Reflexes, Movement, Learning & Behaviour by Sally Goddard Blythe
Essential Reading:
Analysing and unblocking neuro-motor immaturity
Essential Reading | August 2026
There are books that introduce an idea, books that develop a professional field, and books that bring together decades of thinking and clinical experience into a single reference point. Reflexes, Movement, Learning & Behaviour: Analysing and Unblocking Neuro-Motor Immaturity, by Sally Goddard Blythe, belongs to the latter category.
Published by Hawthorn Press in 2023, the 336-page volume represents the culmination of many years of work examining the relationship between physical development, neuromotor function, learning and behaviour. It brings together primitive and postural reflexes, sensory development, balance, movement and neurological maturation, while considering how differences in these foundations may be reflected in the classroom and in wider aspects of children's development.
For INPP UK, the book is particularly significant. Sally Goddard Blythe is Director of the Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology and has been central to the development and evolution of the INPP approach over several decades.
But the importance of this book extends beyond its connection with INPP. It provides an opportunity to consider a question that remains highly relevant to education and child development:
To what extent does physical and neuromotor development provide part of the foundation upon which learning is built?
From reflexes to readiness for learning
One of the central propositions explored throughout the book is that development does not begin with academic learning.
Before a child is expected to sit still, attend, read, write, organise information or sustain concentration, a complex sequence of physical and neurological development has already taken place.
Primitive reflexes are part of this early developmental sequence. These automatic responses have an important role during infancy, contributing to early movement and interaction with the environment. As voluntary motor control develops, primitive reflex activity is normally inhibited or transformed within a progressively more mature system of postural control.
The significance of this developmental sequence is not simply whether an individual reflex is present or absent. Rather, the question is how reflex activity, sensory processing, postural control and voluntary movement become integrated into increasingly efficient patterns of function.
This is an important distinction.
The developmental perspective presented by Goddard Blythe is therefore broader than the idea of “retained reflexes” as isolated neurological findings. It considers neuromotor development as part of a hierarchy in which early patterns of movement and sensory organisation provide a foundation for later voluntary control and increasingly complex activity.
The book's structure reflects this progression, moving from primitive reflexes through postural control and brain development to the sensory systems and their relevance to learning and behaviour.
Why movement belongs in a conversation about learning
One of the strengths of Reflexes, Movement, Learning & Behaviour is that it challenges a persistent separation between physical development and educational achievement.
Education is often discussed primarily in cognitive terms. We talk about literacy, numeracy, memory, attention, executive function and academic attainment. Yet the child undertaking these activities is not simply a brain receiving information. Learning takes place through a developing nervous system within a body that must orientate, balance, move, see, hear and respond to the environment.
This does not mean that every learning difficulty has a physical or neuromotor cause. Nor does it mean that movement-based intervention should replace appropriate educational, psychological, medical or therapeutic support.
Rather, the book encourages professionals to consider whether aspects of physical development have been overlooked when attempting to understand why some children find learning unusually demanding.
This remains an important question.
What has changed since the earlier literature?
The book is particularly valuable when read as part of the history of the field.
Goddard Blythe's earlier Reflexes, Learning and Behaviour, published in 2002, helped establish a framework for considering the relationship between primitive reflexes, neuromotor development and learning. Her subsequent publications developed different aspects of this work, including The Well Balanced Child, Attention, Balance and Coordination, Assessing Neuromotor Readiness for Learning and Movement: Your Child's First Language.
The 2023 book brings this body of work together in a substantially broader volume. Its contents include primitive reflexes, the transition from primitive reflexes to postural control, brain development, sensory systems, reflex testing and different levels of intervention. It also includes case material and discussion of practical applications within educational and developmental contexts.
For readers unfamiliar with the field, this makes the book a useful introduction.
For experienced practitioners, its value lies partly in seeing how the thinking has developed over time.
What does the research tell us?
This is where a professional reading of the book needs to go beyond the book itself.
Research into primitive reflexes and their relationship with later motor and cognitive function has continued to develop. Importantly, the emerging literature does not justify treating reflex persistence as a simple explanation for learning difficulties.
A 2024 systematic review by McWhirter, Steel and Adams examined research concerning learning disorders, motor function and primitive reflexes in preschool children. The review identified associations between motor difficulties and areas including speech and language, executive function and academic performance. However, only three of the included studies specifically examined primitive reflexes, and the authors highlighted substantial heterogeneity between studies and the need for further research.
More recently, a 2026 systematic review published in Acta Psychologica examined 14 studies involving children aged 3–11 without neurodevelopmental disorders. The review found associations between persisting primitive reflexes and aspects of motor and cognitive development, including locomotion, balance, manual dexterity, reading, spelling and mathematics. It also identified intervention studies reporting improvements following movement-based programmes.
However, the authors were clear that the evidence remains limited and heterogeneous.
This is an important point for anyone working professionally in this area.
The current evidence is sufficiently interesting to warrant continued investigation, but it does not support simplistic claims that a retained reflex is, by itself, the cause of a particular learning difficulty or behavioural presentation.
Association is not the same as causation
This distinction is particularly important as interest in primitive reflexes grows.
Finding an association between reflex activity and a developmental or academic measure does not establish a direct causal relationship.
A child may have differences in neuromotor development alongside difficulties with reading, attention or coordination. These may reflect a shared underlying developmental factor, interacting factors, or relationships that are more complex than a simple cause-and-effect model.
For this reason, assessment should never be reduced to identifying a single reflex and assigning a diagnosis or explanation on that basis.
The more useful question is:
How does the child's overall pattern of neuromotor development relate to their functional presentation?
This is much closer to the developmental perspective that underpins the INPP approach.
A significant contribution: bringing the physical child back into the picture
Perhaps the book's most important contribution is conceptual.
It asks professionals to look at the whole child.
A child who struggles to write may also find it difficult to maintain postural stability.
A child who appears inattentive may be working considerably harder than expected to maintain physical organisation.
A child who avoids physical activities may have underlying difficulties with balance, coordination or spatial orientation.
A child who finds reading difficult may also demonstrate differences in visual-motor or postural function.
These observations should not be interpreted as proof of a particular underlying mechanism. They are prompts for further assessment and consideration.
That distinction is crucial.
The value of a developmental framework is not that it provides one explanation for every difficulty. Its value is that it may reveal aspects of development that otherwise remain outside the assessment process.
From theory to practice
Another strength of Reflexes, Movement, Learning & Behaviour is its attempt to connect theory with practice.
The book considers assessment, signs and symptoms, movement programmes, sensory approaches, classroom adaptations and different levels of intervention. It therefore occupies an unusual position between a theoretical text and a practical professional resource.
For practitioners, this makes it particularly useful as a reference text.
For teachers, it provides a framework for thinking about the physical prerequisites for learning.
For parents, it introduces a developmental perspective that may help them understand why movement and physical maturity can be relevant when considering a child's learning.
For researchers, however, the book should be read alongside the peer-reviewed literature rather than as a substitute for it.
That distinction matters increasingly as the field develops.
Where the field needs to go next
One of the most encouraging developments is that primitive reflexes and neuromotor development are beginning to receive greater attention in research outside specialist developmental programmes.
Recent studies have investigated relationships between reflex activity, scholastic performance and school readiness. For example, research involving children aged 5–7 found associations between retained reflex activity and some measures of scholastic performance, although the researchers also reported inconsistencies and called for further research.
Similarly, a UK study examining neuromotor readiness in children beginning school investigated primitive reflex status and movement intervention across the first year of formal education.
These studies do not provide the final word.
They do, however, demonstrate why the questions raised by Goddard Blythe remain worthy of investigation.
The next stage for the field is likely to depend upon increasingly rigorous research: larger samples, consistent assessment methods, clearly defined interventions, appropriate control groups and longer-term follow-up.
This is not a weakness of the developmental approach. It is an indication of where the evidence base needs to develop.
Who should read this book?
Reflexes, Movement, Learning & Behaviour will be of interest to a broad professional audience.
For practitioners, it provides an extensive overview of the developmental concepts underpinning the INPP approach.
For teachers and SEN professionals, it offers another lens through which to consider school readiness, movement and barriers to learning.
For allied professionals, it provides useful context for understanding why neuromotor development may arise in conversations about coordination, sensory processing, learning and behaviour.
For parents, it offers an accessible introduction to the idea that physical development and learning are not separate processes.
For all audiences, however, the book is best approached as part of a wider body of knowledge.
Our view
At INPP UK, we consider Reflexes, Movement, Learning & Behaviour an important text in the development of the neuromotor perspective on learning.
Its greatest strength is its attempt to connect areas that are too often considered separately: early reflex development, postural control, sensory function, movement, learning and behaviour.
Its publication also provides an important opportunity to reflect on how the field itself has changed.
The question today is no longer simply whether primitive reflexes exist or whether they can persist beyond infancy. The more important questions concern how individual differences in neuromotor development relate to functional outcomes, how these relationships should be assessed, and which interventions can produce meaningful and sustainable change.
The emerging research is encouraging, but it is not yet definitive. A responsible professional position therefore requires both openness and caution: openness to the possibility that neuromotor development contributes to children's experiences of learning, and caution about making claims that extend beyond the evidence.
That balance is important to INPP UK.
Development is complex. Children are complex. And understanding the relationship between movement, maturation and learning requires us to look beyond individual symptoms towards the developmental foundations beneath them.
For that reason, Reflexes, Movement, Learning & Behaviour deserves a place on the reading list of anyone interested in the relationship between physical development and learning.
It is not the end of the conversation.
It is an important part of it.
About the author
Sally Goddard Blythe MSc is Director of the Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology (INPP) and has worked for several decades in the field of neuromotor development, learning and behaviour. Her publications include The Well Balanced Child, Attention, Balance and Coordination, Assessing Neuromotor Readiness for Learning and Movement: Your Child's First Language. Reflexes, Movement, Learning & Behaviour was published by Hawthorn Press in May 2023.
Essential Reading
Essential Reading is a professional reading series from INPP UK examining books and publications that have contributed to our understanding of neuromotor development, movement, learning and behaviour.
The series considers not only what individual authors have proposed, but also how their ideas sit within the wider and evolving evidence base.
Next in the series: Assessing Neuromotor Readiness for Learning by Sally Goddard Blythe.