This book is divided into sections. Each section is devoted to a particular issue in Motor Development and comprises two or more contributions. The order of presentation mirrors the order of presentation at the
Institute and thus is not entirely fortuitous! Nevertheless, it does not reflect any value judgement on the part of the editors as to the importance of anyone issue in comparison to others addressed in the book. This volume is
to be seen as a companion volume to 'Themes in Moto!' Development' in which the more specific topics presented during the Institute are published. Together, the two volumes provide both a general and theme specific approach to
this expanding field of knowledge. XI PREFACE Books and conferences, on what in North America is euphemistically termed motor development, have been few and far between in the past 25 years. This is not to say that the study
of how children acquire and develop motor skills has not been a subject on which scientists have focused their attention. In the United States in the 1930's and 1940's, Bayley (1935) and Gesell and Amatruda (1947) described
and scaled the rates at which young children acquired motor skills. In Europe, the development of childrens' motor behaviour was of theoretical interest to Piaget (1952).