Validity of the WISC-IV Spanish for a clinically referred sample of Hispanic children.
The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) is the most commonly used intelligence test for children. Five years ago, a Spanish version of the WISC-IV was published (WISC-IV Spanish; Wechsler, 2005), but a limited amount of published information is available regarding its utility when assessing clinical samples. The current study included 107 children who were Spanish speaking and of Puerto Rican descent that had been administered the WISC-IV Spanish. They were subdivided into a clinical sample of 35 children with diagnoses of various forms of brain dysfunction (primarily learning disability, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and epilepsy) and a comparison group made up of 72 normal children who were part of the WISC-IV Spanish version standardization sample. Comparisons between these groups and the standardization sample were performed for the WISC-IV Spanish index and subtest scores. Results indicated that the clinical sample performed worse than the comparison samples on the Working Memory and Processing Speed Indexes, although findings varied to some extent depending on whether the clinical group was compared with the normal comparison group or the standardization sample. These findings provide support for the criterion validity of the WISC-IV Spanish when it is used to assess a clinically referred sample with brain dysfunction.
Neurology Section, University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus, San Juan, Puerto Rico. lsanmiguel@rcm.upr.edu
Liza E
LE
San Miguel Montes
Daniel N
DN
Allen
Antonio E
AE
Puente
Cris
C
Neblina
D000293:Adolescent; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006630:Hispanic or Latino / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D007360:Intelligence; D007802:Language; D007859:Learning Disabilities / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D011647:Puerto Rico; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014888:Wechsler Scales / Q000592:standards*