DIFFERENCES IN MOTOR PROFICIENCY ACCORDING TO GENDER AND RACE

To assess possible differences in children's motor development data were collected from intact first-grade classrooms on six subtest items from the short form of the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency. Analysis of variance of scores for agility, balance, strength, and hand-eye coordination tested the significance of differences between gender and racial groups. Gross motor proficiency of 111 children of a suburban school system and 69 from an urban elementary school was evaluated. African-American children were significantly faster and more agile than the white children; scores for African-American boys were significantly higher than those for all girls, and scores in strength for white boys were significantly higher than those for white girls. White boys had significantly higher scores on hand-eye coordination than all other children but no significant difference on balance among groups was noted.