What is motor learning?
Motor learning is the change in capability to produce skilled tasks, often associated with practice or experience. In essence, it is the process of learning how to do something well. There are three stages in motor learning: cognitive, associative, and autonomous.
- Cognitive: a slow process where the child needs to think about each step of a task.
- Associative: where the child is able to recognize errors and motor planning is being solidified.
- Autonomous: the stage when action is performed very quickly upon stimulus.
How to measure success
- Time – Response time and time to completion are both important measurements of success!
- Errors – It’s important to set expectations before you begin! First, look at the expectation. Then, look at the steps that are completed and independent. Then you can move onto things like distance to target to measure how well they are doing.
- Retention – How long is this skill lasting? Can they remember the activities they learned yesterday? This will be important to see the progress they are making!
- Transfer and generalization – How well do these skills transfer? If a kiddo can do an activity with one item, can they also do it with another?
- Change in brain activation – Finally, how well are these skills becoming a natural muscle memory? This will be a great final measure of how successful your efforts have been!
How to help children with autism learn motor skills
- Work collaboratively on understanding the task
- Motivate by allowing choices, following a child’s lead and using preferred interests
- Expect they will do well and tell them that they can do it
- Review expectations and definition of success
- Decrease task difficulty to allow high ratio of success
- Use physical assistance as needed to feel the movement but fade it quickly
- Use external focus of attention in verbal prompts, scripts, schedules
- Advocate for variation in practice
- Be patient!
What are your best tips for helping kiddos with autism practice their motor skills?