THE BEHAVIOR ANALYST TODAY VOLUME NUMBER 6, ISSUE NUMBER 4, 2005

DISCOVERY OF MOTOR DEVELOPMENT: A TRIBUTE TO

ESTHER THELEN

G.J.P SAVELSBERGH

HUMAN MOVEMENT SCIENCES, VRIJ UNIVERSITY

In this tribute to Esther Thelen’s legacy, it is discussed how she brought concepts of new theoretical perspectives into the
domain of motor development. As a consequence of this a rejuvenalisation of motor development took place in the mid 1980’s.
The study of motor development skills became a testing ground not only for the task at hand, but also for other areas of
development.
Key words: Thelen, infant motor development, stereotypy
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“The (re) discovery of motor development” is part of
a title used by Esther Thelen (1989) for a discussion pa-
per in Developmental Psychology. It reflects why she
became famous in the world of developmental psychol-
ogy during the early 1980s. She put the field of infants’
motor development in infants back on the scientific
map as an important topic of study both in its own
right and as a window into other, less accessible do-
mains of development. Her achievements are relevant
for any academic interested in teaching and research in
the areas of movement co-ordination, movement control
and skill acquisition. Esther Stillman Thelen passed away
at the age of 63 on December 29th, 2004 at a hospital
in Bloomington, Indiana.
Esther was trained as ethologist and started her
career by carefully documenting repetitive movement
stereotypy’s, first in grooming wasps (masters degree,
1973) and, later in developing infants (doctoral de-
gree, 1977). This early work resulted in a number of
well-received publications and the beginning of what
would be continuous funding by NSF and NIH. In a
comparatively short career, spanning only 25 years,
Esther’s impact on the field is reflected in three books,
an SRCD monograph, and over 120 scientific articles
and book chapters. She served on the editorial boards
of 15 scientific journals, gave countless invited lec-
tures and was elected president of the International
Society on Infant Studies (1996-1998) and president
of the Society for Research in Child Development.
Esther’s influence and significance for scientific work
in development will be measurable beyond these out-
puts for many years to come.
In this tribute to her legacy, we will comment on some
of Esther’s impact and contribution to the field of devel-
opmental science. We will start with her early classic
muscle-fat study and end with her A-not-B error experi-
243
ments, and Dynamic field Theory. In the latter she worked
towards an encompassing dynamic theory for the de-
velopment of action, perception, and cognition.
A NEW KID ON THE DEVELOPMENTAL
BLOCK: THE MUSCLE-FAT RATIO STUDY
The experiments conducted by Thelen in the early
1980s (Thelen & Fisher, 1982, Thelen et al., 1983; 1984)
can be considered as the starting point of a major intel-
lectual shift in motor development. In these experiments,
she challenged the, then-prevailing view on motor devel-
opment as being determined by neural maturation. Be-
fore discussing these experiments, we go back into his-
tory.
In the first two years an infant acquires different a
range of goal-directed motor behaviors, such as reach-
ing, grasping, sitting, crawling and walking. These so-
called milestones are well known since the work of Gesell
(1929), McGraw (1935) and Shirley (1933). The descrip-
tion of these milestones resulted in a view of motor de-
velopment as a rather rigid and gradual unfolding of pos-
tures and movements, that was mainly attributed to the
general process of maturation of the central nervous sys-
tem. From a neural-maturation perspective the develop-
ment of movement co-ordination is regarded as a gradual
unfolding of predetermined patterns (from cephalo-to-
caudal and central-to-distal sequences) in the central ner-
vous system and an increasing cortical control over lower
reflexes. This view was still dominant among scientist
way into the 1960s and 1970s, the so called heydays of
the information-processing approach. Esther challenged
this perspective with her experiments. In one of the key
papers, ‘The relationship between physical growth and a
newborn reflex’ published in Infant Behavior and Devel-
opment, she and her co-workers illustrate instead that the
complex interplay between infants’ bodies, their environ-
 THE BEHAVIOR ANALYST TODAY
ment, and earlier experiences determine the course of
developmental changes. They found that in 8-week-old
infants held upright, the stepping movements observed
at a younger age disappeared. However, when the infants
were lying supine, they performed kicking movements
that were kinematically similar to the earlier observed
stepping movements. Moreover, when the same infants
were held upright in water the stepping pattern also re-
emerged. If the disappearance of the stepping reflex is
due to cortical inhibition, as the traditional explanation
would have it, why would the cortex inhibit movements
in the upright posture but not in the supine posture or in
the water? Thelen explained this disappearance of new-
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born stepping movements as a consequence of the dis-
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proportionate growth of leg muscles and fat tissues
(Thelen et al., 1984). Specifically during this period of
development infants acquire fat at a greater rate than
muscle mass, which leads to relatively less muscle force.
Thus, the occurrence of stepping movements (task) is a
consequence of the interaction between organismic con-
straints (body proportions) and environmental constraints
(orientation to the gravity vector), and not uniquely de-
termined by neuro-maturational constraints. No single
factor has priority, a theme that would resurface through-
out her work.
In the earlier eighties, ecological psychology, coordi-
native structure theory and dynamic systems theory were
introduced (Gibson, 1987; Kelso, 1995; Kugler, Kelso,
& Turvey, 1982). The research described in the article of
Thelen et al. (1984) can be considered as one of the first
experimental studies to test the theoretical concepts pro-
vided by these new avenues of theoretical thinking.
Twenty years later, studies of motor development have
become a major testing ground for examining the devel-
opmental implications of these new theoretical perspec-
tives (some examples from our Amsterdam group:
Savelsbergh & Van der Kamp, 1994, Kawai, Savelsbergh
& Wimmers, 1999; Van Hof, Van der Kamp &
Savelsbergh, 2002). For example, the Van Hof et al.
(2002) experiment examined how the development of
crossing the midline is interwoven with the development
of bimanual reaching. Previously, it was held that the
development of midline crossing is uniquely determined
by maturation of the hemispheric specialisation (Provine
& Westerman, 1979) or the maturation of spinal tracts
(Morange & Bloch, 1996). Van Hof et al. observed in-
fants longitudinally at 12, 18 and 26 weeks of age while
reaching for two balls (3 and 8 cm in diameter) at three
positions (ipsilateral, midline and contralateral). With age,
the infants increasingly adapted the number of hands used
to the size of the object. The number of reaches crossing
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VOLUME NUMBER 6, ISSUE NUMBER 4, 2005
the body midline increased with age. Furthermore, the
majority of the midline crossings were part of two-handed
reaches for the large ball and occurred at, or after onset
of bimanual reaching. Together, this strongly suggest that
the development of crossing the body midline emerges
in the context of bimanual reaching. It is concluded that
the need to grasp a large ball positioned contralaterally
with two hands induces midline crossing. Hence, the de-
velopment of midline crossings is not exclusively depen-
dent on organismic constraints (e.g., the maturation of
hemispheric connections), but on their interaction with
environmental constraints (e.g., object size). Similar to
Thelen’s work, no single factor had priority.
The experiments conducted by Thelen in the early
1980s can be considered as the starting point of a major
intellectual shift in motor development. Although their
primary intention in conducting the research in the origi-
nal paper was to provide empirical evidence to provide
an alternative explanation for the results of training on
infant stepping reported by Zelazo (1983). The impact
of the articles however, is also (and perhaps mainly) due
to the change in theoretical thinking about motor control
and particularly motor development. Concepts stemming
from new perspectives had begun to achieve popularity
in the scientific community, but empirical data support-
ive of these new ideas was lacking, especially in motor
development. Thelen et al.’s article provided some of
the earliest support for these new emerging theoretical
perspectives and became one of the major catalysts re-
sponsible for the rejuvenation of the study of motor de-
velopment.
ESTABLISHING AND EXTENDING A REPUTA-
TION: THE DYNAMIC SYSTEMS APPROACH TO
DEVELOPMENT
Inspired by the work of Bernstein (1967), Gibson’s
(1979, 1988) and Turvey (1990) and dynamic systems
theory by Kelso (Kelso 1995; Kugler, Kelso, & Turvey,
1982; Kugler & Turvey, 1987), Esther started to use mo-
tor development as a vehicle to provide empirical evi-
dence for (i) developmental processes are nonlinear, (ii)
action and perception form an inseparable loop and (iii)
variability in development is functional.
For instance, Ester was inspired by Nikolai Bernstein
(1967), a Russian physiologist, who formulated one of
the central issues in understanding the development of
motor co-ordination: the ‘degrees of freedom’ problem.
The degrees of freedom problem refers to the possible
movements of all the components (e.g., muscles, tendons,
joints etc.) of the motor apparatus of the human body.
Bernstein realised that the non-linear nature of the inter-
 THE BEHAVIOR ANALYST TODAY
actions among these different components of the human
body makes their separate regulation impossible and in-
ferred that to be able to control all these components, or
degrees of freedom, these movements have to be co-
ordinated. Co-ordination, therefore, is the process of
mastering the redundant degrees of freedom into a con-
trollable system. It is this idea of non-linearity what comes
back in many papers of Esther (e.g. Thelen et al, 1989;
Thelen & Smith, 1994).
A couple that had a considerable influence on Esther’s
thinking is Eleanor and James Gibson’s (1979, 1988).
The Gibson’s ecological psychology approach to percep-
tion is also known as the direct perception perspective.
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The word ‘direct’ refers to the fact that objects, places
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and events in the environment can be perceived without
the need of cognitive mediation to make perception mean-
ingful, such as in the information-processing approach.
Information in the environment is not static in time and
space, but specifies events, places and objects. The child
has to learn to pick up and select the appropriate infor-
mation by exploration. The concept of exploration plays
a key role in many publications by Esther. She advocates
that through active and directed exploration of the envi-
ronment the child learns to detect relevant information,
and to couple the information to movements. For instance,
this is nicely shown by Thelen in her earlier ethologically
orientated studies (1979) where she studied the occur-
rence of rhythmical behaviors like kicking, rocking, arm
waving and banging in natural settings. She showed
that these behaviors occurred most frequently around tran-
sitions where new behaviors emerged. Rocking on hands
and feet, for example, emerged in development just be-
fore the onset of crawling. This rocking might represent
the infant’s exploration of his action capabilities and the
(proprioceptive) information it produces. This eventually
leads to a new stable action pattern (crawling). Through
exploration the infant discovers how perception and ac-
tion are coupled.
A third source of inspiration, and maybe her major
source, is the dynamic systems theory (Scott Kelso, 1995).
The aim of the dynamic systems approach is to charac-
terize spatio-temporal and functional patterns of motor
behavior in terms of their stability properties by formal-
izing the time-evolution of relevant variables into dynami-
cal equations of motion. Stationary, stable states or pat-
terns of activity, as well as abrupt transitions between
different states accompanied with loss of stability (in-
duced by changes in external conditions), have been suc-
cessfully modeled in this way (Kelso, 1995). The per-
spective portrays co-ordination as a process that con-
strains the potentially free variables of a system into a
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VOLUME NUMBER 6, ISSUE NUMBER 4, 2005
behavioral unit. A collective variable (order parameter)
is the parameter that captures the observed behavior (co-
ordination pattern), while a control parameter is the pa-
rameter that leads the system through different co-ordi-
nation patterns. Within this approach, the behavioral pat-
tern is regarded as a stable collective state attained by
the system under certain constraints (boundary condi-
tions) and informational settings (Zanone, Kelso, & Jeka,
1993). When the control parameter passes through a criti-
cal point, a co-ordination pattern that was stable becomes
unstable causing a sudden discrete transition to a quali-
tatively different, stable co-ordination pattern. Such a
change appears without any prescription from outside,
but is acquired by the system self, i.e., through self-orga-
nization. Esther Thelen’s group provided empirical evi-
dence (among others, e.g. Van Geert, 1999; Van der Maas,
1993) that developmental processes are not smooth and
monotonic, but are better characterized by phenomenon
such as discontinuities, transitions, instabilities, and re-
gressions (Thelen, 1995; Thelen & Smith, 1994, 1995;
Thelen & Ulrich, 1991). These phenomena are charac-
teristic of non-linear dynamical processes and scientists
from this perspective often search for control and order
parameters. The identification of rate-limiting factors can
help to identify these control parameters (like relative
muscle force as result of the ratio of fat/muscle tissue by
Thelen et al., 1984).
Within this theoretical perspective, Esther’s carried
out a string of ingenious cross-sectional and longitu-
dinal experiments. The development of infants’ leg
movements as a research paradigm dominated in the
1980s, with careful tracking of infants’ kicking, step-
ping, and walking patterns. In the 1990s, she extended
her research program from cyclic leg movements to-
wards perceptually guided, goal-directed arm move-
ments in reaching and grasping (for instance; Thelen
et al., 1993). An important concept in these studies
was variability. When the data are grouped with respect
to the transition point an increase in variability is found
around the transition point. Thelen and Smith (1994) sug-
gested that variability around a transition is a prerequi-
site in order to jump to a qualitatively new level of be-
havior. In their view, variability is highly functional: it
provides the infant/child with possibilities for explora-
tion, that is, the opportunity to discover new qualitatively
different solutions.
EMBODIED COGNITION
Esther’s most recent work was directed towards
embodied cognition, showing how the complex inter-
actions between looking, remembering, and acting
 THE BEHAVIOR ANALYST TODAY
shape infants’ perseverative errors in the A not B search
task. With this work Esther challenged one of the most
highly researched phenomena in the study of infant
cognitive development: Piaget’s theory of object per-
manence with this work. In the traditional work
(Piaget, 1954), Piaget described how his 9.5 months -
old child, Laurent, made reaches for his hidden watch.
The watch was hidden several times under a garment
at location A and Laurent searched for it. Subsequently,
the watch was hidden at a nearer and highly similar
location B while Laurent watched. The infant made a
curious reaching ‘error’; after a delay between hiding
and reaching, Laurent searched for the watch at loca-
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tion A, the location where it was first found. Piaget
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concluded that it is a universal phenomenon that is
due to limitations in Laurent’s concept of an object.
The explanation focuses attention on Laurent’s inter-
nal cognitive machinery, the way he thinks about the
world.
Following the work of Piaget the hide and seek task
has been repeated countless times, with myriad varia-
tions. The error turned out was found to be a robust
phenomenon in its standard form, but highly complex
in its context dependency. Each of the highlighted
components seems to be crucial to the occurrence of
the error (see for a review Smith, Thelen, Titzer,
McLin, & Smith, 1999). After decades of research no
cognitive theory could explain the full pattern of ex-
perimental results, neither a consensus on the nature
of the error nor on its meaning was attained. If the A
not B error is a measure of the infant’s object con-
cept, how can it be that infants have a more mature
object representation when seemingly small task con-
ditions are altered?
Thelen and Smith challenged the notion that the
error reflects the infant’s immature understanding of
the concept of an object. They focused on the infant’s
reaching activity and not on the contents of the infant’s
mind (Smith and Thelen, 1993; Thelen and Smith,
1994). A critical experiment was performed to dem-
onstrate, for example, that the same patterns of be-
havior are evident when waving a continually in-view
object at location A or B, instead of hiding a toy (Smith
et al., 1999). So, the error is not about what infants
have and don’t have as enduring object concepts but
what they are doing and have done. From a dynamic
perspective on goal-directed reaching, perseveration
in the A not B task is a continuous, self-organizing
process which involves multiple interactions includ-
ing visual input, looking behavior, posture, and the
memory dynamics of repeating the same action sev-
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VOLUME NUMBER 6, ISSUE NUMBER 4, 2005
eral times in succession. This means that no single
element has causal priority.
In collaboration with Gregor Schöner, a powerful
mathematical model of A-not-B (i.e. the dynamical
field theory) was offered and tested (Thelen, Schöner,
Scheier, & Smith, 2001). The field model simulates
the decision of infants to reach to location A or B and
the level of inclination to reach in any direction is
constantly changing over time. This constantly chang-
ing set of inclinations (i.e. the movement planning
field) depends on a number of factors, including (1)
the current state of the field, (2) the task input, cap-
turing the perceptual cues that specify the possible
hiding locations, (3) the selective input, capturing the
hiding event or the waving of the lid, (4) the memory
of previous reaches become an input to the next trial,
so in absence of other cues the system is likely to stick
to previous choices (5) interactions between the loca-
tions make sure that a highly activated location will
exert a strong inhibitory influence over the other point,
so one location wins out.
This model can reproduce the A not B error. Be-
fore there is any object hidden there is activation at
both A and B. As the experimenter directs attention to
A by for example hiding the toy, it produces high acti-
vation at A. When the activation peak crosses a thresh-
old the infant reaches to A. Each time the infant reaches
to A, the memory becomes an input and the activation
level at A builds. After several A trials the experimenter
draws attention to location B. But as that cue decays,
the lingering memories of location A begin to domi-
nate the field and over time the inclination shifts back
to location A. Experimenters can make the error come
and go by manipulating the inputs to the fields (Smith
and Thelen, 2003). For example the A not B error in
10 month old infants diminishes when the number of
prior reaches to A decreases, when the two hiding lo-
cations are made more distinctive and, when the hid-
ing event at B is more attractive (i.e. hiding cookies
instead of toys). Younger infants are not able to main-
tain stable peaks. In the A not B task they are domi-
nant on B trials through their motor memory of reaches
to A. Older infants maintain a stable peak after the
cue at B so they reach to B despite delay and motor
memory. Clearly the development of keeping the rel-
evant, but no longer visual, cues in memory is a criti-
cal developmental achievement. But also developmen-
tal changes in the perceptual differentiation of the tar-
gets and attention processes may contribute to a shift
from perseveration to non-perseveration. The conse-
quences are that the division between what is concep-
 THE BEHAVIOR ANALYST TODAY
tual and what is perceptual-motor may be very hard to
draw.
The dynamic field theory predicts that the dynam-
ics that create the error in infants are general processes
involved in goal-directed reaching at all ages. Indeed,
even toddlers make perseverative errors in the A not
B task when the A and B locations are not marked by
lids but instead are two locations in a homogeneous
task space such as a sandbox (Spencer, Smith, and
Thelen, 2001). The model captures both the robust-
ness of the task and its exquisite context-sensitivity.
This is in itself a great achievement, but the model
also provided a number of novel predictions, which
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were born out in further experiments (for instance:
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Schutte, Spencer & Schöner, 2003; Spencer & Schöner,
2003). Esther’s principle of multicausality demands a
rethinking of what is meant by knowledge and devel-
opment. The model accomplishes infant behavior in
the A not B task without invoking constructs of object
representation or other knowledge structures. Rather
the infants’ behavior of knowing or not-knowing is
emergent from the dynamics of the reaching task it-
self, including the history of previous actions. With
her work on embodied cognition, Thelen showed that
knowing cannot be separated from perceiving, acting,
and remembering.
In this tribute we provide a taste of Esther’s Thelen
impact and contribution to the field of developmental
science. Her works towards an encompassing dynamic
theory for the development of action, perception, and
cognition will be a source of inspiration for several
research groups over the world. She left us, undoubt-
edly, with a vibrant, healthy state of current research
on motor development. Esther’s influence and contri-
butions to scientific work and academic life will be
measurable beyond these outputs for many years to
come.
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Author Information:
G.J.P Savelsbergh, Institute for Fundamental
and Clinical Human Movement Sciences,
Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, Free
University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands,
Institute for Biophysical and Clinical Research
into Human Movement, Department for
Exercise & Sport Sciences, Manchester
Metropolitan University, United Kingdom.

Human Movement Sciences, Vrij University

Van der Boechorststraat 9, 1081 BT
Amsterdam Netherlands
Tel.:+31-20-5988461
Fax: +31-20-598
Email: gsavelsbergh@fbw.vu.nl

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