Racial Differences in Bi-Manual Dexterity of Latin and American Children

Abstract

N TESTING Latin and American children with the Stanford revision of the Binet-Simon tests, over a period of ten years, the writer arrived at the conviction that Latin children more dexterous with their hands than American children; so this investigation has been undertaken to prove or disprove that belief. Hollingworth and Poffenberger (5) in discussing form-board studies of different races, made by Woodward, (15), ask, are there characteristics of mind peculiar to different races of men, which need to be considered from the point of view of efficiency? There is practically no attempt to separate the facts of inheritance from the effects of education, customs and general environmental conditions. Experiments have been made on rather simple functions, such as sensory acuity, motor ability and simple judgments. Although the traits simple, yet they characteristics in which peoples supposed, in the popular minds, to differ. The upshot of all the experimental tests seems to show that the racial differences in fundamental qualities, independent of training, slight. Woodward (15) considered the formboard test he used to be a fair test of