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Epilogue: description versus explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

Alex Fedde Kalverboer
Affiliation:
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands
Brian Hopkins
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Reint Geuze
Affiliation:
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands
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Summary

This volume contains a diversity of theoretical approaches to the study of motor development – an inevitable outcome, given its multidisciplinary content. How can such diversity be brought together within a unifying framework so that some general conclusions can be made about the relevance of longitudinal research for the study of motor development? A solution to this problem is approached by making the distinction between description and explanation. This distinction has been present implicitly in most chapters. This chapter concludes with a predictable, but sobering, conclusion: the study of motor development will gain most benefit from longitudinal research when its use is mandated by the requirements of a particular theory.

ON DISTINGUISHING DESCRIPTION FROM EXPLANATION

An explanation provides answers to ‘why’ questions: ‘Why did the child behave in the way he or she did?’ Description is deployed to answer how (and what, when and where) questions: ‘How does change in a developing system occur?’ Allocating description and explanation to how and why questions respectively obscures practical difficulties in making a distinction between them. Some clarification can be obtained when a two-part intermediate category is recognized: descriptive explanations. They not only explain what something is like (e.g. the reaching movements of a newborn relative to those of a 3 month old) but also describe a process: how something occurred in terms of events before and after its occurrence (e.g. after being placed in a semi-upright position the newborn reached for a hanging object but did not grasp it).

Type
Chapter
Information
Motor Development in Early and Later Childhood
Longitudinal Approaches
, pp. 372 - 377
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1993

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