Interrelationship of Physical, Perceptual-Motor, and Academic Achievement Variables in Elementary School Children

Abstract

For third- and sixth-grade children height, weight, grip strength of the dominant and non-dominant hands, elbow flexion and elbow extension strength, hip flexion and hip extension strength, dynamic balance, ball-throwing accuracy, speed of hand-arm movement, eye-hand coordination, stimulus discrimination and hand speed, perceptual ability, academic achievement, and intelligence were measured. (a) Intercorrelations among variables were low and often not significant for sixth- and third-grade children, (b) correlations were of similar magnitude for the two age groups, and (c) perceptual-motor tasks did not correlate any higher with intelligence tests than did simple motor tasks or physical characteristics.