A group of 20 black and 20 white college students viewed videotapes of eight first-grade boys and recorded in writing the boys' responses to 10 vocabulary items from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). The eight boys represented four dialect groups: black standard, black nonstandard, white standard, and white nonstandard. Analysis of the data revealed significant interactions between race and dialect of child relative to (1) a listener’s ability to report in writing a child’s verbatim responses without producing a change in the WISC scoring of the responses, and (2) a listener’s ability to restate in writing a child’s responses without producing a change in the scoring of the responses. Further, both dialect and race of child were found to be significantly related to (3) the total number of errors the listener makes in writing the child’s responses. The race of the listener as a main effect was not found to be significantly related to (1), (2), or (3). However, significant interaction did occur between race of listener and race of child, as well as among race of listener, race of child, and dialect of child relative to (3), the total number of errors the listener makes in writing the child’s responses.
The authors review recent literature regarding the effectiveness of the Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test in screening for brain damage in school-aged children of normal intelligence who display learning problems. Problems with research of this type and various administrations and scoring methods are discussed. All methods reviewed significantly discriminate between groups of brain-damaged and unimpaired children. No method, however, provides successful predictive rates high enough to warrant the use of the Bender as the sole diagnostic instrument in individual cases.
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