ABSTRACT
Traditionally, developmental psychology has been selective in the way it views our lives from cradle to grave. High on its priority list have been topics such as early childhood experience and learning, motivation, perception, intelligence, language and concept development, personality and socialization. From the point of view of sport, one topic is very notable by its absence from this list, motor development. That is not to say that the acquisition of motor skills has been ignored but too often physical accomplishments have been used as no more than developmental milestones, marking out what were seen as more psychologically significant developments in terms of cognitive, perceptual or social skills. Indeed it is only in the last few years that motor development has gained recognition as a valued and separate area within the subdiscipline, with a growing literature devoted solely to the topic (see Gabbard, 1992).
