Developmental Psychology Copyright 1989 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

!989. Vol. 25, Nn.'b. 946-949 O0l2-l649/89/$00.75

The (Re)Discovery of Motor Development;

Learning New Things From an Old Field
Esther Thelen
Indiana University

The articles in this special issue reflect a resurgence of interest in motor development. Just as the
classic studies of McGraw and Gesell helped to establish the scientific study of human ontogeny, so
contemporary studies of motor processes can contribute to our overall understanding of develop-
ment. The articles in this issue illustrate several general principles: (a) The developing system is the
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proper unit for study, (b) the task assembles behavior, (c) developmental processes are nonlinear, (d)
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action and perception form an inseparable loop, and (e) developmental studies should look at vari-
ability as well as modal patterns.

The publication of this special series on motor development
in Developmental Psychology caps a decade of a growing re-
newed interest in an old field. More than half a century ago,
Arnold Gesell and Myrtle McGraw began their elegant and
painstaking catalogues of the acquisition of motor skills in in-
fants and children. For both of these pioneers, the patterns of
ebb and flow that they discovered in the movement patterns of
their subjects exemplified in many specific ways the develop-
mental process in general. In introducing his study on the orga-
nization of prone behavior in infants, for example, Gesell
claimed to bring "into panoramic view the total sweep of devel-
opment" (Gesell & Ames, 1940, p. 247).
Contemporary psychologists are loathe to express themselves
in such grandiose terms. Indeed, learning to crawl may not il-
lustrate all the universal principles of development! What I
would suggest, however, is that, just as Gesell and McGraw set
a standard for the scientific study of human development over
50 years ago and provided a dominant metaphor for a genera-
tion of scholars, so the new interest in motor development can
contribute to thefieldin ways that go beyond the understanding
of motor skill itself. The articles in this collection show how we
can learn new things from an old field. What I will do in this
commentary is to point out a number of general developmental
principles, which, although by no means uniquely discovered
by researchers from the motorfield,seem to have emerged espe-
cially clearly in these studies and others like them.
1. The developing system is the proper unit for study.
In most areas of interest to developmentalistscognition,
perception, affect and temperament, social relations, and lan-
guagebehavior is studied in encapsulated domains. For exam-
ple, in the legions of studies on the "A not B" error in infants,
This commentary was supported by National Institute of Mental
Health Research Scientist Development Award 1K.O2 MH00718.
Correspondence concerning this commentary should be addressed to
Esther Thelen. Department of Psychology. Indiana University, Bloom-
ington. Indiana 47405.
the focus has been on understanding aspects of memory and
cognition (e.g., see the review by Wellman, Cross, & Bartsch,
1986). The arm trajectories and postural adjustments used in
retrieving the hidden object have not been studied and have
been assumed to be incidental to the task. Nor have other, non-
obvious, aspects of the infant's organic status and the task envi-
ronment been conventionally considered. This can lead to an
implicit assumption that the A-not-B task is modularized into
a special A-not-B device (presumably in the brain) that works
and develops essentially in isolation.
The most important contribution of contemporary studies
of motor development is the rejection of such special purpose
devices dedicated to a single performance domain in favor of
more-or-less explicit systems approaches where development is
driven by the interaction of multiple subsystems. Such ap-
proaches are adopted by nearly all the articles represented in
this series. For example, Goldfield (pp. 1013-1019) shows that
the onset of crawling emerges from the convergence of three
developing capabilities: kicking, reaching, and maintaining ori-
entation to the support surface. None of these contributing ca-
pabilities is specific to crawling itself, which only emerges in
their interactions. Bertenthal and Bai (pp. 1036-1045) suggest
that the changes in infants' sensitivity to opticflowfor control-
ling posture is a result of spirally interacting achievements in
postural control and locomotor development, as well as in per-
ception.
Why do notions of complex dynamic systems appeal to those
studying motor development? I would argue first that it is the
nature of our phenomena that leads us to seek these explana-
tions. Movement is the "final common pathway" for many sub-
systems working together to accomplish a task or goal. For a
child to move, perception, motivation, plans, physiological sta-
tus, and affect must all interact with a mechanical system that
is composed of muscles, bones, and joints. Although we may
not choose to study all these contributing elements at the same
time, it is conceptually impossible (and empirically foolish) to
encapsulate the movement outcome from the motives that in-
spired it, the information that guided it, and the body parts that
produced it.

946
 SPECIAL SECTION: (RE)DISCOVERING MOTOR DEVELOPMENT
The underlying systems view leads to several important cor-
ollaries, which are well illustrated by the articles in this collec-
tion.
2. The task, not preexisting instructions, assembles be-
havior.
Each of the studies gathered here is evidence that develop-
ment proceeds not as the progressive revelation or elaboration
of already existing schemata, programs, or plans, but as the op-
portunistic marshaling of the available components that best
befit the task at hand. Development is function driven to the
extent that anatomical structure and neurological mechanisms
exist only as components until they are expressed in a context.
Once assembled in context, behavior is, in turn, molded and
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modulated by its functional consequences. Some functional
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outcomes require quite limited solutions. For other goals, a
wider range of motor patterns may accomplish the task, al-
though some are usually more efficient than others (Thelen &
Fogel, 1989; Thelen, Kelso, & Fogel, 1987).
The studies of Palmer (pp. 885-993) and Rochat (pp. 871-
884) are especially eloquent in showing how the functional
properties of the task are mapped onto specific motor actions.
The appearance of these actions early in infancy is compelling
evidence that motor patterns are highly context-dependent
right from the start. Connolly and Dalgleish (pp. 994-1012), in
their chronicle of spoon use, provide another remarkable dem-
onstration of how elements are assembled flexibly for a func-
tional goal. What did not change was the functional goal of us-
ing the spoon to get food into the mouth. The precise motor
patterns and the consistency of their use varied with experience
level and among infants. Again, both the Goldfield and the Ber-
tenthal and Bai studies suggest that what is stable is some gener-
ally defined goal (e.g., obtain an object out of reach, maintain
upright posture) and that many different solutions are possible,
depending on what is maturationally and situationally avail-
able.
The articles by Clark, Phillips, and Petersen (pp. 1029-1035)
and Getchel and Roberton (pp. 1020-1028), as well that by
Goldfield, explicitly consider the biomechanical properties of
the body in the developmental equation. The tasks of hopping
and jumping are already assembled in the older children stud-
ied by these authors. What Clark, Phillips, and Petersen show
is that the overall goal of getting the body off the ground using
two feet imposes a single constraintthe delay in peak exten-
sion velocities between adjacent jointsthat remains invariant
despite a variety of positions and magnitudes of the jump. This
suggests that once this form of locomotion is accomplished
even in the 3-year-oldthe morphology of the system and its
energy requirements impose restrictions on certain patterns of
joint coordination. It would be interesting to compare the suc-
cessful and unsuccessful jumps of even younger toddlers to see
whether such a velocity pattern is the sine qua non of move-
ments identified as jumps or whether it emerges only as jumps
become uniformly successful.
The Getchel and Roberton article most explicitly illustrates
the self-organizing properties of the neuromotor system in re-
sponse to task demands. An emerging theme in contemporary
947
motor development studies is that movement patterns may be
generated without preexisting programs because of the cooper-
ative relations of the neural, muscular, and skeletal components
(cf. Kugler, Kelso, & Turvey, 1982). That the hopping leg can
be modeled as a spring or inverted pendulum suggests that
physical and energetic constraints are sufficient to produce
space and time regularities, in much the same way that these
patterns emerge in a purely mechanical spring or pendulum.
That their stiffness may be an important tunable variable adds
compelling evidence to this view. In addition, Getchel and Rob-
erton beautifully illustrate a third general principle of a dy-
namic view: the nonlinearity of developing systems.
3. Developmental processes are nonlinear.
In their ingenious within-subject microgenesis experiment
(in which children show different developmental configurations
of hopping on preferred and nonpreferred legs), Getchel and
Roberton discovered that differences in a continuous variable,
whole body stiffness, were associated with the discontinuous de-
velopmental levels seen in the coordination of each hopping leg.
As the authors note, the causal chain of these changes is unspec-
ified. Are improvements in stiffness regulation driven by neuro-
logical maturation preferentially manifest by the preferred
side? Or does more frequent practice of hopping on the pre-
ferred leg lead to a more mature ability to regulate stiffness?
Nonetheless, the study is an excellent example of a phase shift,
in which system reorganizations result from small changes in
one or a few component variables (Kugler et al., 1982).
Goldfield's analysis of crawling onset shows similar phase
shifts engendered by continuous component variables. The shift
from low to high creep seems to be a result of an increase in
strength, which allows the infant to fully support the weight
above the surface. Likewise, the release of weight bearing to
start the alternation for forward crawling may be initiated by
shifting strengths in lateral hand preference. Note that, in all
of these cases, the variable responsible for the phase shift (in
dynamic terminology, the control parameter) is not a prescrip-
tion for the action or a representation of some end-state, but
only a systems component. There is no maturation of a hop or
crawl schema, but a coalescence of contributing subsystems.
It is characteristic of dynamical systems that these cooperative
assemblies may be nonlinear at some parameter values.
Developmental nonlinearities are also evident in Rochafs in-
triguing study of early exploration. Although the presumed goal
of infants' actions is to learn about the qualities of objects, Ro-
chat shows how different perceptual modalities and motor ac-
tions intertwine and wax and wane to produce different qualita-
tive modes of exploration. Here again, as the system changes, it
becomes sensitive to different parameters. Rochat proposes that
increased looking at objects in the hand is associated with the
new configuration offingering.Similarly, the lateral differenti-
ation of function is concurrent with new modes of haptic explo-
ration. As subsystems themselves change, old configurations
dissolve and new configurations emerge (Thelen, 1989).
Rochat's study is important because it also illustrates a
fourth and recurrent theme contained in these studies: the in-
separability of action and perception.
 948 ESTHER THELEN
4. Action and perception form an inseparable loop.
Systems views emphasize the organism within context; nei-
ther the individual nor the environment has logical priority or
contains priviledged instructions for change (Thelen & Fogel,
1989). This means that, from the earliest age, the organism
must be in a continual dialogue with the periphery. The organ-
ism may be more or less receptive to the periphery at certain
ages and in certain behavioral states (Fentress, 1989). The dom-
inant modalities used for this dialogue may change with ontog-
eny and task, as Rochat so nicely demonstrates. Nonetheless, a
functionalist approach rests on the assumption that infants are
built to seek and receive information from the periphery and,
in turn, can modify their actions in accordance with these per-
ceptions (Reed, 1982). The data of Palmer, of Bertenthal and
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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Bai, and of Connolly, as well as of Rochat, are especially perti-
nent here.
Rochat also points to the increasing multimodal character of
early exploration. The multimodal aspect of all facets of the
perception-action loop deserves our increased attention. As
Edelman (1987) has recently emphasized, the architecture of
the brain provides for multiple and highly overlapping entry
and reentry of information from all sense modalities. Most im-
portant, and often neglected, is that proprioceptive feedback
from actions performed is also processed with information
from the distal receptors. Thus, every action is multiply corre-
lated with its perceptual associations and consequences. A
growing body of evidence of cross- and multimodal matching
abilities in early infancy suggests that these mappings may be
fundamental properties of the brain wiring.
According to Edelman's selection model, stable categories of
behavior can emerge from these overlapping and repeated en-
tries of sensory and motor information. As actions and their
consequences are repeated over and over, the synaptic connec-
tions among certain groups of neurons will be strengthened as
a result of their associations in the real world. Thus, efficacious
movements would be gradually carved out from a universe of
less functional actions through many iterations of perception-
action-perception cycles, each in its way unique. Dynamical
theory predicts that, under such conditions, systems autono-
mously "seek" stable and efficient solutions. Although Edel-
man's model is speculative, it is supported by anatomical data
and simulation models. But most important is the emphasis on
the inextricable ties of perception and action for developmental
change.
Connolly's account of spoon use details such an ontogenetic
process. Within their general goal of using a spoon to feed, in-
fants assemble whatever components are available to accom-
plish the job. Presumably, each attempt at solving the feeding
problem results in the correlation of the perceptual compo-
nents of the task (visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory) with the
proprioceptive and perceptual consequences of the movement
(corollary feedback of the skin, muscle, and joint receptors and
vestibular actions in tandem with the smell, taste, sight, and feel
of the food, and the sensations of chewing and swallowing). Over
time, certain movement patterns may be associated with more
desirable outcomes, and these are selected from the larger reper-
toire of possibilities. The concept that dynamic systems auton-
omously settle into energy minima (e.g., Kugler & Turvey,
1987) suggests that a conscious or unconscious "strategy" need
not be invoked, but that these minima are discovered through
practice (also demonstrated by Getchel and Roberton). During
the process, various modalities, such as visual monitoring, may
increase and decrease in salience as coordinative solutions sta-
bilize and destabilize. Because the ontogenetic process involved
broad feature correlation and the selection of stable categories
rather than the imposition of strategic schemas, the mature be-
havior can be both stable and widelyflexibleto deal with uncer-
tainties, such as eating in a moving train.
5. Variability during development may be very interesting.
The Connolly and Dalgleish article documents beautifully
the possibility, most recently articulated by Edelman (1987),
that skill acquisition may involve the selection of appropriate
and efficient actions from a larger pool of possible coordinated
patterns. With age, infants used fewer spoon actions and used
their patterns more consistently. This makes the variability seen
during development, not just the modal behavior, an important
part of the story.
A selectionist account is also compatible with Palmer's com-
pelling data of increasing object-action specificity with age.
\bunger infants, although displaying many object-appropriate
activities, also showed a larger percentage of less appropriate
actions, such as mouthing the bell. Here, again, some measures
of stability and variability at the emergence of these behaviors
would be informative. Does the progressive specificity arise as
some actions are tried and rejected, or is it a result of general-
ized knowledge about properties of objects (such as support sur-
faces) gained through a wide variety of object-action interac-
tions?
Conclusion
I am confident that the best new work in motor development,
as exemplified by the articles in this special series, will have a
lasting influence on the study of human development. Because
motor actions are observables, they are accessible windows on
developmental change. Because movements are never per-
formed in a vacuum, we must view the organism and the con-
text together. When the traditional explanations did not work,
we have been compelled by our phenomena to look outside tra-
ditional disciplines and domains for theory and methodology.
This has opened up new ways of asking developmental questions
and has especially rekindled interest in systems approaches,
which have had a long intellectual, if not empirical, welcome in
development. Contemporary systems principles, in turn, ap-
pear to have potential wide utility for studying development.
I would hope that mainstream developmental studies will feel
the influence of the new motor field in several more concrete
ways. First, perhaps the constraints and abilities of the percep-
tual-motor apparatus will be considered more seriously as part
of the system in all behavioral domains (e.g., see Fogel &
Thelen, 1987; Thelen, in press). Second, I hope a new genera-
tion of graduate students will see motor development as inter-
esting, important, and challenging. Andfinally,please no more
chapters in introductory texts depicting motor development as
 SPECIAL SECTION: (RE)DISCOVERING MOTOR DEVELOPMENT
a series of motor milestones. The articles in this issue tell us
that it is time to update these 50-year-old concepts. The new
ideas are not so simply told, but they are much more exciting.
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Received April 14, 1989
Accepted May 15, 1989