A NOTE ON SCORING RECALLED FIGURES O F THE BENDER. GESTALT TEST USING PSYCHOTICS, NON-PSYCHOTICS AND CONTROLS

HORACE STEWART AND SAM CUNNINGHAM

Florida State Hospital, Chattahoochee, Florida

PROBLEM The addition of a recall test to the standard form of the Bender Visual Motor

Gestalt Test has been found useful in evaluating personality. Much already has been done toward establishing the expectations for the number of designs recalled. Also, to better understand the psychological factors involved, the Bender recall has been correlated with a number of other psychological techniques. The purpose of the present study is twofold: first, to present a method for scoring recalled designs; and secondly, to present some normative data. The Pascal-Suttell scoring system is used for the basic design(I).

METHOD Procedure. The Bender Gestalt was administered to newly admitted female patients as part of a routine test battery. Standard administration of the Bender Gestalt was followed, after clearing away all test materials, by an immediate recall for the de- signs. All questions were answered in a non-commital manner. Subjects. The subjects for this study were all females between the ages of 15 to 59. There were three groups of subjects: Psychotic (thirteen schizophrenics and five involutional psychotics) ; non-psychotic (thirteen personality disorders and four neurotics); and control (twenty student nurses). The student nurses were from the upper academic half of their class. Scoring. Scoring the standard presentation was done in accordance with the Pascal- Suttell scoring system. The scoring of the recalled designs necessitated some modi- fication of this system. In general, the recalled designs one through eight were scored in accordance with the Pascal-Suttell system. TABLE 1. SPECIAL SCORING ADAPTED FROM THE PASCAGSUTTELL SCORING SYSTEY FOR SCORING

RECALLED DESIGNS

Design A, not scored by Pascal-Suttell, is scored on recall. The scoring items for design A were selected empirically (see Table 1). The Configuration Design was re- vised and a new factor was added. The new factor was called contamination, and was scored when any unrecognizable design was drawn or when some recalled figure was the composite of two or more figures. A contaminated design was counted as a recalled design for pro-rating.

The raw score derived from the recalled designs is pro-rated to the base of eight, giving a raw percentage score. For example, if six designs were recalled, the raw

208 HORACE STEWART AND SAM CUNNINGHAM

score would be six-eights of the raw percentage score. The raw percentage score was then converted to a Pascal-Suttell z-score.

RESULTS Means and standard deviations were computed for both the standard and recall

scores (Table 2). The means were found to be in increasing size in the direction of TABLE 2. THE MEAN, STANDARD DEVIATION, RANGE AND SAMPLE SIZE FOR

THE SUBJECTS OF THE STUDY

Groups I Mean S.D. Range N

Psychotic Standard Recall

Non-psychotic Standard Recall

Control Standard Recall

72.20 17.72 45-119 18 98.33 8.38 43-143

60.88 15.63 37-97 17 1 77.35 11.36 41-119

48.89 5.24 34-66 20 58.11 4.79 34-85

more pathology for both the standard and recall scores. The differences between the means were statistically significant in all but one instance. For the psychotic us. the non-psychotic standard presentation comparison, the data fall just short of the five percent level of confidence.

The actual number of designs reproduced on recall are presented in Table 3. Comparing favorably with previous studies, it was found that with increased emo-

TABLE 3. NUMBER OF DESIGNS RECALLED BY THE PSYCHOTIC, NON-PSYCHOTIC AND CONTROL GROUPS

Group 1 2

Number of Figures Recalled 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

psychotic 0 1 5 3 3 5 0 1 0 non-psychotic 0 0 0 2 5 6 3 0 0 control 0 0 0 1 0 4 10 4 1

tional pathology fewer figures were recalled. Although there were some instances in which more figures were recalled by the pathological groups, they show greater variability.

SUMMARY The Bender Gestalt was administered to three groups of subjects to compile

normative data for a method of scoring recalled designs. The Pascal-Suttell scoring system was utilized with some modification for scoring the recall. The statistical significance of the findings indicate that the scoring of the recall of the designs may be fruitful in personality study.

REFERENCE 1. PASCAL, G. and SUITELL, BARBARA. The Bender Gestalt Test. New York: Grune and Stratton, 1951.