Do early walkers end up smarter?

What studies found

A study in Zurich followed about 220 healthy children from birth to 18 years. The age they started walking, anywhere from about 8½ to 20 months, wasn't linked to their thinking skills or to most movement skills at any age from 7 to 18. Earlier walkers did very slightly better at balance tasks. The researchers concluded that, for healthy children, the age of early movement milestones says little about later development.

A large Danish study of children born around 1960 found that, on average, those who stood and walked earlier scored slightly higher on intelligence tests as adults. The differences were small. For one early language milestone, the earliest and latest groups differed by about 4 points on average, while people's scores on these tests normally differ by much more than that.

Another Swiss study, of about 550 children aged 2 to 6, found that children who had walked later did less well, on average, on some balance, hand and attention tests.

Children vary a lot, and that's normal: in the Zurich study, 8 in 10 healthy children started walking somewhere between 10½ and 16 months.

What we don’t know yet

Whether walking early makes any difference itself, or whether something else explains the small links some studies find.

The studies

• Jenni, Chaouch, Caflisch & Rousson (2012). Infant motor milestones: poor predictive value for outcome of healthy children. Acta Paediatrica.
• Flensborg-Madsen & Mortensen (2018). Developmental milestones during the first three years as precursors of adult intelligence. Developmental Psychology.
• Messerli-Bürgy, Kakebeeke, Meyer et al. (2021). Walking onset: a poor predictor for motor and cognitive skills in healthy preschool children. BMC Pediatrics.