In an instructional program planned to increase the academic growth of children in preschool and in primary school grades (some of whom were learning disabled or educationally handicapped), teaching materials were developed to stimulate use of right and left brain function as a means of equalizing hemispheric development and of maximizing learning capabilities. For a public school treatment (experimental) sample, a public school comparison sample, and a private school treatment sample, an attempt was made to obtain evidence of the construct validity of several pupil ability measures hypothesized to represent an orientation to right, left, or integrated hemispheric function and of teacher observation subscales intended to reveal behaviors or activities in a school setting that were hypothesized to portray a preference for right or left brain function. Application of a multitrait-multimethod matrix to selected posttest measures for the experimental public school and private school samples did not establish the convergent or divergent validity of measures chosen to represent hypothesized right hemisphere (RH) and left hemisphere (LH) functions. Factor analyses of correlational matrices of selected pretest and posttest measures along with other variables across the three samples (six analyses in all) in general did not provide support for the existence of two dimensions hypothesized to reflect constructs of RH or LH orientation. The factor analytic outcomes posed two alternative interpretations of (a) the presence of two general ability dimensions of abstract (information processing of semantic and symbolic content) and concrete (information processing of figural content) thinking or (b) the appearance of instrumental dimensions corresponding to method or scale format variance rather than to variance associated with hypothesized latent traits. Recommended procedures were offered for improving the construct validity of measures intended to represent an orientation to an RH or LH function.
For a sample of 34 nine-year-old children from a southern California middle-class suburban community both the scores of 76 individually administered structure-of-intellect (SOI) tests constructed or selected to duplicate exactly 76 hypothesized SOI abilities and the scores on the verbal (V), nonverbal (NV), and composite (C) scales of the Lorge-Thorndike Intelligence Tests (LT), Multi-Level Edition, were intercorrelated and factor analyzed to determine the extent of overlap of SOI ability measures, their degree of relationship with the LT scales, and the possible presence of second order factors among the SOI tests. Although the data revealed a range in magnitude of the 2850 correlation coefficients among the SOI measures from -.47 to .69 (median coefficient, .13), the values for the ranges and the average magnitudes of intercorrelation coefficients of SOI tests within single categories of the same operations, contents, or products dimension of the SOI model did not differ appreciably from those corresponding values and magnitudes found between categories from different SOI dimensions. In the absence of identifiable meaningful second order factors or dimensions, there was, however, the suggestion of a factor of general intellectual function in view of the high loadings of several SOI tests on the same factor as that on which the LT-V and LT-NV scales were heavily saturated. A weighted combination of eight to ten SOI ability tests could afford a potentially valid representation of the complex of functions or of the general function being measured by the LT-V and LT-NV scales.
For a sample of 89 second, third, and fourth grade pupils without any identifiable learning disabilities, criterion-related validity coefficients of two newly-devised tests hypothesized to be measures of left brain function and right brain function were obtained relative to scores earned on the reading and mathematics portions of a widely used standardized achievement test. The measure intended to portray left hemisphere ability exhibited statistically significant validity coefficients with all criterion variables irrespective of whether the maturity (grade level) of pupils was statistically controlled. On the other hand, the test designed to represent right hemisphere function yielded coefficients consistently lacking in significance when grade level was controlled but demonstrating marginal significance when grade level was not controlled. The scale constructed to reflect left brain psychological processes afforded higher validity coefficients in relation to standardized test scores in reading than in mathematics.
For a sample of 152 children (76 boys and 76 girls) in grades 2 to 6 without identifiable learning disabilities, interest centered upon whether measures of empathy and social sensitivity as conceptualized within the behavioral segment of Guilford's structure-of-intellect model would exhibit concurrent validities with a criterion measure represented by a standardized test of academic performance in basic skills and would provide identifiable factor dimensions within the behavioral domain. Although tests constructed to represent various hypothesized factors in cognition of behaviors tended to exhibit low correlations with measures devised to portray hypothesized factors of divergent production of behaviors, these cognition scales did display higher concurrent validity coefficients than those registered by divergent production measures. When heterogeneity associated with grade level (age) was statistically controlled, all six measures of cognition of behaviors continued to yield statistically EDUCATIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT 1979, 39
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