PT 861 - Assessment of infant gross motor development: Down syndrome
The importance of movement
- Movement is one of the 'driving' forces of infant and child development. Early movement skills provide the infant with the means to:
- learn about the mechanics of their limbs and of the environment, including gaining knowledge about the effects of gravity;
- manipulate their environment to determine boundaries between self and the external world, and
- establish meaningful interactions with caregivers.
Activity
- Can you provide 2 examples of movement-based activities that the child can use to:
- learn the mechanics of his or her limbs
- define boundaries
- establish meaningful social interactions
- Movement therefore 'sets the stage' for attaining goals across different domains of global infant development: physical, cognitive and social / emotional. In this respect, the 'quality' of infants movement would not be as important as the 'quantity' of movement. This is well demonstrated in the following video clip of a 7 month-old infant using a 'non-traditional' crawling method to reach her cognitive goal.
- Assessment of the gross motor function of infants, therefore, serves a number of goals that extend beyond simply identifying what an infant can or cannot do and provides an 'early' marker of developmental concerns.