Gross motor skills in Navajo American Indian children one year or under.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to gather information on the appropriateness of using the Wolański Gross Motor Evaluation (WGME) with a Navajo population. Eighty normal healthy Navajo children (41 boys, 39 girls) were tested within 7 days of 4,6,9 and 12 months of age at Well Baby Clinics on the Navajo Indian Reservation. Total scores on the WGME were calculated for each age group. The scores of the Navajo boys and girls at each age were compared using a one-tailed Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test, a = .05, to look for gender-related differences at each age. No significant gender-related differences were found. The scores of the Navajo infants did not correspond with the existing WGME grids. Navajo infants appeared to score substantially higher than the Polish sample at 4 months. At six months the mean scores of Navajo infants fell just above the 95th %ile on the existing WGME grids but scores below the mean fell within the grids. At 9 and 12 months the of Navajo infants fell between the 15th and 65th %iles on the infants grids. These results indicate that normative data on the WGME would need to be gathered on Navajo infants before the test could be used for screening with that population.