Physical size, school performance, and visual‐motor maturity in the Philippines

The broad theoretical issue approached in this work is whether supposedly adaptive or maladaptive biological variation has any real impact on people's lives and well‐being. From a poor barrio of a rural lowland Philippine fishing community, a sample of 25 boys and 25 girls who had completed first grade at 8 years was measured. This population may be considered moderately undernourished by NCHS but not Philippine standards. Correlations between anthropometry, school grades, and visual‐motor skills were calculated. Grades, taken here to have both cognitive and social‐behavioral components, correlated best to percentage of median height (NCHS and Philippine), less strongly but still significantly to visual motor skill, and not to weight for height. Visual‐motor skills (estimated by the Beery VMI) did not correlate to anthropometry. Visual‐motor performance, however, is low by U.S. standards, a finding discussed in a behavioral context.