Environmental influences on perceptual and motor skills of children from immigrant Ethiopian families

Sarah Rosenblum, Noomi Katz, Jeri Hahn-Markowitz, Tal Mazor-Karsenty, Shula Parush*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

15 Scopus citations

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine environmental influences on perceptual and motor skills of children from immigrant Ethiopian families in Israel in comparison with those of Israeli-born children. The subjects were divided into groups based on age (6-to 8-yr.-olds and 10-to 12-yr.-olds) and length of time in Israel. The results of this study show that the perceptual and motor performance of 6-to 8-yr.-old, less recent Ethiopian immigrants is similar to that of the recent Ethiopian immigrants of the same age. A difference exists between those two groups and the Israeli-born children of the same age. In the 10-to 12-yr.-old age group, there is a marked difference between the performance of the two groups of Ethiopian immigrants. The difference between the less recent immigrants and the Israeli-born children is smaller for most tasks; however, the less recent immigrants' performance is still poorer than that of the Israeli children. These results are compatible with those of other studies describing the difficulties encountered by children who had not studied in formal educational settings and those who have had that experience.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)587-594
Number of pages8
JournalPerceptual and Motor Skills
Volume90
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2000

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Environmental influences on perceptual and motor skills of children from immigrant Ethiopian families'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this