ABSTRACT
Despite the fact that skilled behaviour underlies nearly every human activity, our understanding of the factors that contribute to attainment of expertise is far from complete. The study of skill learning has a long and somewhat chequered history. Long, in that interest in the acquisition of perceptual-motor skills can be dated back to the late 1800s. Chequered, in the sense that the importance of skill acquisition as a major research agenda item has waxed and waned and its relationship with the sub-field of motor control has at times been quite tenuous. One of the problems inherent in the field has been agreeing on what we regard as a skilled behaviour. While most would agree that a perfectly executed high bar routine in gymnastics is a highly skilled activity that only a few can accomplish, whether a simple action that few cannot achieve, like reaching for a glass is a skilled behaviour is more contentious. The problem is that while the reach and grasp action is a simple automatic action for an adult, it poses a complex motor control problem for a young child.
