Physiology: Motor Learning

Motor skills provide not only physical but psychological benefits to the body. Motor skills, like bilateral coordination, help children learn to perform various tasks simultaneously. The complex tasks could be performed conveniently once the young master these motor skills. This paper aims to illustrate a strategy for reinforcing a learner regarding physical motor skills.

Motor Skill

The motor skill of interest is bilateral coordination since it triggers to performance of intricate tasks by functioning in various ways. Since numerous actions occur daily in our daily routines, children must be aware of how to use them effectively. Research has suggested that bilateral coordination supports high physical functioning and academic achievement. The fluid intelligence of pre-schoolers has noticed an increase and showed a strong hold over reading and mathematical skills.

In this paper, the bilateral coordination of a 10-year-old boy is observed. For this, jumping jacks have been selected as the physical activity requiring the simultaneous movement of arms and legs.

Explanation of the Learners Ability, Experience, and Learning Situation

The learner was hesitant to do jumping jacks in the beginning when the class started. It was learned that the child has minor ADHD, as children with ADHD have poor motor coordination and neurobehavioral troubles (Mokobane et al., 2019). The child could not stand still as he was restless and constantly fidgeting. These few conspicuous symptoms of his minor ADHD do not let him concentrate on tasks properly (National Health Services, 2021). His motivation was, therefore, low in learning jumping jacks as well.

The learners ability to grasp the notion of jumping jacks, which is moving arms and legs in coordination, was low. In terms of experience, the learner was incapable of doing motor programming, and accuracy was not fluent. His first few movements showed that he was not comfortable in doing arms and legs movement symmetry as he mostly jerked. The variability in his actions, such as moving his legs first and then arms or moving one arm up and the other down, were visible signs of underdeveloped motor skills.

The symmetrical movements, like moving arms up when the legs should be straight and stretching arms wide when the legs should be stretched wide, were challenging for the learner. He was found annoyed at his fourth or fifth attempt. Sat sixth, when he instigated to try one more time, the learner angrily told the instructor that he did not want to. He did not shout at the instructor; however, his facial expressions showed that he was quite irritated by that time and his motivation level was zero. The learning situation was complicated and had to be stopped for some while before the instructor could find a way to encourage him again and do the same as his other class-fellows were doing.

Summary of Two Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Article 1

A study was conducted by Cho et al. (2014) among 57 Korean school-aged children with a mean age of 9 years. Fifty-eight children were selected for a controlled trial group, experimental research in which another 70 children were set as a control group. The assessment was made with the Bruininks-Oreretsky Test of Motor Proficiency (Cho et al., 2014). The measure used was BOT-2 for evaluating participants motor function. It is a test measuring the motor skills of individuals aged 4 to 21 (Cho et al., 2014). Statistical analysis was conducted using chi-square and t-tests to compile the final results.

The results cited that children with ADHD have trouble with fine motor coordination as they cannot display the skills needed for conducting complex tasks (Cho et al., 2014). Their balance is unstable as numerous motor overflow intricacies create subtle neurological signs of irritation and annoyance in behavior. Moreover, children are not physically active due to their inability to get involved in various physical activities, and their muscle strength is low, too (Cho et al., 2014). Manual dexterity is low and postural control cannot be witnessed visibly in ADHD children. The sequential development of physical and mental reflexes is weak, as they cannot respond quickly to actions and sensory stimuli in games.

The study is significant for two reasons: firstly, empowering the physical as well as psychological abilities...…cannot learn anything properly, they should immediately abstain from keeping the motivation level of a 10-year-old high.

Extinction could be used for ignoring some of the childs behavior, such as getting irritated and the instructor still keeping his calm attitude towards the child, knowing his ADHD problem.

Negative Reinforcers

One is discussed above, which disallows other class fellows to make fun of the child.

The instructor could give a break to the child for 10 mins to recompose his thoughts and again try if he feels comfortable; otherwise, the next day.

Prevent enforcing all actions of jumping jacks upon the child on the first day or all actions in one day. Starting with small steps like moving hands in coordination on the first day and moving legs in coordination the next day could be helpful.

Punishments

Punishment is not suggested for ADHD children since it can cause negative behavioral consequences not suggested for the childs condition and its long-term implications.

Conclusion

Using the identified reinforcers, the orders of teaching the child how to do jumping jacks would be one step at a time in a day. It can stretch up to four or five working school days. Within a week, the learning motivation would be gauged right from the first step. The child would be observed whether he is irritated to do arm coordination on the first day and whether, on the second day, he is back to school with greater encouragement. On the second day, the instructor can give him examples of his cartoons to instill internal reinforcement and ask parents to praise him for his efforts at school, never to give up, and keep doing that in the coming days. On the third day, the instructor can ask other children to refrain from making fun of him and even see him do so that they can learn from him. This might give the 10-year-old motivation to teach them, and they could even do better in this case. On the fourth day, if he performs well in showing arm coordination, he could be given candy. The fifth day is when complete…