The Development Of Throwing By Children Aged Three To Six And Its Influencing Factors

Since the 1980s, the domain of motor development has regained its focus from worldwide scholars with the development of kinematic biochemistry, cognitive neuroscience and ecological psychology. For children, fundamental motor skills in this field are the foundation to execute the movement and the important meaning and ways to explore the environment and acquire more knowledge of the world around them. Throwing, one of the important and complex fundamental motor skills has been focally studied by scholars. For decades, the study of children’s throwing movement (such as the developmental characteristics, affecting factors, measurement and evaluation) has been extensively executed by researchers abroad and certain achievements have been made. The research about this in our country is at the primary stage with some studies of the behavioral attractors of throwing and the instructional strategies. Nearly none of the domestic researches has made further and deeply research about the constraints, which have great influences on children’s throwing. The change of living conditions and transportation has made our country’s current social environment less favorable for the development of children’s throwing. Therefore, the need to continue research and provide a reference to improving environmental conditions of motor development is urgent. Against this background, three experiments, which were based on the perspective of dynamic system theory and Newell’s Triangle Model, were designed in this study to explore the throwing performance of 3-through 6-year-old children and its influence factors. The first experiment involved the development of children’s throwing and constraints residing in the children. Test two shifted the focus from the performers to the environment and explored the environmental constraints imposed onto the configuration of throwing by 3 to 6 year olds. The third experiment, based on experiment one and experiment two, focused on the task constraints. Main conclusions of the study were as follows:(1) Children’s throwing was developing rapidly with some relatively premature movements which were mostly second type of over-arm throw based. The 5-and 6-year-old children exhibited more mature form. With a variety of throwing performances, the degree of freedom for the emerging movements was significant. Boys did better in the throwing task than girls. (2) The constraints residing in a performer included age, gender, height and weight. Effects of these constrains on throwing were not independent. (3) When considered along with gender issues, projectiles might be another environmental constrain of throwing. They had a greater effect on the girls than boys. (4) Task constraint played a prominent role in the development of children’s throwing movements. Regardless of the throwing movements or the results,3 to 6 year olds did better in task required by the others than in task determined by oneself. This study dived deeper into the analysis of the behavioral attractors of children’s throwing movements under natural conditions and explored some constrains that really affected the development of children’s throwing. The results offered an empirical support for improving the throwing movements and physical coordination of children and supplied a research basis for further study about the behavioral attractors of children’s throwing, its constraints and the relationship within the constraints.