Practical and theoretical issues regarding assessment and treatment alternatives for Black exceptional children are presented, including: problems in the evaluation of assessment practices; a review of critiques of large and small studies on assessment practices of Black children, with emphasis upon the insights they yield for improved assessment…

Item bias in the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (Revised) was investigated using black, white, and Hispanic learning disabled children. Samples of 112 blacks, 126 whites, and 117 Hispanics were matched on subtest raw score and sex. An item-by-group analysis of variance was computed on delta transformed item means for each of nine…

This essay shows that the adoption of intelligence tests by the schools was a complex development. Tests were adopted during the 1920s as part of the reform program fashioned by the network of applied psychologists and school people. While the network itself often viewed testing as a means to improve the schools and society, immigrants and blacks…

The author maintains that IQ testing developed in a political context and still serves to descriminate against minority group gifted children; he suggests a method of identifying potentially gifted disadvantaged children by using culturally familiar experiences. The discriminatory aspects of intelligence testing are evidenced by quotes from L.…

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale For Children (WISC) and the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT) were administered to seventh graders in a New York City school located in a depressed area with a Negro population approaching 100 percent. Full scale and subtest scores were analyzed. A factor analysis of the WISC, MAT, and the two scales combined was…

The use of a multiple intelligences (MI) assessment to enhance a career exploration program for eighth graders was studied. All of the eighth graders (n=160) in a suburban middle school completed three sets of activities as part of their career exploration program. Students completed a multiple intelligences self-assessment, the Multiple…

Intelligence tests are likely to move toward measuring multiple aspects of ability. Tasks will be less abstract and closer to life experiences of the individual. The metric will change from the present formula to a separate score for each measured ability, normed in relation to cultural and linguistic background. (Author/RD)

Early-treated phenylketonuria (PKU) children and unaffected peers were evaluated on four executive function (EF) tasks and one nonexecutive task. The PKU children scored lower than unaffected children on EF tasks, but not on the nonexecutive task. The PKU children's composite EF score was correlated with concurrent and mean lifetime phenylalanine…

Whether or not subjects can simulate mental retardation, a consideration that has implications in criminal cases, was studied using 21 adult Caucasian males between 20 and 30 years of age, largely comprised of students and staff employees of the University of New Mexico. Subjects were asked to give genuine and simulated responses to two major test…

This study analyzed and tested the equivalence of Forms A and B of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST). In designing the CCTST, Form A was composed of 34 items from a bank of 200. To develop a parallel measure, Form B was developed by rewriting 28 of the 34 items and rearranging their order. Study participants were all entering…

The general ability factor (G), as enunciated by Charles Spearman in the model of cognitive functioning, has been the foundation of psychometric theory and test making practices for 80 years. Through these decades, some psychologists disagreed with this theory, especially Godfrey Thompson and E. L. Thorndike. Nevertheless, various aptitude tests…

A confirmatory factor analysis was used to determine the respective viability of factor structure models for the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) standardization data. The traditional verbal-performance split was compared to an alternative model proposed by Gutkin, Reynolds and Galvin. The confirmatory analysis indicated that the…

In two separate experiments, children (2nd and 7th graders) and adults generated oral descriptions of the picture stories in the WISC-R picture arrangement task. Comprehension of the stories was assessed by subjects' use of logical connectives and by mention of subtle themes in interpreting the more difficult stories. In both experiments and on…

The study, involving 379 students (6-20 years old), investigated the 3-year performance stability of handicapped children from four racial groups (Anglo, Black, Mexican American, and Native American). Data were collected from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Revised (WISC-R) and the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT). Results…

Recent research has revealed that informal inventories of students' abilities can be useful in reading diagnosis. Teachers need to be aware of the occasions during the school day which permit informal observation or testing of skills related to reading. The purpose of this study was to determine if classroom teachers, through informal observation…