The relationship between intelligence, brain damage, and Hutt-Briskin errors on the Bender-Gestalt

New studies of adults' responses to the Bender Gestalt

The Bender-Gestalt test originated in 1936 with Lauretta Bender for evaluating perceptual and motor development of children 4 to 11 yr. old. Koppitz (1964) developed a scoring system for the test. Lacks (1984) contributed normative data for testing adults. Seven studies since Lacks' which have contributed to normative data of adults' responses to the Bender-Gestalt are reviewed here.

Using the Bender Gestalt in South Africa: Some Normative Data for Zulu-speaking Children

In this study the authors investigated the use of the Bender Gestalt test within the South African context by evaluating the applicability of the existing norms (Koppitz) and by exploring how the variables age, sex, educational level, and geographical area affect test performance in Zulu-speaking school children. Zulu-speaking subjects ( N = 882) ranging in age from 6–18 years, completed the test. The test was administered in group form and independently scored. The study sample's performance was compared to Koppitz's norms and some significant discrepancies were apparent, suggesting that these foreign norms are inappropriate for use with Zulu-speaking children. Further exploration revealed that age was very strongly related to performance, accounting for 31% of the variance. Sex and geographical area were also significantly related to performance but their respective effect sizes were small. Initial normative data are presented for Zulu-speaking children. The implications of these findings for further clinical use of the Bender Gestalt are considered.

Differentiation of organics from functional psychiatric patients across various IQ ranges using the Bender-Gestalt and Hutt Scoring System

This study investigated the effectiveness of the Hutt Scoring System (Hutt, 1977) in differentiating organic from functional psychiatric patients, the relationship of IQ to Bender-Gestalt errors as measured by this scoring system, and examined the discriminative power of this scoring system for various IQ ranges. One hundred eighty patients were utilized, 90 of whom had been classified as organics and matched with the remaining 90 subjects on the basis of age, education, and IQ range. In addition, the organic subjects' secondary diagnosis was matched with the primary diagnosis of the nonorganic patients. Results between WAIS IQ and Hutt error scores for organic subjects yielded an r = -.34 (p less than .01); between WAIS IQ and Hutt error scores for the nonorganic subjects, r = -.61 (p less than .001). No significant results were obtained for organics and nonorganics simultaneously within the same IQ cells.