Motor and perceptual determinants of performance on the Bender-Gestalt and the Beery Developmental Scale by retarded males.

The Bender Visual-motor Gestalt Test and Beery's Developmental Test of Visual-motor Integration were administered to 51 educable mentally retarded boys ranging in age from 72 to 161 mo. These scores were compared with scores boys received on three gross motor tasks by computing simple correlation coefficients and multiple regression coefficients with Bender and Beery's tests as dependent variables. The simple rs were similar but order of inclusion of independent variables in the regression analysis suggests differences.     

Visual‐motor and executive functions in children born preterm: The Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test revisited

Böhm, B., Lundequist, A. & Smedler, A.‐C. (2010). Visual‐motor and executive functions in children born preterm: The Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test revisited. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51, 376–384. Visual‐motor development and executive functions were investigated with the Bender Test at age 5½ years in 175 children born preterm and 125 full‐term controls, within the longitudinal Stockholm Neonatal Project. Assessment also included WPPSI‐R and NEPSY neuropsychological battery for ages 4–7 ( Korkman, 1990 ). Bender protocols were scored according to Brannigan & Decker (2003) , Koppitz (1963) and a complementary neuropsychological scoring system (ABC), aimed at executive functions and developed for this study. Bender results by all three scoring systems were strongly related to overall cognitive level (Performance IQ), in both groups. The preterm group displayed inferior visual‐motor skills compared to controls also when controlling for IQ. The largest group differences were found on the ABC scoring, which shared unique variance with NEPSY tests of executive function. Multiple regression analyses showed that hyperactive behavior and inattention increased the risk for visual‐motor deficits in children born preterm, whereas no added risk was seen among hyperactive term children. Gender differences favoring girls were strongest within the preterm group, presumably reflecting the specific vulnerability of preterm boys. The results indicate that preterm children develop a different neurobehavioral organization from children born at term, and that the Bender test with a neuropsychological scoring is a useful tool in developmental screening around school start.     

Bender Gestalt signs as indicants of conceptual impulsivity.

Sixty children were individually administered the Matching Familiar Figures Test and the Bender Gestalt Test. The mean age of the subjects was 10 years, 11 months. A significant relationship was found between errors on the Bender Gestalt test and impulsivity. More specifically, increased or decreased loops (figure four or six), change in angulation, loops for circles and circles for dots or dots for circles were all significantly related to children's impulsivity.     

Bender-Gestalt emotional indicators and acting-out behavior in young children.

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between 15 emotional indicators on the Bender-Gestalt Test and acting-out behavior in young children. The subjects were 93 children ranging in age from five to 12 years. Each was administered the Bender. A measure of each subject's overt acting-out behavior was then obtained by having teachers rate each student on a Behavioral Rating Scale. Subjects' records were then divided into groups on the basis of both sex and age. Results indicated that neither the total number of Bender indicators nor any of the individual Bender indicators were correlated significantly with total scores on the rating scale. Use of the Bender as a projective device to measure acting-out behavior was seriously questioned.     

VISUO-PERCEPTIVE AND VISUO-MOTOR PERFORMANCE OF CHILDREN WITH READING DISABILITIES

N ielsen , H. H. & R inge , K. Visuo-perceptive and visuo-motor performance of children with reading disabilities. Scand. J. Psychol ., 1969, 10 , 225–231.—Twenty 9–10-year-old children with reading disability were compared with twenty normal readers on Frostig Test of Visual Perception, Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test and Goodenough Draw-a-Person Test. Contrary to prediction, the results showed more similarity than difference in performance level between the two groups, only the Bender Test discriminating significantly ( p<0.05 ). It was concluded that impaired visual perception and visuo-motor dysfunction did not seem important correlates of reading disability.     

Keep 'Gestalt' in the name of the test: the curious name permutations of the Bender-Gestalt Test

The Bender-Gestalt Test is often referred to in the literature by several different names, or just as the Bender Test, without the term Gestalt. As a consequence, the figures of the test are frequently called Bender figures or Bender designs, terms which are unjustified and misleading because the figures have been taken from Wertheimer's classical study of Gestalt laws. In this article, I trace the beginnings of the name of the test and its curious permutations, and I advocate the retention of the term Gestalt in the name of the test for logical and historical reasons.     

BIP-Bender protocols of learning disabled and regular education students

20 learning disabled and 20 normal elementary school children took the Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test twice, once under standard conditions and again using Background Interference Procedure paper. Based on Koppitz's scoring system, the disabled pupils did equally poorly on both modes but performed significantly worse than the normal children when given the standard Bender first. No other differences were found. Other scoring methods are suggested for investigation.     

Practice effects within a multiple-phase Bender administration.

Practice effects within a multiple-phase administration of the Bender Visual-motor Gestalt Test were investigated. The addition of a 5-sec. Flash phase prior to the standard presentation did not significantly influence performance on the standard presentation. Students who attempted both the Flash and standard administration prior to a recall phase remembered significantly more designs than students receiving only the standard administration prior to recall. Those skills possibly measured by the multiple phase Bender format are discussed and the need for research using the three-phase method is suggested.     

Validity and reliability of the Test of Early Reading Ability-Second Edition with preschool age children

Criterion validity and test-retest reliability across the two forms of the Test of Early Reading Ability-Second Edition were examined. 18 preschool age children, 4 boys and 14 girls, between the ages of 37 and 59 mo. (M = 48.5, SD = 7.6) were randomly administered Forms A and B as well as the sound-blending, letter-word identification, spelling, and sound-awareness reading subtests from the 2001 Woodcock Johnson-III. Correlations were moderate between the children's performance on the Test of Early Reading Ability-2 Forms A and B and their reading subtest scores from the Woodcock Johnson-III and also between Forms A and B of the Test of Early Reading Ability-2. However, Forms A and B of the Test of Early Reading Ability-2 were not clinically equivalent.     

Low lead and cadmium levels and childhood visual-perception development

This study investigated possible relationships of lead and cadmium levels to childhood visual-perceptual development. Hair-metal concentrations of lead and cadmium were analyzed in 25 children who were having learning problems. They were also administered the Bender Visual-motor Gestalt Test. Lead and cadmium levels correlated significantly and negatively with age-deviations of Bender errors. A continuing reexamination of lead and cadmium levels is needed because levels previously thought harmless may be associated with decrements in childhood visual-perceptual development.     

Projection,Play and Poetry

Ninety-two elderly Ss ranging in age from 57 to 92 were examined in an effort to find a battery of psychological tests which would effectively measure their level of intactness or deterioration of function. Five tests were used: the Rorschach, Gesell Incomplete Man Test, Bender Gestalt, Monroe's Visual Three, and the Color Tree Test. Ss were identified as normal adult, intact presenile, medium presenile and deteriorated on the basis of their Rorschach response. To check on the adequacy of this sorting, responses of each group were averaged for each of the other four tests. Differences between the several groups, on every test, were significant at the .001 level as measured by the median test.     

A Procedural Critique of “Bender Gestalts of Organic Children: Accuracy of Clinical Judgment”

It is suggested that conclusions from a study by Wagner and Murray be tempered with respect to several procedural flaws: (a) their failure to include an appropriate control group for comparison with brain-injured Ss; and (b) failure to adequately describe the organic group. The results, therefore, cannot be taken as evidence for or against the use of the Bender Gestalt Test in differential diagnosis of brain-impaired children.     

Torque as a Predictor of Reading Achievement

The present study assessed the utility of the Torque Test (Blau, 1977b) as a predictor of reading performance. Children (N = 149) were administered the Torque Test, the Harris Test of Lateral Dominance (Harris, 1958), the Wide Range Achievement Test, (Jastak & Jastak, 1965), and the Bender Gestalt Test (Koppitz, 1975). Torque scores of disabled and nondisabled readers did not differ significantly, and the correlation between torque and WRAT grade level scores was substantively low. It was concluded that torque is not a useful measure of reading ability.     

The relationship between psychological test results and EEG patterns in healthy children

222 children (112 girls and 110 boys) aged 5–16 years with different types of EEG pattern, selected according to well defined normal criteria in order to exclude cerebral lesion elements, were investigated by current child-psychiatric diagnostic methods, including the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for children (WISC), which gave a mean IQ of 116.5. With two so-called tests of organicity (Bender Gestalt Test and Benton's Revised Visual Retention Test) poor performances indicating brain damage were shown in 22% and 24% of the children respectively. Various EEG patterns showed few significant correlations with the test variables. According to clinical judgement "slight symptoms of cerebral dysfunction" was found in some children, but no correlation appeared between such symptoms and poor performance in the psychological tests. The high frequency of defective scores in the Bender and Benton tests in this selected material of healthy children means that these tests cannot be used in clinical work for diagnosing brain injury in individual children. Nor can they be used to throw light on the clinical significance of the different EEG variables studied.     

Bender Gestalt test performance as a predictor of differential reading performance

Sixty Ss (two groups of second graders, with differential reading skills and average or above intelligence, matched with regard to CA, IQ, and sex) were compared on Bender test performance. No significant differences were found for rotations, integrations, perseverations, sex, or number of errors on Designs A through 8. Although significant differences were found between groups for both Bender composite scores (p = <.05) and distortion errors (p = <.01), there was no significant difference in the number of students in each group above and below the mean Bender score for that age group.

Poor Bender performance was found as often for good readers as for poor ones. This strongly suggests that Bender performance should be used with extreme caution in predicting or diagnosing poor reading performance.     

Bender Gestalt Test performance and the word recognition skills of disadvantaged children

The Bender Gestalt Test and the WRAT reading section were administered to 147 disadvantaged children. The zero-order correlation of ?.62 was found to be moderated by the variable of age. For younger subjects, highly significant first- and second-order partial correlations were obtained with age and/or WISC information scores held constant.     

Rapid Word Recognition as a Measure of Word-Level Automaticity and its Relation to Other Measures of Reading

The present study investigated the relationship between rapid recognition of individual words (Word Recognition Test) and two measures of contextual reading: (1) grade-level Passage Reading Test (IRI passage) and (2) performance on standardized STAR Reading Test. To estabilish if time of presentation on the word recognition test was a factor in predicting contextual reading performance, four computerized presentation times were used: 300 msec, 650 msec, 1000 msec, adn 2000 msec. Regression analyses revealed that, for both third- and fourth-grade students, there was evidence that presentation times of less than 1 second better approximated performance on the two contextual reading measures.     

Correlations for the Stroop Color and Word Test with measures of reading and language achievement

The present investigation examined the relationships for scores on the Stroop Color and Word Test with measures of reading and language achievement within an adult population. The Stroop Color and Word Test, Nelson-Denny Reading Test, Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-Revised, and Wide Range Achievement Test-3 were administered to 99 men ranging in age from 18 to 27 years. Pearson product-moment correlations indicated that the Stroop Word task was positively associated with scores on the WRAT-3 Spelling task, the Woodcock-Johnson Basic and Broad Reading tasks, and the Nelson-Denny Rcading Rate and Comprehension tasks. These and other significant relationships were discussed in terms of possible implications regarding the assessment of reading achievement.     

Block design as a measure of everyday spatial ability: a study of ecological validity

This study investigated the effectiveness of the WAIS-R Block Design subtest to predict everyday spatial ability for 65 university undergraduates (15 men, 50 women) who were administered Block Design, the Standardized Road Map Test of Direction Sense, and the Everyday Spatial Activities Test. In addition, the verbally loaded National Adult Reading Test was administered to assess whether the more visuospatial Block Design subtest was a better predictor of spatial ability. Moderate support was found. When age and sex were accounted for, Block Design accounted for 36% of the variance in performance (r = -.62) on the Road Map Test and 19% of the variance on the performance of the Everyday Spatial Activities Test (r = .42). In contrast, the scores on the National Adult Reading Test did not predict performance on the Road Map Test or Everyday Spatial Abilities Test. This suggests that, with appropriate caution, Block Design could be used as a measure of everyday spatial abilities.     

Working memory and inhibitory control across the life span: Intrusion errors in the Reading Span Test

The aim of this study was to examine to what extent inhibitory control and working memory capacity are related across the life span. Intrusion errors committed by children and younger and older adults were investigated in two versions of the Reading Span Test. In Experiment 1, a mixed Reading Span Test with items of various list lengths was administered. Older adults and children recalled fewer correct words and produced more intrusions than did young adults. Also, age-related differences were found in the type of intrusions committed. In Experiment 2, an adaptive Reading Span Test was administered, in which the list length of items was adapted to each individual’s working memory capacity. Age groups differed neither on correct recall nor on the rate of intrusions, but they differed on the type of intrusions. Altogether, these findings indicate that the availability of attentional resources influences the efficiency of inhibition across the life span.