Developmental norms for the Gardner Steadiness Test and the Purdue Pegboard: a study with children of a metropolitan school in Brazil

Abstract

Norms for the Gardner Steadiness Test and the Purdue Pegboard were developed for the neuropsychological assessment of children in the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro. A computer-generated unbiased sample of 346 children with a mean age of 9.4 years (SD = 2.76), who were attending a large normal public school in this urban area, was the subject of this study. Two boys were removed from the study, one for refusing to participate and the other due to severe strabismus. Therefore, the final sample contained 344 children (173 boys and 171 girls). Sex and age of the child and hand preferred for writing, but not ethnic membership or social class, had significant effects on performance in the Gardner Steadiness Test and the Purdue Pegboard. Girls outperformed boys. Older children performed better than younger children. However, the predictive relationship between age of the child and neuropsychological performance included linear and curvilinear components. Comparison of the present results to data gathered in the United States revealed that the performance of this group of Brazilian children is equivalent to that of US children after Bonferroni's correction of the alpha level of significance. It is concluded that sex and age of the child and hand preferred for writing should be taken into account when using the normative data for the two instruments evaluated in the present study. Furthermore, the relevance of neurobehavioral antidotes for the obliteration of some of the probable neuropsychological effects of cultural deprivation in Brazilian public school children is hypothesized.

Growth status, behavior and neuropsychological performance: a study of Brazilian school age children

“…The procedures for neuropsychological testing are described in detail elsewhere 10 . Briefly, the neuropsychological battery used in the present report was administered over two sessions (one session a day) by the first author and a research associate.…”

“…Trials for each hand were administered alternately. Standard (z) scores for total number of contacts and total touch time across the three trials were derived for each child based on Brazilian norms 10 .…”

“…Procedures for this test were as described in Brito and Santos-Morales 10 and Tiffin 18 . Standard (z) scores for number of pegs placed with the preferred and non-preferred hands, number of pegs placed with both hands, total time to place 10 pegs across three trials with the preferred and non-preferred hands, total time to transfer 10 pegs across three trials with the preferred and non-preferred hands and total number of items assembled in the "assembly" modality were obtained for each child based on normative data gathered in Brazil 10 .…”

Desempenho acadêmico de estudantes do segundo segmento do ensino fundamental examinado por uma adaptação do wide range achievement test (WRAT 3)

“…As reported previously 1,2,10,11,18,19 , this school was selected not because of its large enrollment but also because it attracts children from all ethnic and socioeconomic groups, although mostly from lower social classes, and whose places of residence are in communities distributed throughout Niterói, a city located across the Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro, and adjacent localities, e.g., São Gonçalo, Maricá and Itaboraí. There were no exclusionary criteria for participation in the study.…”

“…It is, therefore, critical that adequate locally-derived data for instruments used in the neurobehavioral assessment of children be developed in our country. Previous research from our laboratory has made several of these assessment instruments available for use in Brazil: the Conners Abbreviated Teacher Rating Scale 2,3 , the Composite Teacher Rating Scale 4,5 , the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory 6,7,8 , the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (DSM-IIIR) Teacher Rating Scale 9 , the Bender Gestalt Test 10,11 , the Benton Right-Left Discrimination Test, Motor Persistence Tests, the Color Span Test, the WISC-R's Digit Span Test and the Human Figure Drawing Test 11,12,13 , the Gardner Steadiness Test and the Purdue Pegboard Test 1 . The application of these instruments in clinical research in child neuropsychology in Brazil has been described 14 .…”