Human Motor Development: A Lifespan Approach, Eleventh Edition provides an overview of the academic field of study known as human motor development, the examination of lifelong changes in human movement. The book uses a holistic approach and emphasizes the importance of intellectual, social, and physical development and their impact on human motor development at all ages. The unique approach of this book includes the relationships between motor development and critical interactions with cognitive, social, and physical changes across the lifespan.

Organized into five parts, the book examines key topics in motor development, including the relationship between cognitive and social development and motor development, factors affecting development, changes across the lifespan, and assessment in motor development, with special attention being applied to adulthood and older adulthood, given the increasing numbers of people in those age groups worldwide. Each chapter includes chapter objectives, a summary, a list of key concepts, questions for reflection, a list of related online resources, and an extensive reference list.

Highly illustrated and written for student accessibility by providing access to a fully updated companion website, which includes laboratory exercises, an instructors’ manual, a test bank, and lecture slides, Human Motor Development: A Lifespan Approach is essential reading for students of motor control and development, kinesiology, and human performance and for students interested in physical therapy, physical education, and exercise science.

Table of Contents

Part I: An Overview of Development

1. Introduction to Motor Development

2. Cognitive and Motor Development

3. Social and Motor Development

Part II: Factors That Affect Development

4. Prenatal Development Factors

5. Effects of Early Stimulation and Deprivation

Part III: Physical Changes across the Lifespan

6. Growth and Maturation

7. Physiological Changes: Health‑Related Physical Fitness

8. Movement and the Changing Senses

Part IV: Movement across the Lifespan

9. Infant Reflexes and Stereotypies

10. Voluntary Movements of Infancy

11. Fine Motor Development

12. Fundamental Locomotion Skills of Childhood

13. Fundamental Object‑Control Skills of Childhood

14. Youth Sports

15. Movement in Adulthood

Part V: Assessing Motor Development

16. Assessment