The connections between fine motor skills and learning

Supervisor: Dr Sebastian Suggate

A) Rationale for the project

A question that has baffled and inspired psychologists, educations, and philosophers for centuries is how the mind and body are in intertwined. Children who struggle with reading, language, and mathematics tend to have lower fine motor skills. Indeed, for all children research has begun to show that fine motor skills link to learning and development, however there are still many unanswered questions, for many domains of learning and development (reading, maths, language, cognition, imagery), and age groups (children, adults, the elderly). Newer ideas about how exactly our mind is connected with our body have begun to change our understanding (e.g., grounded cognition), which has opened a great deal of new research questions.

B) References that should be read

Pexman, P. M. (2019). The role of embodiment in conceptual development. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 34(10), 1274–1283.

Suggate, S., Pufke, E., & Stoeger, H. (2019). Children’s fine motor skills in kindergarten predict reading in grade 1. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 47, 248–258.

Suggate, S. P., & Martzog, P. (2021). Children’s sensorimotor development in relation to screen-media usage: A two-year longitudinal study. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 74(7465), 101279.

Winter, R. E., Stoeger, H., & Suggate, S. P. (2021). Fine motor skills and lexical processing in children and adults. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 666200.

C) Research aims and questions

Research questions include, but are not limited to, investigating how fine motor skills and the many aspects related to it (e.g., primitive reflexes, gross motor, vestibular and proprioceptive senses, sensory integration) relate to thinking and learning, with foci on reading and mathematical development, and lexical processing. Additionally, the influences of contemporary life (screen-time, exercise, outdoor experiences) on embodied development offer exciting avenues for research.

D) Methods

Good scientific practice dictates that the methodology should arise out of the research question (not the other way around), however, methods I am comfortable supervising include studies in educational settings, experiments, interventions, longitudinal/cross sectional studies, online studies, interviews, literature reviews and meta-analyses.