Motor development as foundation and future of developmental psychology

The study of how infants and children come to control their bodies is perha ps the oldest topic in scientific developmental psychology. Yet, for many y ears the study of motor development lay dormant. In the last two decades, h owever, there has been an enormous resurgence of interest. As at the time o f the very beginnings of our field, the contemporary study of motor develop ment is contributing both empirically and theoretically to the larger quest ions in development and especially to our understanding of developmental ch ange. In this essay, I trace the course of the changing fortunes of motor d evelopment, evaluate where we have been, what we are doing, and speculate o n some critical issues for the future. The purpose of this essay is to comm ent on the general themes and influences that have been a part of motor dev elopment's "rise-fall-and-rise-again'' history. For a more comprehensive re view of substantive topic areas in motor development, readers are referred to the authoritative treatment recently published by Bertenthal and Clifton (1998) and to the excellent monograph by Goldfield (1995).