A comparison of the WISC and WISC-R on black child psychiatric outpatients

Administered the WISC and WISC-R in a counterbalanced design to 20 black child psychiatric outpatients. The resulting test scores revealed the two to be essentially different with lower Verbal, Performance and Full Scale IQs Subtests WISC-R scores were also lower than those on the WISC. Significant practice effects occurred when the WISC was preceded by the WISC-R, but not when the order of test presentation was reversed. The boys' combined WISC and WISC-R scores were higher than the girls' on the Information, Arithmetic, Similarities, Vocabulary, Picture Completion, Block Design, Object Assembly, and Coding Subtests and Verbal and Full Scale IQs. The girls scored higher on Coding. The tests were found to be highly correlated. The major implication is that greater numbers of black children may be given developmental disability labels.