Definition - What does psychomotor ability mean?
Psychomotor ability covers the interrelationship between the cognitive processes and sensorimotor cues that prime human responses when learning, acquiring, and retaining information based on environmental conditions. As an adjunct component in industrial and organizational psychology (I-O Psychology), the dualism between cognitive processes and motor functionality translates to the overarching paradigm of staffing a workforce that consistently meets job performance standards.
SureHire explains psychomotor ability
The corporate landscape depends on I-O psychologists to help analyze, establish, and implement practical guidelines that promote universal work design methods, ergonomic control solutions, and organizational models aligning businesses with health and safety regulations. Psychomotor abilities represent a dynamic approach in gauging the relative fine and gross motor movements of individuals, serving as a benchmark for determining candidacy in holding a specific job position. Because I-O psychology is an interdisciplinary field, employers can draw on their expertise in modulating workplace protocol as it applies to select and train employees, design and modify equipment, and establish baseline assessments to ensure worker proficiency.
With evolving demographic statistics, quantifying psychomotor skills through a battery of testing procedures —including the Grooved Pegboard Test, Purdue Pegboard Test, among other subsidiary testing methods — and examining important parameters including manual dexterity, motor coordination, and speed is critical. An aging workforce that endures awkward body movements/postures, compression forces, and repetitive motions is more likely to encounter psychomotor ability deficits due to impaired cognitive faculties coupled with physical limitations. Given the fact that an aging workforce comprises a mass proportion of the workforce, an I-O psychologist can administer psychomotor testing to determine correlative findings between healthy participants and anomalies.
Companies that enlist I-O psychologists can help coordinate, develop, and implement strategic planning tailored around a climate of uniform health and safety to promote efficient work practices while, in turn, advancing productivity. Employee wellness programs are beneficial in providing educational resources and tools combined with psychomotor ability tests to comparatively measure the base values that separate cognitive and motor functionality with skewed results. Employers and I-O psychologists can limit or prevent the risk of accidents or injuries surrounding cognitive impairments and motor dysfunction, which can point to underlying epidemiological implications such as musculoskeletal disorders (MSD), a common culprit among the aging population.
