learning theory approach within psychology wasgradually replaced by, or evolved into, an information processing perspective. At the be-ginning there were few developmentalists who took this approach, but gradually they wereattracted to it too. Some of the early signs of this attraction were exemplified byConnolly(1970), Schmidt (1975), andThomas (1980). Almost by definition the research from an in-formation processing perspective was concerned with process but there was little explicitconcern with the development vs. learning dichotomy. However, implicitly one could inferthat some processes were more likely to be subject to the effects of experience than others.So, for example,Pew and Rupp (1971)analyzed the pursuit tracking performance of fourthto tenth grade children. They suggested that age changes in time delay reflected maturationwhile changes in system gain reflected individual characteristics, perhaps strategy adjustmentwhich would fall on the cognitive/learning side.Mounoud, Viviani, Hauert, and Guyon (1985)also investigating tracking responses andHay (1984)investigating use of feedback in reachingresponses have reported strategy changes with age at somewhat lower ages than in Pew andRupp’s study.

In more recent times the focus on investigation of, and theorizing about, process has con-tinued with information processing research and newer approaches. Interest in dichotomizingdevelopment and learning has diminished, almost disappeared. There is still vital interest inthe role of experience and it is commonly recognized that experience has its effects in thecontext of growth or development. In fact there is growing recognition that there is reciprocalinfluence between experience and development in motor performance and many other aspectsof psychological development (Gottlieb, 1997).

Note

1. I have transliterated the name of the Soviet/Russian physiologist as Bernshtein which iscloser to the standard accepted form of transliteration. However, in Western psychologicalliterature his name is usually transliterated as Bernstein, and this is the case for histranslated books. My citations below to one Russian book (Bernshtein, 1947) and onetranslated book (Bernstein, 1996) refer to the same author.


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development and learning: an historical perspective on acquisition of motor control

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