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.