Why is Movement Important in Childhood?
As children move, they gain experience. Their worlds grow from their primary caretakers to the ceiling, floor, bed, and other places they notice and remember. In the last post, we discussed how children begin exploring their new world as infants. Movement changes the infant’s world: infants have opportunities to engage more of their senses and view the world from different perspectives. As children’s mobility develops from passive to independent, they actively think about what they are doing and where they are going.
Child-navigated movement is linked to cognitive development, such as decision and problem-solving skills. Authors highlighted experiments examining four- to six-year-old children’s ability to retrieve an object in a large room. Children who independently found the hidden objects, or told a moderator where to go as they were being pushed in a wheelchair were the most successful. The children that were passively pushed in wheelchairs or walked through the course by an experimenter were not as successful at remembering where items were placed. This experiment suggested that active movement, powered by child-led decision making, facilitates spatial search tasks.
Independent Movement Makes for the Building of Spatial Skills
Delay in motor abilities is also associated with delays or impairments in cognitive skills. Upon the onset of locomotor skills, an infant gains the ability to remain upright. She then can begin to build spatial skills or spatial cognition, expand her attention within her surroundings, as well as, develop and build working memory. Although those with motor disabilities might be delayed in mastering other skills, they can grow with the acquisition of locomotive skills. The review by Anderson and colleagues [1] also explains children with motor disabilities who gain mobility with aid (be it apparatuses that allow them to move independently or are moved by another person) are more successful at spatial tasks, the more their decision-making skills develop. The child is voluntarily moving when exercising these decision-making skills.
Spatial skills function as cognitive tasks. They describe the ability one has to remember how objects relate to others and the space they occupy. As these skills develop, so does the child’s capacity to realize the things (objects and people) around him, expanding his attention to focus on one or multiple items, and remember those relationships. Acquiring such capabilities, children desire to feed their curiosity about their environment and act and react to their world. Building spatial skills is often encouraged for achievement in science, mathematics, and technology subjects in school. Consequentially but not coincidentally, physical activity is encouraged to complete spatial tasks, such as building blocks. Movement not only helps a child explore their world, but mobility is also essential to physical well being. While physical fitness is not structured in childhood, it is often a means of play, where children communicate and build social relationships and skills. Children recognize and remember the new faces, objects, and places that, in turn, assist in their social and emotional development. During a typical Motor Fairy Tales project, children are introduced to a story and then physically act it out, using their locomotor skills to build spatial knowledge and social skills. For example, when children participate in Finding Dory, they must run around the vast blue sea, finding colorful pebbles, but careful enough not to bump into each other. Those pebbles are actually LEGO pieces that they must describe to the teacher. They can accumulate pieces to build structures.
How do these Implications Affect Us as We Age?
Coupling cognitive tasks with locomotive skills can also maintain psychological function throughout the lifespan. As a result of the known connection between exercise and cognitive and mental awareness, the review also describes studies that have examined these relationships. Deliberate reinforcement of cognitive tasks during physical activity has resulted in the maintenance of relevant cognitive development. Let’s imagine what that would look like in a grade school setting, where there are structured physical activities, such as Motor Fairy Tales or gym class, recess activities, or after-school co-curricular programs. The benefits associated with developing locomotor skills, such as increasing, ever-growing spatial skills, will build habits and continue to aid as a child grows into old age when these skills typically revert.
[1] Anderson, D. I., Campos, J. J., Witherington, D. C., Dahl, A., Rivera, M., He, Uchiyama, I., Barbu-Roth, M. (2013). The role of locomotion in psychological development. Frontiers in psychology, 4, 440. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00440
Written by Rabiyah Abdus-Salaam, MS Educational Research
Rabiyah Abdus-Salaam is an educational researcher. She focuses on cognitive development and how biological and external factors relate to the learning process in early childhood. Her goal is to use research on cognitive developmental neuroscience to inform public policy on education in public schools. She uses program evaluation tools and the science of learning to reduce racial and gender disparities in schools.
At ZWIFLY, Rabiyah expands her knowledge of cognitive developmental neuroscience research and developmental methods in partnership with the ZWIFLY Affiliate company Motor Fairytales based in Milan.
