Infant Behavior & Development 26 (2003) 441–448

Development and learning: An historical perspective

on acquisition of motor control
Herbert L. Pick Jr.∗
Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, 51 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA

Received 17 January 2002; accepted 31 January 2002

Abstract
A historical overview on infant motor development is provided, using the concepts of learning and
development as a vehicle to travel from Darwin, through the 20th century till today. The different
theoretical perspectives are highlighted with attention to how the two concepts are treated.
© 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Newborns of most animal species are not nearly as motorically skillful as mature individ-
uals. This is even true of precocial birds and other animals who are able to locomote at birth.
Historically, such facts were noted by researchers and even casual observers of behavior. In
trying to explain the change researchers wrestled with various dichotomies: nature–nurture,
heredity–environment, instinct–learning, etc. On one side was something inborn in the organ-
ism, on the other side was something acquired through experience. The dichotomy focused
on here is similar, that of development and learning. Again, development implies something
inborn, and learning implies acquisition through experience. I think the use of the term devel-
opment has a further emphasis, namely that even though something may be inborn, it changes
with growth and age. At least in that sense it is similar to maturation and is the sense in which
it will be considered here.
In trying to present an historical perspective, one is faced with a question of where to start.
Here, one possibility is to start with Socrates and his trying to convince a student that he didn’t
have to learn; he already knew. He simply had to think and remember. . . This is a strange form
of maturation or at least an anti-learning perspective, but it wasn’t concerned with questions
of motor development, and anyway it is probably too far back to start. Another possibility is
to begin with Descartes. I understand that in between his invention of analytic geometry and

∗
Tel.: +1-612-624-2062; fax: +1-612-624-6373.
E-mail address: herbpick@umn.edu (H.L. Pick Jr.).

0163-6383/$ – see front matter © 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2002.01.001
442 H.L. Pick Jr. / Infant Behavior & Development 26 (2003) 441–448

his analysis of the mind–body problem, he wrote a book called the Development of the Fetus.
(This is said to have been done during the year that his illegitimate child was born.) However,
Descartes is still too far back to begin.
Probably a good temporally more proximal place to start is with Charles Darwin and his close
followers. In the latter half of the nineteenth century Darwin’s ideas and writings had the sig-
nificant and important impact on physiology and psychology of putting animal and man on an
evolutionary continuum. Studies of animal behavior and physiology could be relevant to under-
standing human functioning. Following closely after Darwin, Romanes (1884) distinguished
between habit and instinct in animal behavior. Although his work was not mainly focused on
motor behavior it did contrast development (instinct) and learning (habit). Cf (Gottlieb, 1997).
A widely cited researcher of that period, Spalding (1873, 1954), conducted experiments to
determine whether relevant prior experience was necessary for birds to begin to fly. He raised
birds without the opportunity of flying until they physically matured to the point that naturally
growing birds would be flying. When released these birds flew with little or no delay.
Such experiments made such an impact on William James that after discussing them in his
Principles of Psychology (originally published in 1890), he made the following comments:

In the light of this report one may well be tempted to make a prediction about the human child,
and say that if a baby were kept from getting on his feet for two or three weeks after the first
impulse to walk had shown itself in him—a small blister on each sole would do the business—
he might then be expected to walk about as well, through the mere ripening of nerve centers as
if the ordinary process of ‘learning’ had been allowed to occur during all the blistered time. It
is to be hoped that some scientific widower, left alone with his offspring at the critical moment,
may ere long test this suggestion on the living subject. (James, 1950, pp. 406–407)

Another reseacher of the same era as Spalding was William Preyer, a German physiologist,
who worked mostly in the late eighteen hundreds. Preyer did much of his research on the
motor development of animals: studying chick embryos in the egg, squirming of frog embryos,
newborn guinea pigs, etc. Preyer also observed his own child and wrote a book, Die Seele des
Kindes (1882). One observation he made relevant to later work on motor development of
children was that there were very large individual differences in rate of motor development in
children but the order or sequence “is the same in all individuals and that is the important matter.”
Notwithstanding James’ remarks no one undertook to vary the experience and environment
of the human infant to test his hypothesis. However, Preyer’s animal research was an early
contribution to a line of research sometimes called experimental embryology in which motor
development of very young animal organisms was observed and manipulated, specifically to test
in a systematic way the kind of hypothesis that Spalding had investigated and James proposed.
Early in the twentieth century a number of researchers engaged in such experimental em-
bryology. Prominent among these was Coghill, a neuroanatomist at the Wistar Institute in
Philadelphia. Coghill’s research included studies of the neural anatomical development in am-
blystoma (salamanders) and related it to their behavioral development (e.g., Coghill, 1914,
1929). He described the course of development of swimming movements which started with
head turns and then body coiling proceeding in a cephalo-caudal direction. The coiling rate
increases in rapidity so that one coil is not completed before the next wave begins and results in
forward locomotion. Of particular interest to the theme of this paper are his observations that
 H.L. Pick Jr. / Infant Behavior & Development 26 (2003) 441–448 443

these movements develop along with growth of the nervous system and are well coordinated
before they can be elicited by any external stimulation such as tactual probing with a stylus.
This led Coghill to conclude when discussing the relation between development of the nervous
system and the amblystoma behavior:
The relation that is found to exist between the structural development of the nervous system
and the development of the organism to perform particular acts makes it necessary, in the
present state of our knowledge, to distinguish sharply between the process by which the animal
determines what acts it can do and the process by which it determines when and to what extent
it will do them. (Coghill, 1929, p. 86)

Coghill goes on to say that whether a muscle contraction occurs depends on the develop-
mental mechanics of the muscle system and is not related in any causal way to the value of the
behavior it produces. In a series of studies the psychologist, Leonard Carmichael, continued this
line of research investigating more experimentally whether motor experience contributes to the
development of locomotion in amblystoma. Carmichael (1926, 1927) raised amblystoma either
in tap water or a solution of chlorbutanol (chloretone). The latter is an anasthetic drug under
which morphological growth occurs in the absolute absence of observable external movements.
The organisms grow to the point when they appear to be better physically developed than the
tap water controls were when they had begun to swim. When the chloretone ambystoma are
placed in tap water they begin to make movements in just a few minutes and in less than thirty
minutes are making coordinated swimming movements, in many cases indistinguishable from
control organisms who have been swimming for five days (Carmichael, 1926, 1927).
It was in this context, and particularly with issues of learning and development in mind, that
a number of researchers began studying the motor development of young children. Among
the most well known were Arnold Gesell, Myrtle McGraw, and Mary Shirley. They worked
toward the realization of a test of William James’ hypothesis with children.
Gesell, with training in education, psychology, and medicine took a biological perspective
on development of children and was very influenced by Darwin and Coghill. His biological
perspective included the view that the structure of behavior mirrored the organization and
structure of the nervous system. Gesell pioneered the use of movie recording in assessing the
development of normal children. In fact he was widely known for the norms he collected. For
example, in one study he assessed the behavior of 107 infants at 15 ages from birth to 56
weeks of age (Gesell & Thompson, 1934). Gesell may have been the first major researcher
to use the co-twin control paradigm to study the relative effects of development and learning
in children (Gesell & Thompson, 1929). One of a pair of twins (Twin T) was given special
training in locomotor skills, especially climbing and in prehension at 46 weeks of age. These
skills were allowed to develop on their own in the other twin (Twin C). The locomotor skills
developed much more rapidly when training was introduced after seven weeks for Twin C.
Prehension developed at about the same rate for both twins not withstanding the special training
given Twin T. Such results, Gesell’s general biological orientation, and his heavy emphasis on
age norms gave a strong maturational developmental cast to his writing and to his influence
on the field. However, he recognized that there must be a learning or experience component
in development and occasionally took pains to acknowledge it. Consider, for example, his
statement: The heredity and environment of an organism can be completely separate only in
444 H.L. Pick Jr. / Infant Behavior & Development 26 (2003) 441–448

analytic thinking, for in actual nature such separation would lead to instant death, even though
the philosopher making the analysis might himself survive (Gesell, 1933). See Thelen and
Adolph (1992) for an excellent description of the Gesell’s research and impact on the field.
McGraw was also greatly influenced by Coghill. Indeed he was an advisor on her research
projects. McGraw also undertook a co-twin control study. Her study of Johnny and Jimmy is
a classic, probably the best known of investigations using this paradigm (McGraw, 1935). The
detailed reports of the development of motor skills, both trained and untrained in these two
boys makes fascinating reading, even after this long a time interval. Starting at age of 20 days
Johnny was given systematic stimulation several times a day and around nine months periods of
training in climbing inclines, climbing off a stool, and seemingly more complex skills like roller
skating and riding a tricycle. McGraw distinguished between “phylogenetic” actions which all
children of the species acquire and “ontogenetic” actions which are not obligatory for all
children. Actions like creeping, crawling, standing erect, walking, etc. fit into her phylogenetic
category, and climbing up inclines, skating, riding tricycles, etc., she placed in the ontogenetic
category. The phylogenetic actions were achieved at approximately the same ages. For example
both babies took a few steps alone at nine months but didn’t achieve independent locomotion
till about 16 months at about the same age “despite the daily exercise of Johnny” (p. 84).
Johnny mastered some of the ontogenetic actions, e.g., stair climbing and climbing off
stools, in relatively short periods of time, and he learned to skate but did not learn to ride the
tricycle. Mcgraw’s explanation for that failure was that her training involved strapping the feet
to the peddles with the aim of making the task easier. However, this constraint took away the
possibility of Johnny’s exploring the task. McGraw’s conclusion was that the training context
needs more study. The field, in general, and the general public concluded, as with Gesell, that at
least phylogenetic skills depended more on development and maturation. A careful reading of
Mcgraw, as with Gesell, finds a much more balanced view of the relative roles of development
and learning. For example, “But the daily practice in stepping movements from the time Johnny
was 20 days old was not without some effect. There developed a conditioned response in the
lower extremities . . . ”. And she concludes:

The extent to which exercise of an activity may alter the development of a particular behavior-course
in infancy is contingent upon the following conditions: (1) the neuro-structural level at which
the activity is controlled; (2) the state of plasticity or fixity of the behavior-course at the time
increased exercise is introduced; (3) the state of fixity attained by the behavior-pattern at the
time the factor of special exercise is withdrawn, and (4) the phylogenetic origin and importance
of the behavior-pattern. (p. 309)

(For an excellent discussion of Gesell’s research and impact on the field see Thelen and
Adolph (1992). Similarly, Bergenn, Dalton, and Lipsitt (1992) provide an excellent treatment
of McGraw’s research and theoretical ideas. Also see Dalton (1996) and Thelen (1996) for an
exchange of views about McGraw’s perspective on development and learning.)
Shirley (1931, 1933) did not undertake a manipulation of experience to investigate the rela-
tive importance of maturation and experience. Rather in a careful and systematic examination
of motor development during the first two years of life she observed the sequence and age
of achievement of various motor skills in general domains like eye coordination, posture and
locomotion, fine motor manipulation, motor play. Echoing Preyer’s suggestion (above) about
 H.L. Pick Jr. / Infant Behavior & Development 26 (2003) 441–448 445

the ontogenetic order of actions, she found the ordinal sequence of 42 individual behaviors in
these categories to be relatively invariant. And she suggested several criteria for asserting a
dominant role of maturation: (1) consistent sequential order of achievement in spite of vari-
ation of environment, (2) sequential order invariant across different rates of achievement, (3)
achievement not dependent on training or opportunity for incidental practice, (4) conformity
of functional development to biological structural changes, and (5) sudden appearance of new
achievements. She interpreted her observations to largely conform to these criteria and thus
also came down on the side of maturation.
Notwithstanding the caution of these investigators in promoting a strong maturationist view,
their work was widely interpreted in that direction. On the other hand there were researchers
who tended to emphasize the learning side of this dichotomy. Very prominent among these was
Kuo who studied avian motor development (e.g., Kuo, 1924, 1932). The complex and mature
behaviors of birds at hatching were often regarded as independent of experience and hence
instinctive. However, Kuo emphasized the fact that these birds had a considerable period of
intra-egg experience that could and should not be disregarded. His careful research indicated
first of all, that every manifestation of so-called instinctive behavior had an intra-egg course
of development which could be traced. Secondly, it was possible to manipulate the intra-egg
experience and produce changes in the so-called instinctive behavior. For example, prior to
hatching while still in the egg, chick legs are folded on the breast of the chicken. This posture
is carried over to post hatching when chicks sit in a similar position. Kuo suggested that with
most chicks in this posture the body weight exerts pressure on the legs, allowing the plantar
surface of the feet to be stimulated by the ground. This elicits an anti-gravitational extensor
thrust, enabling the chick to stand and subsequently walk. Kuo observed chicks with abnormal
posture in the egg in which legs were not folded on the breast. This incorrect posture carried
over post hatching, and the chicks did not ever stand and locomote.
With attention on movement and environment in the egg, Kuo’s observations included de-
tailed functioning of the “embryonic musculature” cataloging the kind and time of head move-
ments, beak movements, tail movements, etc. These were more reminiscent of the observations
of Coghill than the more functional behaviors focused on by Gesell, McGraw, and Shirley. In
the physiology literature of that era two researchers, Paul Weiss and Nicolai Bernshtein1 sug-
gested taxonomies of behavior that might have been useful in addressing issues of development
and learning.
Weiss was a physiologist/embryologist who explicitly called attention to the development/
learning dichotomy although the terms he used were preformist and heuristic (Weiss, 1941).
Orthopedists had established that in humans, in cases of paralyzed muscles, it was possible to
substitute healthy muscles for the affected one. Recovery of motor control could then occur, but
the timing pattern of the substitute muscle had to be modified from its original source timing.
Such recovery with modification of timing pattern was manifest in humans. Weiss investigated
the adjustment of amphibia, particularly salamanders, to transplantation of muscles, muscle
groups, and entire limbs. In the case of salamanders no adjustment of timing occurred. However,
he reported that they could be trained to some extent to move in a functional way although
their pattern of coordination is not modifiable. (Similar observations have been made with
rats.) Weiss suggested that a way of thinking about such patterns of adjustment is to consider
a hierarchy of levels of motor control. His taxonomy consisted of six levels: (1) neurone,
446 H.L. Pick Jr. / Infant Behavior & Development 26 (2003) 441–448

(2) muscle, (3) muscle group, (4) organ, (5) organ system, and (6) organism as a whole.
Adjustment to experimental (or natural) modifications of aspects motor performance might be
made at almost any level. A crude example would be that if one were a patient with a paralyzed
muscle in the right arm and a transplanted muscle were substituted one could learn to innervate
that muscle (level 2) at the appropriate time to produce the desired movement or one could
produce the desired result in a completely different way by producing the same functional
movement with the left arm (level 6). In any case this perspective suggested that the question
of development vs. learning might be contingent upon what aspects or levels of the motor
system were the focus of attention.
Bernshtein similarly proposed a taxonomy of levels with a somewhat different emphasis.
He was an anti-Pavlovian Soviet/Russian physiologist and has been considered to be an action
physiologist in so far as his focus was on more functional aspects of motor control. In analyzing
motor performance he also proposed a taxonomy of levels which partially overlapped with that
of Weiss. However, where they separated, Bernshtein’s moved in the direction of function.
So, for example, Bernshtein’s initial level (A) is roughly equivalent to Weiss’ muscle level,
but Bernstein focused on the most primitive function of muscles and that he suggested was
to maintain body tonus. Any executive movement of an organism presupposes having some
general state of tonus. His second level (B) focuses on joint/muscle relations and is the level
at which the relation between one body joint and another is regulated. Thus, this level has
to do with intra-body spatial organization. The third level (C) involves the relation of the
body to external space. Level (D) is finally concerned with objective actions, the organization
of movement in relation to objects. (There was a fifth level that was subsequently added-a
symbolic level.) So, for example, in order to write with a pencil, one has to start with a certain
level of body tonus (A), assume an appropriate relation between parts of the body (B), position
the body appropriately to pick up the pencil (C), pick up the pencil (D), position it appropriately
on the page (C), and form the letters (C) and (D). Although Bernshtein did not explicitly address
the development vs. learning dichotomy it is easy to gain the impression that he would have
taken a perspective similar to that of Weiss, that learning of a motor skill as opposed to its
maturation might well depend on what level of the motor system was being addressed. No
matter how he would have come down on this question, it seems like the early psychological
researchers of motor development might have benefited by thinking more in terms of such
analytic descriptions of motor behavior.
Behaviorist learning theories were rapidly developing during the 1920s through the 1940s
at the same time as the research of Gesell, Mcgraw, Shirley, Weiss, and Bernshtein were most
active. This so-called stimulus–response (S–R) perspective, by definition emphasized learning,
but most of these learning theorists and empiricists took little interest in development. What
is also interesting from the point of view of the present discussion is that the S–R researchers
paid relatively little attention to analysis of the stimulus or of the response. In their defense,
they were mainly focused on the link or association between the stimulus and response and its
relation to reinforcement. Often stimuli and responses were simply defined and/or selected for
experimental convenience.
In a critique of how the stimulus was regarded in psychology, in general, James Gibson
(1960) described some of the definitions used by learning theorists. For example, Hilgard and
Marquis in 1940 suggested that the stimulus is in some sense an occasion for the response
 H.L. Pick Jr. / Infant Behavior & Development 26 (2003) 441–448 447

and Neal Miller and John Dollard in a circular way suggested that a response is any activity
which can become functionally connected with an antecedent event and a stimulus is any
event that can be connected in this way. In fact, Gibson raised the general issue of whether,
in S–R analyses, stimuli and responses were defined independently of one another. Of course,
S–R experimentalists did define responses operationally independently of stimuli. But again in
their selection of responses to use in learning experiments, they used actions like bar presses,
maze direction choices, choices of buttons to press, directions in which to move a limb, etc.,
all movements which could be easily and reliably measured. They did pay attention to the
nature of the response sometimes in analyzing what was learned as in investigation of response
generalization. The aspects of the response focused on for this purpose were often charateristics
such as reaction time, rate, amplitude, duration, etc. rather than the detailed structure of the
response.
After the Second World War the S–R learning theory approach within psychology was
gradually replaced by, or evolved into, an information processing perspective. At the be-
ginning there were few developmentalists who took this approach, but gradually they were
attracted to it too. Some of the early signs of this attraction were exemplified by Connolly
(1970), Schmidt (1975), and Thomas (1980). Almost by definition the research from an in-
formation processing perspective was concerned with process but there was little explicit
concern with the development vs. learning dichotomy. However, implicitly one could infer
that some processes were more likely to be subject to the effects of experience than others.
So, for example, Pew and Rupp (1971) analyzed the pursuit tracking performance of fourth
to tenth grade children. They suggested that age changes in time delay reflected maturation
while changes in system gain reflected individual characteristics, perhaps strategy adjustment
which would fall on the cognitive/learning side. Mounoud, Viviani, Hauert, and Guyon (1985)
also investigating tracking responses and Hay (1984) investigating use of feedback in reaching
responses have reported strategy changes with age at somewhat lower ages than in Pew and
Rupp’s study.
In more recent times the focus on investigation of, and theorizing about, process has con-
tinued with information processing research and newer approaches. Interest in dichotomizing
development and learning has diminished, almost disappeared. There is still vital interest in
the role of experience and it is commonly recognized that experience has its effects in the
context of growth or development. In fact there is growing recognition that there is reciprocal
influence between experience and development in motor performance and many other aspects
of psychological development (Gottlieb, 1997).

Note

1. I have transliterated the name of the Soviet/Russian physiologist as Bernshtein which is

closer to the standard accepted form of transliteration. However, in Western psychological
literature his name is usually transliterated as Bernstein, and this is the case for his
translated books. My citations below to one Russian book (Bernshtein, 1947) and one
translated book (Bernstein, 1996) refer to the same author.
448 H.L. Pick Jr. / Infant Behavior & Development 26 (2003) 441–448

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