Lecture Notes

General Movement Assessment: Methodology and Purposes

• Developed by Heinz Prechtl in the 1990s as a qualitative assessment method.
• Based on observation and categorization of spontaneous movement patterns during fetal, neonatal, and early infant periods.
• Specifically identifies and assesses "general movements" (GMs), which involve global movements of all body parts.
• Formalized as "Prechtl’s Method on the Qualitative Assessment of General Movements in Preterm, Term, and Young Infants" (Einspieler et al., 2005).