This book is divided into Sections. Each Section is devoted to a
particular theme in Motor Development and comprises two or more
contributions. The order of presentation is largely fortuitous and does
not reflect any value judgement on the part of the editors as to the
importance of anyone theme in comparison to others addressed' in the
book. This volume is to be seen as a companion volume to 'Motor
Development in Children: Aspects of coordination and control' in which
the more general issues in motor development presented during the
Institute are published. Together, the two volumes provide both a
general and a theme specific approach to this expanding field of
knowledge. XI PREFACE Books and conferences, on what in North America is
euphemistically termed motor development, have been few and far between
in the past 25 years. This is not to say that the study of how children
acquire and develop motor skills has not been a subject on which
scientists have focused their attention. In the United States in the
1930's and 1940's, Bayley (1935) and Gesell and Amatruda (1947)
described and scaled the rates at which young children acquired motor
skills. In Europe, the development of childrens' motor behaviour was of
theoretical interest to Piaget (1952).