The practice of adapted physical education should be consistent with a theoretical model of motor behavior. We believe that the dominant view of movement skills, motor abilities, and general motor ability, as expressed in the current literature, often is not congruent with assessment instruments currently used in adapted physical education. The purpose of this paper is to review the dominant conceptualization of skills, abilities, and general motor ability; present four problems with the dominant view related to assessment in adapted physical education; and then offer a new perspective based on a four-level taxonomy. The levels of the proposed taxonomy are movement skills, movement skill sets, movement skill foundations, and general motor ability.

A new approach to task analysis is presented based upon an ecological theory of perception and current motor development and control theories. The ecological task analysis (ETA) approach stands in sharp contrast to more traditional approaches and offers procedures equally applicable to instruction and assessment of movement performance as well as to applied research. The strengths of the ETA approach lie in (a) its grounding in current motor development and control theories, (b) its linking of the task requirements, environmental conditions, and performer characteristics, (c) its application of a functional and dynamic approach to instruction and assessment, and (d) its integration of instruction and assessment procedures. Following a discussion of the traditional approach and ecological theory, four concepts are presented that emanate from Gibson’s theory of affordances. From these concepts ETA procedures are derived. Applied research questions relating to task analysis are also implied from the ecological approach and are presented in the final section.

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Therapists are recommended to use Schneck and Henderson's 10-grip scale only for documenting the persons' grips and changes in their grips, but if comparisons between individual persons are desired, then Schneck's five-level scale, which affords greater generalizability, should be used. Further, children with graphomotor performance deficits are not likely to benefit from grip manipulations because such strategies were shown to make better only performance that is already good.

Ten males and 10 females in each of four grade/age groups threw styrofoam balls of six different diameters as hard as possible at a wall 6.7 m away. Each ball size was thrown four times. The first hypothesis, that the levels of the five components of the one-hand overhand throw would be quite stable for individuals for throws of a particular ball size, was supported. Ball sizes at which the component levels were unstable marked the beginning of a transition to a new component level 70.6% of the time. The second hypothesis, that five components would change from higher to lower levels for most of the subjects as ball size was scaled up, was supported only for the backswing and forearm components. These components were more likely to be affected by increasing ball size because the higher level components required a firm, one-hand grip on the ball, which became more difficult as ball diameters exceeded the subjects’ hand widths. The results indicate that practitioners need to recognize that different ball sizes may elicit different throwing patterns, and specifically that a critical ball diameter may be reached when it is equal to hand width.