From Walking to Running: Applying a Dynamical Systems Approach to the Development of Locomotor Skills

Jill Whitall · Nancy Getchell

59 citations0/0 files storedChild Development

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Children's Physical and Motor Development Motor Control and Adaptation Robotic Locomotion and Control

Abstract

Developmental transitions of complex systems may be studied by selecting (collective) variables that constrain the degrees of freedom for each developmental state. In a dynamical systems approach, the transitions from state to state are engendered through the scaling of contributing subsystems (control parameters). In this study, the locomotor skills of walking and running were compared in newly running infants by observing several likely collective variables including relative stance, estimated pathway of center of mass, and segmental/joint action. 4 children were filmed longitudinally at 5.5, 7.5, and 9.5 months of independent walking and then at 3 years of age. 3 trials per gait were selected for single stride analysis and compared with data from 4 adults. In general, the proposed collective variables showed transitional forms over the first few months of running, indicating a relatively continuous change between the 2 gait forms. Coordination of the knee joint was very similar between gaits and across age, but the ankle joint was less consistent for both gaits in the infants. Relative stance and stride length data indicated that the children could not generate vertical and horizontal displacement. These findings echo those found in newly walking infants and suggest that similar rate-limiting parameters are present for both gaits.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 59 citations exist upstream.

References

1991Hidden Skills: A Dynamic Systems Analysis of Treadmill Stepping during the First Year 1987Development of early expressive and communicative action: Reinterpreting the evidence from a dynamic systems perspective.1989Development of Posture and Gait: Across the Life Span 1993A Longitudinal Study of Intralimb Coordination in the First Year of Independent Walking: A Dynamical Systems Analysis 1992Postural Requirements and Progression Velocity in Young Walkers 1988Human interlimb coordination: The first 6 months of independent walking 1993THE DEVELOPMENT OF COORDINATION IN INFANCY 1986Development of Coordinated Movement: Implications for Early Human Development

Cited by

2006Age and task-related differences in timing stability, consistency, and natural frequency of children's rhythmic, motor coordination 2012Assessing locomotor skills development in childhood using wearable inertial sensor devices: the running paradigm 2020Differences in the Level of Children Gross Motor Skills Development in Silat, Taekwondo and Karate in Malaysia

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.