Responses of emotionally disturbed children to PPVT-R items of human versus nonhuman content: extension of Shipe, Cromwell, and Dunn.
A group of 22 children with diagnoses indicating one of the severe developmental disorders were tested for differential response patterns on the PPVT-R, in an extension of earlier research carried out by Shipe, Cromwell, and Dunn in 1966. Data supported the prediction of the children's greater difficulty with PPVT-R items featuring human content than with those featuring nonhuman content. In addition, children's relative success rates on human-content items correlated positively with a measure of differentiation of the children's drawings. The results suggest that the asociality of certain disturbed children may selectively lower intellectual efficiency and lead to underestimation of their intellectual potential.
D000293:Adolescent; D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000523:psychology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005201:Fantasy; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011581:Psychological Tests; D011594:Psychometrics; D014825:Vocabulary