Motor performance impairment in students with learning disability: Influence of gender and body build

Abstract

The Bruininks‐Oseretsky test battery has been applied to a sample of 33 boys and 10 girls with learning disabilities. The age of the students (mean ± SD) was 9.4 ±1.1 years. The female students were heavier (p ≤ 0.001) and a little taller (p ≤ 0.05) than a representative Canadian sample of comparable age. Relative to the norm for a North American population, the motor performance score for balance (p ≤ 0.001), bilateral coordination (p ≤ 0.001), upper limb coordination (p ≤ 0.001), visual motor control (p ≤ 0.001), upper limb speed and dexterity (p ≤ 0.001), and response speed (p ≤ 0.001) were all significantly reduced. There was also a trend toward a reduction in strength (p ≤ 0.025) and a corresponding deficit in gross motor (p ≤ 0.005), fine motor (p ≤ 0.001), and battery (p ≤ 0.001) composite score. A significant gender difference (favoring males) for strength (p ≤ 0.001) and response speed (p ≤ 0.001) was shown, together with a related trend in gross motor composite (p ≤ 0.025), fine motor composite ...