Stability of growth in strength and motor performance from childhood to adolescence.

Abstract

THERE is widespread belief that boys and girls who are stronger and more proficient than their peers in physical skills in childhood will retain this superiority in the years to come. Evidence in support of this is at best meager. In fact, only limited study has been made of the predictability of growth in muscular strength and motor performance during the growing years. The few investigations in which strength measurements have been taken on the same children over a period of several years have shown only moderately high between-year correlations. For example, Baldwin (1920) found correlations of .65 for boys and .45 for girls between grip strength at 9 and 10 years of age and grip strength taken again six years later on the same children. Similarly, Tuddenham and Snyder (1954) reported between-year correlations, age 9 to 18 years, of .63 for boys and .57 for girls, for a composite strength score (sum of right and left grip, pull and thrust). Only a few reports have been published on the stability of growth in gross motor skills over extended periods of time. Using longitudinal data, Glassowand Kruse (1960) reported between year correlations (grade 1 to grade 6) of 7.02 for the 30-yard dash and .739 for the standing broad jump. Espenschade (1940) found that between year correlations (age 13 to age 16) on such events as the 50-yard dash, the standing broad jump, jump and reach, throw for distance, Brace test, and target throw ranged from .29 in the dash to .66 in the Brace test for boys and from .36 in the target throw to .84 in the distance throw for girls. On the basis of the limited data available, one might hypothesize that higher order responses such as complex motor skills are more susceptible to varying environmental influences than muscular strength and hence correlations over time are likely to be lower for the former than for the latter. The present investigation was designed to examine the stability of growth in dynamometric muscular strength and motor performance

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 33 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.