Differential Effectiveness of Receptive Language and Visual-Motor Assessments in Identifying Academically Gifted Elementary School Students

Abstract

A sample of 50 gifted elementary students were administered two receptive language tests (the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and its revised version) and two visual-motor tests (the Bender Visual-motor Gestalt Test and the Developmental Test of Visual-motor Integration). These scores were then evaluated against an achievement test battery. The receptive language and visual-motor measures did not account for a significant amount of the achievement test's variance, although some significant correlations were obtained. These results and their implications for identifying gifted elementary students are discussed.

Test reviews

“…A number of other studies comparing previous versions of the VMI to achievement measures frequently have found low correlations (Shapiro & Simpson, 1994;Knoff, Cotter, & Coyle, 1986;Hagborg & Aiello-Coultier, 1994). Though some studies have found higher correlations between the VMI and achievement measures, they often failed to control for IQ.…”