Characteristics of Motor Development

Fine-Motor Skills

Preschool children gain more precision in fine-motor development, or the use of the hands and fingers, between the ages of 3 and 5. They acquire more control of finger movement, which allows them to become proficient in using small materials that require grasping and control. In preschool classrooms, children learn to work with puzzles; cut with scissors; use brushes, pencils, pens, and markers; and manipulate small blocks, counters, and modeling clay. They refine self-help skills used in dressing themselves by learning to button, use zippers and snaps, and tie shoelaces   (J. E. Johnson, 1998; McDevitt & Ormrod, 2004; Wortham, 1996).

Perceptual-Motor Skills

Perceptual-motor development refers to the child’s developing ability to interact with the environment, combining use of the senses and motor skills. The developmental process of use of perceptual or sensory skills and motor skills is viewed as a combined process. Perceptual-motor development results from the interaction between sensory perception and motor actions in increasingly complex and skillful behaviors (Jambor, 1990; Mullen, 1984; Puckett & Black, 2005). More specifically, visual, auditory, and tactile sensory abilities are combined with emerging motor skills to develop perceptual-motor abilities.

Perceptual-motor skills include body awareness, spatial awareness, directional awareness, and temporal awareness. Body awareness means the child’s developing capacity to understand body parts, what the body parts can do, and how to make the body more efficient. Spatial awareness refers to knowledge of how much space the body occupies and how to use the body in space. Directional awareness includes understanding of location and direction of the body in space, which extends to understanding directionality and objects in space. Temporal awareness is the development of awareness of the relationship between movement and time. Skills involving temporal awareness include rhythm and sequence. The sequence of events using a form of rhythm or pattern reflects temporal awareness (Frost, 1992; Gallahue, 1989; Jambor, 1990).