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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Yuhua Li, Satomi Izumi-Taylor, Kun Wang
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DOI:10.17265/2161-623X/2026.09.006
University of Memphis, Memphis, USA; Shandong Sport University, Jinan, China
Previous research suggested that child gross motor skill development is a critical component of early childhood and can be influenced by sociocultural circumstances. The purpose of the current study was to examine if there are any similarities and/or differences in the development of gross motor skills between American and Chinese children. Sixty children (three to five-year-old boys and girls) were recruited from each of the two countries: Memphis in the United States of America and Rizhao of Shandong in China. A total of 120 children were tested by using the Test of Gross Motor Development-3 (TGMD-3) standardized test protocol, including six locomotor skill items and seven object control skill items. The results from a 2 (country) × 3 (age) × 2 (gender) three-way ANOVA on the locomotor test showed a significant Country effect, F(1, 108) = 6.66, p < 0.05, and an Age effect, F(2, 108) = 26.73, p < 0.01. American children had a better performance in the test than Chinese children, and older children had higher scores than younger ones. The data analyses on the object control test revealed significant effects on country, age, and gender effects, F(1, 108) = 13.48, p < 0.01; F(2, 108) = 10.39, p < 0.01, and F(1, 108) = 9.08, p < 0.05 respectively. An interaction was also found for Country by Gender and Country by Age, F(1, 108) = 5.54, p < 0.05; F(2, 108) = 10.34, p < 0.01. Further analyses revealed that American boys performed better than Chinese boys, and there were no significant differences between the girls of the two countries. American five-year-old children performed the best among the three age groups, but the best performance age group for Chinese children was among four-year-old. These findings confirmed the cross-cultural differences on gross motor development of children. Further investigations using a large-scale study may be needed before the conclusion regarding how sociocultural influences can affect children’s gross motor development.
early childhood, gross motor skills, TGMD-3
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