A F VanSant | PubMed Health

PubMed1990

Life-span development in functional tasks.

A life-span concept of motor development is presented as a framework for interpretation of a series of studies of righting tasks. Beginning with the task of rising from the floor, the use of a component approach for movement pattern description and for the identification of developmental sequences of motor patterns is reviewed. Studies applying this approach to a wide range of age groups and to various functional righting tasks are discussed. Recent studies investigating factors related to movement patterns used to perform one of the righting tasks are also reviewed. Suggestions concerning the ways in which this information could be applied to physical therapy practice are included.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1989

Description of adult rolling movements and hypothesis of developmental sequences.

Physical therapists frequently evaluate and teach patients to roll from a supine to a prone position. The purposes of this study were 1) to describe the rolling movements of adults and 2) to determine whether the movement patterns used to roll might represent different developmental steps within three body regions. Thirty-six healthy adult subjects were videotaped during 10 trials of rolling from a supine to a prone position. Written descriptions of each subject's movements were reduced to general categorical descriptions of movement patterns for three body regions (upper extremities, lower extremities, and head and trunk). Stage theory criteria were used in an attempt to order the movement patterns into developmental sequences. The most common combination of movement patterns was used to describe adults' rolling action. Although stage theory criteria were not met, developmental sequences of movement patterns were proposed for the three body regions. Subjects were quite variable in their rolling movements. The most common form of rolling occurred in less than 12% of the subjects' trials. The descriptions of adults' rolling action gathered in this study provide physical therapists with a variety of movement patterns for teaching patients to roll.

Adult↗