Children with Specific Learning Disabilities

Abstract

The Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test protocols of 82 elementary school boys with learning disabilities were scored for developmental errors using the Koppitz system. Sixty-seven % of the children with learning disabilites (CLD), as compared with only 44% of a group of 34 controls, made more errors than the mean for children of equivalent ages in Koppitz's normative sample. Whereas controls with below average Bender scores were no different from controls with adequate Bender scores on any WISC subtest, CLD with subaverage Benders scored significantly lower on Information, Arithmetic, Picture Completion, Block Design, and Mazes than CLD with adequate protocols. Lower WISC IQs were coupled with poor Bender reproductions in 45% of CLD but in only 21% of the controls. The CLD with classical neurological signs did not have a reliably higher incidence of poor Bender scores than the CLD without classical signs.