A Cross-Cultural Item-Analysis of Bender-Gestalt Protocols Administered to Ghetto and Suburban Children

The Bender-Gestalt (Bender) designs were administered to 325 third-grade Ss of diverse cultural backgrounds and the Koppitz scoring system was applied to determine Ss' visual-perceptual-motor reproduction “errors.” Two comparisons were made: the first, between 654 first graders previously studied and the third-grade Ss considered in this study; the second, between the two third-grade groups. In this study, it is shown that: difficulty in reproducing Bender designs accurately tends to diminish from Grade 1 to Grade 3 but remains a problem in perceptual-visual maturation for culturally disadvantaged children. Additionally, there is a different developmental sequence for the two groups and certain visual-perceptual-motor reproduction tasks continue to be difficult for one group whereas others do not.