An investigation of the Bender-Gestalt as a screening technique for psychiatric disorders in children

Abstract

The present study utilized three groups of children; 200 normals, 60 emotionally disturbed and 39 suffering some degree of cerebral dysfunction. Their ages ranged from 10-0 through 14-11 and their IQs from 76 to 126. Each child was administered individually the Spiral After effect Test, the writer's version of the Trail Making Test and the Bender-Gestalt Test. The Bender-Gestalt protocols were then scored by the Pascal-Suttell method. Although it was found that each of the three tests discriminated between the groups at the . 1[percent] level of confidence, they were of little value for individual prediction purposes.Two brief screening scales, Scale A (Emotional Disturbance) and Scale B (Neurological Referral) were then constructed from scorable deviations on the Bender-Gestalt Test and from parts of the Spiral Aftereffect and Trail Making Tests. When these scales were applied to the test data, they were also able to discriminate between the groups at the .1% level. The scales improved on the Pascal-Suttell method in making individual discriminations in that they misclassified fewer subjectsin both experimental groups than the Pascal-Suttell method.