Motor skill

“ At puberty, however, when muscle habits are so plastic, when there is a new relation between quantity or volume of motor energy and qualitative differentiation, and between volitional control and reflex activities, these kinetic remnants strongly tend to shoot together into wrong aggregates if right ones are not formed. Good manners and correct motor form generally, as well as skill, are the most economic ways of doing things ”

“ This psychomotor side of the process, and not the mere muscle activity as such, is indeed the essential factor which should interest us. The results of exercise are a training of the central apparatus of the brain and not of the muscular periphery. The further development of those experiments soon led to complex questions, which referred not only to the mere change in the motor efficiency, but to the learning of particular groups of movements and to the influences on the exactitude and reliability of the movements. ”

“ By teaching rhythm, as elsewhere directed, marching and skipping can be done as soon as the necessary muscles and nerves are sufficiently developed. Swimming can be learned at about four years. Muscles of trunk, limbs, and hands (the fundamental muscles) should be trained early; the accessory muscles—fingers, eyes—are not ready for fine adjustments and training until about seven years. Space and apparatus are the chief needs in motor education, with occasional help in technique. ”

“ To learn swimming or skating by simple cogitation or mere visual observation is of course impossible. The new ideas requisite cannot be constructed without motor experience, and the training must include that motor experience. Hence the training for a new skilled motor manœuvre must be simply ad hoc, and is of itself no training for another motor co-ordination. ”

“ As Bryan well says, "The efficiency of a machine depends so far as we know upon the maximum force, rate, amplitude, and variety of direction of its movements and upon the exactness with which below these maxima the force, rate, amplitude, and direction of the movements can be controlled." The motor efficiency of a man depends upon his ability in all these respects. Moreover, the education of the small muscles and fine adjustments of larger ones is as near mental training as physical culture can get ”

“ The Cerebrum an Organ giving Adaptation and Readjustment of Motor Acts.—The exercise of this control and the acquirement of skilled actions have obviously elements in common. By skilled actions, we understand actions not innately given, actions acquired by training in individual experience. The controlling centres pick out from an ancestral motor action some part, and isolate and enhance that until it becomes a skilled act. The motor co-ordination ancestrally provided for the ring finger gives an extending of it only in company with extension of the fingers on either side of it. ”

“ To say that motor-habits, with which when they are established consciousness may have little to do, can be registered in a flexible motor instrument and acted over and over again, is reasonable enough ”

“ Such objects are of value as educational materials to the degree to which they call for necessary muscular adjustments similar to those which the race from the earliest times has experienced. Every sensation or thought, the psychologists affirm, naturally stimulates a motor adjustment which reinforces the original sensory or central impulse which originated the motion. ”

“ The vigorous man who has been used to take exercise on horseback, on his bicycle, or on his legs, must beware lest the fascination of motoring lead him to give up his physical exercise. Unless he systematically maintains habits of muscular exertion he may find that he is putting on flesh, becoming flabby, and generally losing condition. Whether he possesses a motor or not, he must use his muscles regularly and sufficiently if he desires to preserve his health. ”

“ Closely connected with these facts, perhaps only a somewhat different aspect of them, is the phenomenon of motor mechanization. Any movement repeated tends to become a circular reaction, as it is called; that is, the end of one repetition serves as a cue for the beginning of the next. ”

“ It is the universal motor adapted in the most exquisite manner to every form and state of the lungs, which communicate their general motion to every part of the body, and set every wheel in its infinitely complex organism revolving upon its axis, and give to every muscle and nerve the power to expand and contract and vibrate in the performance of its use, and in this way to fill every organ in the whole universe of the body with the power of sensation. ”

“ Thus not only the motor, but the sensor nervous system also, and the mental functions, are capable of being exercised and need it; and the muscles again appear to acquire a deeper importance in gymnastics. ”

“ The dignity and rights of motor education receive an unusually strong and comprehensive recognition. And here as elsewhere, we are reminded in general and in detail that the order of control over muscles and the apparatus of the will is indicated by its natural growth in the child and in the race. ”

“ This mode of motor enjoyment is realized when standing in the middle of a building or an avenue of trees, and tracing an imaginary central receding line, and it is noticeable that we naturally place ourselves in the position and execute this kind of movement whenever we wish to appreciate the effect of perspective. It may be added that a union of gradation of velocity with that of duration, as in tracing the path of a projectile across the field of vision, affords the eye its richest form of motor delight. ”

“ How can we help being struck by the fact that, while man is capable of learning any sort of exercise, of constructing any sort of object, in short of acquiring any kind of motor habit whatsoever, the faculty of combining new movements is strictly limited in the best-endowed animal, even in the ape? The cerebral characteristic of man is there. The human brain is made, like every brain, to set up motor mechanisms and to enable us to choose among them, at any instant, the one we shall put in motion by the pull of a trigger. ”

“ To this intelligent distribution of the central nervous excitation in the co-operating groups are added a more perfect tact in appositeness, a surer realization of the direction of the intensity and the duration of the contractions, and a greater promptitude in grasping at once all the conditions of the effort. Thus is realized a perfectionment of the motor organs which is manifested externally by address, agility, and sureness of movements, and closely touches upon the higher qualities—confidence in one's strength and courage. ”

“ In the last few years, however, the psychologists have learned a great deal about the motor aspects of mental activity. They have demonstrated that almost any simple act of attention involves muscular innervation and, contrariwise, that motor exercise quickens intelligence. Psychology teaches that body and mind have grown up together and that the latter has no raison d'être apart from motor adjustment. ”

“ To start a mechanism that will produce well-ordered movement, as when I lift this book from the table, impulses or messages, whatever you like to call them, must first be transmitted from the body itself to the brain. Such messages may come to the brain by nerve-fibres from some organ of sense, it may be from the skin, or from the eyes, or from the muscles themselves, but they must be sent to the brain before the brain will send out messages along motor nerves to groups of muscles which are called into action, so as to perform a definite movement. ”

“ An analagous emphasis must be placed upon action as opposed to thought. The study of motor impulses becomes as fundamental in psychology, and motor training as fundamental in education, as any analysis of how we think, or any teachable wisdom in the guidance of thought. The motor response is as vital to the psychological mode of manifestation as the ability to defend policy by argument or to analyze results into processes. In all these several aspects the position of woman has remained closer and truer to nature than that of man. ”

“ In lifting an object in the hand I can discover no sensation of volitional energy. I perceive in the first place a slight tension about the head, but that this results from a contraction in the head muscles, and not from a feeling of the brain-discharge, is shown by the simple fact that I get the tension on the right side of the head when I move the right arm, whereas the motor discharge takes place in the opposite side of the brain.... ”

“ Moreover, the process of abstracting these common qualities is itself a motor process. It is, physiologically speaking, the same sort of activity as collecting postage stamps or beetles’ wings. Indeed, the simplest perception of any concrete object, any red object, for example, involves motor activity of a highly elaborate character. When we look at such an object, not only is the retina of the eye stimulated, but various muscles and glands are simultaneously activated to an elaborate transformation of energy. ”

“ Again, full muscular balance and competence is conditional upon a certain degree of intelligent direction and impulse. Sensations exist for the specific purpose of inciting us to action, either immediate or remote. If they fail to initiate the proper actions their failure is absolute. Brain exercise of all kinds is accompanied with motor elements; no force is lost. If the associative fibers in the brain are inadequately developed by use and training there must be a deficiency both in motor and in sensory areas. ”

“ Since the ideational centres, as is usually held, correspond to the motor centres, the nervous action causes a motor impulse to be transmitted to the muscles. * * In making his way to the location of a hidden object, the subject usually does not lead the muscle-reader, but the muscle-reader leads the subject. That is to say, so long as the muscle-reader moves in the right direction, the subject gives no indication, but passively moves with him. The muscle-reader perceives nothing unusual. ”

“ Is the time in which the greatest exactitude is produced, the same for every group of muscles; that is, has every motor apparatus the same natural rhythm? and: Is this natural rhythm a constant rapidity for all motor nerve-centres or does it depend upon the complexity and character of the movement? ”

“ As regards reading, writing, and drawing, they involve, in the first place, a high degree of motor specialization, which is not only unnatural but dangerous for young children. Studies in motor ability have shown that the order of muscular development is from the larger and coarser to the finer and more delicate muscles. The movements of the child are the large, free movements of the body, legs, and arms, such as he exhibits in spontaneous play. The movements requiring fine co-ordination, such as those of the fingers and the eyes, are the movements of maturer life. ”

“ Everybody, too, must often have observed how the execution of any but mechanical movements arrests attention to thoughts or sensations, and how, vice versa, a striking impression or thought interrupts him in the performance of skilled movements. Let us suppose, then, that we have at any given moment a certain distribution of attention between sensory and motor presentations; a change in that distribution then will mean a change in the intensity of some of all of these. But, in the case of motor presentations, change of intensity means change of movement. ”

“ IV The moment we touch upon line-form we are already, in strictness, beyond the elements. For with form enters the motor factor, which cannot be separated from the motor innervations of the whole body. ”

“ The motor confirms the ethical fact that each introduction of a higher material force into the daily uses of humanity lifts it to a broader, brighter plane, gives its capabilities freer and more wholesome play, and opens fresh vistas for all possibilities. ”

“ To accomplish a true reflex movement, a whole mechanism is necessary, set up in the spinal cord or the medulla. To choose voluntarily between several definite courses of action, cerebral centres are necessary, that is, crossways from which paths start, leading to motor mechanisms of diverse form but equal precision. ”

“ We conclude, accordingly, that perception of an object is not absolutely the same thing as motor response to the object, nor even as motor readiness to respond, although the transition from perception to motor readiness may be so quick that the whole reaction seems a unit. In reality, perception of the object precedes the motor adjustment, and is one factor in determining that adjustment. ”

“ Modern physiology, from its objective point of view, is engaged over finer and finer issues of microscopic and experimental work; and, from its subjective point of view, is becoming more and more psychological, seeking a higher level of interpretation, and a statement of the departmental life of the brain in terms of ever-increasing complexity. The motor centres, governing the voluntary purposeful movements of the body, are considered to be not simply motor, but “psycho-motor” ”

“ A lower motor center is a group of motor and central neurones, lying anywhere in the cord or brain stem, and capable of directly arousing a certain coördinated muscular movement. One such unit gives flexion of the leg, another gives extension of the leg, a third gives the rapid alternation of flexion and extension that we see in the scratching movement of the dog. Such a motor center can be aroused to activity by a sensory stimulus, and the resulting movement is then called a reflex. ”