Co-ordination of movement plays a key role in human development and is an active area in sport and health sciences. This book looks in detail at how children develop basic skills, such as walking and reaching for objects, and more complex skills, such as throwing and catching a ball accurately or riding a bicycle.

Development of Movement Co-ordination in Children is informed by five major theoretical perspectives - neural maturation, information-processing, direct perception, dynamic systems and constraint theory - and these theories are explained in an introductory chapter.

The international contributions are then brought together under the headings of ergonomics, health sciences and sport. Focusing on practical applications, individual chapters cover many different aspects of movement behaviour and development, ranging from children's overestimation of their physical abilities and the links to injury proneness to the co-ordination of kicking techniques. Both normal and abnormal development is considered.

Development of Movement Co-ordination in Children will be of considerable interest to students, teachers and professionals in the fields of sport science, kinesiology, physical education, ergonomics and developmental psychology.

Contents:
1. Interceptive Actions in Sport: Theoretical Perspectives and Practical Applications 2. Cognitive Expertise and Interceptive Actions 3. Visual Search and Cue Utilisation in Racket Sport 4. Vision and Proprioception in Controlling a Soccer Ball 5. Learning to Cross a Balance Beam: Implications for Teachers, Coaches and Therapists 6. Implicit and Explicit Learning in Golf Putting 7. Visual Information for One-Handed Catching 8. Intercepting Accelerating Objects 9. Catching Fly Balls 10. Auditory Information for Ball Catching 11. Sensitivity of Children and Adults to Haptic Information in Wielding Tennis Rackets 12. Perception and Action During Interceptive Tasks: An Integrative Modelling Perspective 13. Co-ordination Dynamics of Interceptive Actions 14. Bimanual Co-ordination in Catching Behaviour 15. Co-ordination in the Volleyball Serve: Expert-Novice Differences 16. Co-ordination and control of kicking in Soccer 17. Acquiring Co-ordination in Self-Paced Extrinsic Timing Tasks 18. Control of Grip Force in Interceptive Sport Actions 19. Grip Force Dynamics in Cricket Batting 20. Regulating Stride Parameters in the Long Jump Approach Phase 21. Co-ordination and Control of the Triple Jump Run-Up

Dynamic interceptive actions play a significant role in human behaviour, and are central to all forms of sporting activity. This book is the first to offer a comprehensive review of current theoretical research on dynamic interceptive actions, as well as demonstrating the connections between theory and practice for a wide range of key sporting skills.
An international team of authors, including many of the key figures in the field, present important new work on many of the most fundamental sporting actions such as : *catching
* hitting
* external-paced striking
* self-paced timing tasks
* locomotion towards targets or long surfaces
* kicking.
This book offers a wealth of theoretical material, as well as unique analysis of dynamic interceptive actions in practice. It will be essential reading for anybody with an interest in motor control and skill acquisition, and will also be of interest to students and practitioners in sport psychology, movement science and coaching science.

This important new book is the first text on motor learning and control to focus exclusively on the development of movement coordination in children. It is also the first book to bring together in one volume both cognitive and ecological-psychological approaches to the subject. Based on cutting-edge theory and research, the book explores how children develop coordination within three real-world settings:
* everyday behaviour, including studies on spoon use, handwriting and posture
* movement disorder, including studies of perceptual motor behaviour of children with Down's Syndrome and Cerebral Palsy
* sporting activity, including studies of catching and throwing behaviour.
The book therefore makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the development of children. It will be essential reading for all those with a particular interest in movement coordination within the fields of sport science, health science and ergonomics, as well as all psychologists, developmentalists, educators and clinicians working with children.