Identifies a coordinative structure of action that integrates hand and mouth activities within hours after birth. Found that presenting neonates with a sucrose solution focused gross motor patterns of hand movement on the oral and perioral regions. (SKC)

Basic behavioral processes involved in motor control based on theories of motor control and learning are outlined using the teaching of two-point touch cane technique as an application of the theories. The authors assert the importance of repetition, practice, and sufficient learning time. (Author/CL)

Movement-sequencing deficits and possible manual-performance asymmetries in right-handed adolescents and adults with Downs syndrome were examined. Although Ss with Down syndrome showed no hand differences in tapping performance, they evidenced the same transfer of training asymmetries as did Ss without Down syndrome, suggesting that both the Down…

Using a memory for sentences procedure, 50 learning disabled boys, with and without motor impairments, were compared with normal controls when trained with and without motor enactment. Memory in both normal and learning disabled Ss (with and without motor impairment) improved significantly following motor enactment with a trend for greater…

The mother of a child with cerebral palsy recounts her daughter's efforts to walk after surgery. (CL)

Suggested is a sequence of 11 class activities, progressing from gross to fine motor skills, to assist the development of skills required to perform handwriting tasks successfully, for use particularly with children who lack fine motor control and eye-hand coordination. (KW)

A dance for early learners is given, as well as the music and with directions for making costumes. (DB)

Twenty-eight Down's syndrome and 33 normal children (4 to 17 years old) were evaluated for patellar tendon reflex, muscle tone, and grip strength. Results indicated that Down's syndrome children had a less brisk and more irregular patellar reflex response than normal controls. (Author/SB)

Found that infants who were delivered with their head turned right exhibited a neonatal right supine head orientation and a right-hand preference in visually guided reaching tasks at 19 weeks of age. Contrary to prediction, infants delivered with their head turned left did not exhibit a left-sided preference in either neonatal head position or…

The authors postulate that dysfunctions in the cortical sensorimotor areas of the brain that control internal speech may adversely affect the learning of reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic, especially in children who are first learning these skills. (Author)

The present study suggests that post-KR delay interval time or activity in the interval has little to do with learning on a self-paced positioning task, not ruling out that on ballistic tasks or more complex nonballistic tasks that a learner could make use of additional time or strategy. (MB)

Studied hand-mouth coordination in 40 infants of 1-3 days. Sucrose solution was delivered intraorally every 2 minutes. Results provide evidence for sucrose as a calming agent and for a coordinative behavorial system that integrates hand-mouth activity in supine human infants. (RJC)

Cyclical fluctuation in spontaneous motor activity (CM) emerges in fetus and persists in newborn. This "resetting" experiment perturbed CM by noise stimulus during infants' active sleep. Pre- and postperturbation CM were measured and compared. Subjects were 33 infants between 1 and 3 days of age. The stimulus induced a relative slowing of CM…