The Bender-Gestalt test has been used as an indicator of visual-motor perception performance which improves as a function of age, especially between the years of 4 and 11 ( 1). This age span is also the period when children are developing language skills which are dependent upon both maturation and learning. Experimental and theoretical positions have long emphasized the role that learning plays in perceptual-motor development (3, 4, 5 ) . The present srudy investigated perceptual-motor and language development in two groups of children; one had had a year of kindergarten experience ( K E ) , the second had just entered a summer kindergarten and had no previous nursery or kindergarten experience (NKE) . Twenty children were randomly selected from a kindergarten operated by a local church, excluding children who had nursery school experience. A second group of 20 children were selected from a summer kindergarten at a local public school, located in the same vicinity so that the children came from essentially the same socio-economic level. M c a of the KE group was 70.5 mo.; MGA of the NKE was 70.0 mo. Each child was given first the Bender-Gestalt test and then the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT; 2 ) . The mean Bender errors ( 6 ) were 8.35 for the KE group and 10.0 for the NKE group ( c = 3.93, P = .01). The product-moment r , computed between the mean Bender errors and the PPVT MA, was -.71 for the KE group and -.43 for the NKE group. Thus, Ss with kindergarten experience made significantly fewer errors on the Bender than children w~thout such experience. The large negative r between verbal ability and number of errors suggests that language development and motor development are inversely related. Inspect~on of the score distributions suggests that children of higher MA make fewer errors on the Bender-Gestalt test. It is suggested that control of intelligence, socio-economic level, parental attitude, etc., be evaluated before the efficacy of school experience (kindergarten, head start programs, etc.) be ascertained.