ABSTRACT
H ow do individuals learn movement skills andacquire skill? How do young children de-velop movement patterns? What changes occur, motorically, across a person’s lifespan? What are skillful performances? And how do the central nervous system and the environment control the execution of our movements? These questions are the concern of the entries included in this chapter. The chapter contains entries that focus on the disciplines, fields, and areas of study that deal with human movement and skill. The term psychomotor domains is used here to highlight the territories or fields of thought and action that are concerned with human movement, and the acquisition and development of motor skills, and skillful performances. The word psychomotor became popular in the late 1950s when Benjamin Bloom and David Krathwol published a handbook entitled Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (1956). Bloom and his associates identified three categories or educational domains that served to classify objectives and the types of learning that accrue in educational settings: cognitive-knowledge and intellectual thinking skills; affective-attitudes, values, appreciations, and emotions; and psychomotormovement skills and abilities. The psychomotor domain categorized human movement from a psychological perspective. Not to be confused with Bloom’s work, the term psychomotor domains in this chapter is used to describe disciplines, fields, and areas of study and research concerned with human movement and skill.
