Developmental 

Beverly Ulrich, Professor, School of Kinesiology Movement Science, University of Michigan

Monday, February 25, 2013, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
B247 East Hall

Event Information

Abstract: For years, physicians and developmentalists have known that newborns can produce stepping patterns if held upright and moved forward slowly over a firm surface. The disappearance of this response after a few months remained a mystery until Esther Thelen discovered techniques, such as pediatric treadmills, that could elicit stepping well beyond the neonatal period and across the first year of life. The treadmill context opened the door to a wide spectrum of theoretical questions about processes that underlie change in patterns of motor behavior over time. And, over time, these data led me to propose intervention strategies for infants with developmental disabilities. In this talk I will share examples of some of my work focused on the emergence of stepping patterns in infants. I will conclude with a discussion of my current “proof of concept” study underway involving infants born with spina bifida (myelomeningocele) and the goal of using treadmill stepping practice to enhance their development of subsystems important for the acquisition of upright locomotion.

Speaker: Bev Ulrich, PhD
Bio: Bev Ulrich earned her Ph.D. in Kinesiology from Michigan State University, did a postdoctoral fellowship at Indiana University in Developmental Psychology, and was a faculty at Indiana University for ten years before coming to the University of Michigan in 1999 as Dean of Kinesiology. Her research focuses on dynamic systems theory and how infants acquire functional motor skills. She is particularly interested in translational science- developing and accumulating basic scientific knowledge as a foundation that leads to application for infants and young children with Down syndrome and spina bifida. She has received numerous federal and foundation grants for her work and published in a wide range of journals from Child Development, to Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology and Experimental Brain Research.