A TEST OF NEGRO-WHITE DIFFERENCES ON THE ILLINOIS

TEST OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC ABILITIES

APPROVED:

Major Pn6fessfor

Minor Professor ' | — - — — —

Chairman of the Department ^""Psychology

Da;iri 777r~"Tv» CTT!T.TrT~r" "** — : _____ De^n of the Graduate School"

Levengood, William 0., A Test of Negro-White Differences

on the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities. Master

of Science (Clinical Psychology), May, 19 73, 38 pp., 6

tables, bibliography, 6 8 titles.

The purpose of this study is to compare black children

with white children to determine if a significant difference

exists between their scores on the subtests of the ITPA.

Twenty-seven black children were matched with twenty-seven

white children from a much larger group of white children.

The subjects were matched on the basis of sex and scores on

the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. As an index

of the possible effect of socioeconomic status on the ITPA

scores, correlation coefficients between fathers' educa-

tional level and ITPA scores were computed.

The children who served as subjects in this study had

sought diagnostic assistance at a mental health and mental

retardation clinic. A majority of the children had been

referred by the city school system because of learning

disabilities.

Black children obtained scores that were significantly

higher at the .05 level or better on the Visual Closure

Subtest and at the .01 level or better on the Auditory

Sequential Memory Subtest. White children obtained scores

that were significantly higher at the .05 level or better

on the Auditory Reception Subtest and at the .0001 level or

better on the Sound Blending Subtest. The differences be-

tween black and white females on the Auditory Sequential

Memory Subtest was not statistically significant, but the •

difference between black and white males on this subtest was

significant at the .01 level or better.

The only subtest which yielded a significant correla-

tion with fathers' education level was the Visual Sequent-

ial Memory Subtest. However, there was no difference

between black and white children on this subtest.

The hypothesis that the white children would score

significantly higher than black children on all subtests of

the ITPA except the Auditory Sequential and Visual Sequent-

ial Memory Subtests was not supported. Only four of the

subtests yielded significant differences between the groups

and the Auditory Sequential Memory and Visual Closure Sub-

tests were significantly higher for blacks. Upon analysis

no differences were found between black and white children

in any particular sensory channel except the auditory

channel at the representational level. This was measured

by only the Auditory Reception Subtest.

The results seem to strengthen the argument that en-

vironmental factors are influencing the children's scores

on the ITPA. A behavior analysis seems to answer the cause

of differences between black and white children on the sub-

tests .

It is concluded that the cognitive repertories needed

to improve children's subtest scores are developed by exper-

ience in the home. The home must offer the appropriate

physical stimuli, the social arrangers, the proper kinds of

reinf orcement^ and the assurance that the reinforcements are

properly scheduled. The children in this study had a minimum

amount of experience in the school system. Therefore, their

parents and others in the home acted as their social

arrangers.

A TEST OF NEGRO-WHITE DIFFERENCES ON THE ILLINOIS

TEST OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC ABILITIES

THESIS

Presented to the Graduate Council of the

North Texas State University in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

MASTER OF SCIENCE

by

William 0. Levengood, B.A.

Dentonj Texas

May, 1973

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

LIST OF TABLES . iv

Chapter

I. INTRODUCTION 1

Purpose of the Study Hypothesis

II. METHOD 12

Subjects Instruments Procedure Supplementary Analysis

III. RESULTS 18

IV. DISCUSSION 23

V. SUMMARY 27

APPENDIX 30

BIBLIOGRAPHY 33

i n

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

I. ITPA Means, SDs and to Values for the Black and White Groups 19

II. ITPA Means, SDs and t Values for the Female Black and White Groups 20

III. ITPA Means, SDs and t Values for the Male Black and White Groups 21

IV. Correlations Between Father's Level of Education and Scores of Thirty-one Children's Subtests of the ITPA 22

V. Correlations Between Fifty-four Children's WISC IQ Scores and ITPA Subtest Scores . . . 31

VI. Intercorrelation Coefficients of the Twelve ITPA Subtest Scores for Fifty-Four Children 32

IV

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA)

is considered to be a diagnostic instrument to delineate

specific abilities and disabilities rather than a method of

general intellectual assessment. The ITPA makes no assump-

tions with respect to neurological or neurophysiological

correlates, but places emphasis on assessing psycholinguis-

tic behavior and in relating the assets and deficits to a

behavioral model. Psycholinguistics brings together the

empirical tools of psychology and the theoretical tools of

linguistics to study the processes underlying the acquisi-

tion and the use of language. On the average, black

Americans score lower on standard intelligence tests than

do white Americans, a fact which has been attributed to a

failure to develop the language skills required to achieve

high scores on the tests. Some blacks use a form of Eng-

lish, peculiar to the black man's culture, called black

English, which according to Baratz (1969) has fully deve-

loped rules every bit as complex as white English. The

close relationship between language and intelligence test

scores and language and the ITPA suggests that there should

be a difference between black and white children's scores

on several of the subtests of the ITPA. A search for the

source of difference between Negro and White distributions

on measured intelligence tests yielded a substantial quan-

tity of research. Shuey (1958) summarized more than 200

investigations into the problem in which the racial differ-

ence in intelligence test scores has been attributed to many

factors, the chief ones being heredity, environment, socio-

economic, and development.

It is difficult at this time to define the relative

contributions of heredity and environment to intelligence.

According to Jensen (1968), every anatomical and physiolo-

gical characteristic anyone has chosen to study has shown

racial variations. He states that it would be surprising if

the brain alone was exempt from this generalization. Jensen

has drawn criticism for his statements, but he demanded a

renewed scientific inquiry into the nature-nurture problem

rather than insistence that environment alone is responsible

for all educationally or socially important differences.

Klinesberg (19 35) found that the IQ scores of Northern

Negroes were higher than the IQ scores of Southern Negroes

and hypothesized that the higher IQ's for Northern Negroes

were due to the improvement in their environment. He ig-

nored the fact that more intelligent Negroes might better

visualize the economic advantage of moving North. Most

social scientists have suspended efforts to discover whether

any race is inherently inferior and are concentrating their

energies instead on analysis of the aspects of the environ-

ment that help to shape intellectual development. Three

modern theories of perceptual phenomena have offered struc-

tures for these investigations.

Hebb (1949) presented a concept of perceptual learning,

which emphasizes the importance of early experience on

later change in the perception of an object or event result-

ing from earlier perceptions of the same thing or related

things. These past perceptions can also have a negative

effect to learning. Hebb's theory is a neurological approach

involving the concept of reverberatory circuits, learning

cell assemblies, and phase sequences, for a variety of per-

ceptual phenomena. The cell assemblies are built up through

practice. This suggests some kind of metabolic change or

growth of additional terminal buttons at the synapse. Re-

verberatory circuits are neural circuits that can continue

firing after input from sensory nerves has ceased. Cell

assembles develop sequentially in phase sequences and at

any given time the individual's perceptual performance is

intimately dependent on the number and variety of cell

assembles that have developed, sequentially, on the basis

of past experience. New neurological models of perceptual

learning are becoming fairly numerous. Hebb can be classi-

fied as a behaviorist, and according to Taylor (1962), the

more extreme behavioristic theorists grant nothing to nativ-

ism and very little to the significance of perceptual wholes

and organized conceptual patterns found in Gestalt theory.

The Gestalt theory as presented by Kohler (1929) em-

bodies a strong element of nativism. The Gestalt theory

places emphasis on a phenomenological approach to visual

perception. The cerebral cortex is viewed as analogous to

a field force which is in active equilibrium, and each sen-

sory input effects the entire field.

Piaget (194 7) presented a theory of perceptual develop-

ment, which was guided by a philosophy that intellectual

functioning is developmental. In Piaget's developmental

theory, cognitive development consists of a progressive

structurization whereby actions and intellectual operations

become organized into coherent systems. During the sensori-

motor stage of development, for example, the coordination of

the child's movement with the concurrently changing percep-

tions gives rise to the permanence of objects. Piaget has

chosen problems in his studies relative to cognitive func-

tioning that are isolated from motivational variables. In

the functionalist tradition, the work of Piaget stresses the

achievement of the individual in adjusting to the environ-

ment and the processes involved.

The psychological development of children rests in

fundamental ways upon the existence and use of language.

Carroll (196 4) gave three interrelated sequences in the pro-

cess of language acquisition, as follows: (1) cognitive

development, "a child's capacity to recognize, discriminate,

and manipulate the features and processes of the world

around him;" (2) psychoacoustic discrimination, "development

of the capacity to discriminate and comprehend the speech he

hears from others in his environment;" (3) productive abil-

ity, "development of the ability to produce speech sounds

that conform more and more closely to the patterns of adult •

speech."

Although language is conventionally and properly re-

garded as a fundamental aspect of "culture," it occupies an

ambiguous position in cognitive studies. Language is em-

ployed in many, but by no means all of the cognitive proces-

ses. Differences in parental practices and the attitudes of

parents of different social and ethnic origin must be re-

lated to the emergence of stylistic differences in cognitive

behavior. Busse, Ree, Guthrie, Alexander, and Powell (19 72)

have shown that an environmentally enriched classroom can

significantly improve the cognitive and perceptual develop-

ment of preschool black children. This study found that an

enriched classroom significantly increased the performance

of black preschool children on the Visual Receptive and

Visual Sequential Memory Subtests of the ITPA. Each item

used in the program to enrich the classroom was chosen spe-

cifically to augment one or more of the following: verbal

ability, performance ability, visual perception and social

interaction, Thompson (1951) found perceptual differences

could be cultural in origin. His study used children from

three different American Indian tribes for comparison of

their characteristic responses to Rorschach inkblots.' The

Papago tended to see vague wholes, the Navajo saw obvious

detail, and the Hopi differentiated organized wholes. These

studies seem to indicate cognitive and perceptual differ-

ences in all groupings of people down to each family.

Gottesman (19 72) indicated that the dialect differ-

ences within a single language are positively related to

differences in auditory discrimination performance. Each

group of people fosters its own cultural patterns by the

systematic teaching of the younger members of their? group.

This pattern of teaching within a group tends to make all

members of the group speak and perform in somewhat the same

manner. This makes the cultural patterns of the home parti-

cularly important in interpreting the tests of preschool

children and children of the lower grades of school. Some

of the words used in the Gottesman study were the same as

the words used in the construction of the ITPA Sound Blend-

ing Subtests. Others were of a similar phonetic structure.

Her study indicates a difference of auditory discrimination

ability between black and while children. Elenbogen and

Thompson (19 72) used the Wepman Auditory Discrimination Test

to determine if there is a difference in auditory discrimi-

nation abilities between black and white children. The

results showed that white children scored much higher than

black children on the regular Wepman forms. Black and white

children obtained nearly identical scores on the distorted

or nonsense syllable form from which meaning seems to have

been removed as far as the children were concerned. This

might indicate that in addition to auditory discrimination

a vocabulary factor had influenced the scores of blacks and-

whites on these tests.

Baratz (196 9) compared language behavior of Negro and

white children by having them repeat standard and nonstand-

ard English sentences. Her measurements on the repetition

tasks were in terms of the dialects in which they socialized.

She found that in responding to standard English sentences,

white speakers did significantly better than black speakers.

The converse was true on nonstandard English sentences as,

black children scored higher than white children. The non-

standard English, or black English, used in this study

placed white children in the same disadvantaged position

that black children are normally placed by standard lin-

guistic tests.

Labov (1967); Labov, Cohen and Robins (1965); and

Pederson (1964) have noted that Negro dialect is different

from standard English in both grammar and phonology. Labov

(196 7) found many pronunciation differences between Negroes

that speak a dialect and white subjects speaking standard

English. Lotz et al. (19 60); Singh and Black (1966); Mac-

Neilage (1963) and Liberman et al. (1961) have found that

it is easier to discriminate among articulated sounds within

one's own language than it is to discriminate among articu-

lated sounds within a foreign language. Prins (1963) found

that sound discrimination ability is a function of articu-

lation and the total language learning process.

The relationship between socioeconomic status, health,

and nutrition, and the quality and development of both fetal

and postnatal life is important in studying possible social

differences. It is obvious that most studies in this area

lack proper controls for these variables. Birch and Gussow's

(1970) found that disadvantaged children scored lower on cog-

nitive performance. It appears that poor health, inadequate

nutrition, and other biological factors may indirectly con-

tribute to the child's cognitive performance. Socioeconomic

status would have to be considered as a factor of the pre-

school children's prior perceptual and cognitive development.

Mental health also needs to be considered in the in-

vestigation of differences between black and white children.

Gorwitz (1964) found substantially higher rates of mental

illness in non-whites when compared with whites in Mary-

land. This evidence may indicate that the consciousness of

being black, or a member of a minority, causes emotional

difficulties and hostility toward whites, which could ac-

count for the inferior performance on intelligence tests

or other tests of ability.

In a study of Negro-White differences conducted by

Levelthal and Stedman (1970), using the 1961 Experimental

Edition of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities,

it was found that white children scored significantly high-

er than black children on six of the nine subtests. It

should be expected that similar differences will remain in

the 196 8 revision of the ITPA.

Three problems of testing make the determination of

ability differences between black and white children dif-

ficult: the problem of obtaining an adequate sample, the

problem of assuring that the test items are fair, and the

problem of developing rapport in testing. These represent

the major problems in this type of testing situation.

It is rarely possible to deal with the entire popu-

lation. For practical purposes, a sampling of the popula-

tion must be used. The larger the sample of any population,

the lower the sampling error. The standardization sample

of the ITPA contained only four percent blacks, which is

far below the percentage of blacks in the population.

Neither the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities

nor any other kind of a test is entirely culture-fair. Two

subtests of the ITPA, the Visual Sequential Memory and the

10

Auditory Sequential Memory Subtests, meet the requirements

of what most psychologists consider a culture-fair test in

that they tend to rule out cultural parameters. The other

ten subtests of the ITPA appear to have varying amounts of .

cultural influence. Dreger and Miller (1960) and Klinesberg

(196 3) reiterate the question whether the tests designed

for white subjects are adequate to measure Negro intelli-

gence.

Manning (1960) found that Negroes are frequently re-

luctant to "play the white man's game," at least where law

and authority are concerned. The subject's past experience

is certain to play a part in the way he faces the socio-

cultural implications of the testing situation. The exam-

iner's physical characteristics, the "warmth" he displays

toward the subject, his prejudicial statements and atti-

tudes can affect the test results. The establishment of

rapport can be expected to influence the test results more

in some cases than others when both black and whites are

involved in a testing situation.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to compare black children

with white children to determine if a significant differ-

ence exists between their scores on the subtests of the

ITPA.

11

The Hypothesis

White children will attain significantly higher scores

than black children on all of the subtests of the ITPA,

except the Auditory Sequential Memory and the Visual

Sequential Memory Subtests. The term "black" or "Negro" is

used in its sociological sense rather than in a strictly

genetic or anthropological sense in this study.

CHAPTER II

METHOD

Subjects

The fifty-four children who served as subjects for this

study had sought diagnostic assistance at a mental health

and mental retardation clinic located in a southwestern city

of less than 100,000 persons. Ninety-six percent of the

subjects used for the study made below-average intelligence

test scores. More than ninety percent of the subjects were

referred by the public school system of that city.

Instrument

The Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities was

designed to measure more discrete psycholinguistic differ-

ences than other psychological tests had in the past. An

attempt was made in the construction of the ITPA to use it

as a helpful tool in the organization and development of

remedial education programs for children. Mentally retarded

children, even within a narrow IQ range, are not homogenous

in their characteristics. One deaf child might learn speech

reading, another might not. One child afflicted with cere-

bral palsy may be mentally retarded, another child with the

same affliction may learn adequately in school. It was this

12

13

need to more accurately measure a child's learning disabili-

ties that led to the development of the ITPA. After several

previous attempts to develop language and perception tests

for children with learning disabilities, the 1961 Experi-

mental Edition of the ITPA was completed.

The presently used, 196 8 Revised Edition, of the ITPA

was developed in an attempt to analyze children's function-

ing along three dimensions. The three dimensions of cogni-

tive abilities postulated by the ITPA are (1) the channels

of communication, including auditory and visual input, and

vocal and motor output; (2) psycholinguistic processes in-

cluding verbal comprehension (receptive linguistic ability),

verbal problem-solving ability (inner linguistic ability),

and fluency (expressive linguistic,ability); (3) the two

levels of organization, including the automatic and repre-

sentational levels. The twelve subtests of the ITPA are

designed to isolate strengths and weaknesses or deficits of

abilities along these dimensions. The following outline

will indicate this breakdown and the use placed upon each

subtest.

The functions tested at the representational level of

the ITPA can be outlined as follows:

1. The Receptive Process (Decoding).

a. Auditory Reception. This is a test of the

child's ability to understand the spoken word

or derive meaning from verbally presented

14

material.

b. Visual Reception. This is a test of the

child's ability to understand or interpret

what he sees or the meaning that he gains

from the visual symbols.

2. The Organizing Process (Association).

a. Auditory Association. This is a test of the

ability to relate to the spoken word in a

meaningful way or to relate to concepts that

are presented orally.

b. Visual Association. This is the ability to

relate to visual symbols in a meaningful way

or to relate to concepts that are presented

visually.

3. The Expressive Process (Encoding).

a. Verbal. Expression. This is a test of the

child's ability to express ideas in the spoken

language or to express his own concepts vocally.

b. Manual Expression. This is a test of the

child's ability to express his ideas in

meaningful gestures.

The functions tested at the automatic level of the ITPA

can be outlined as follows:

1. Closure. These tests assess the child's ability to

fill in the missing parts in-an incomplete picture,

word, or verbal expression (the ability to integrate

15

discrete units into a while).

a* Grammatic Closure. This is a test of a child's

ability to make use of the redundancies of oral

language in acquiring automatic habits for

handling syntax and grammatic inflections.

b. Auditory Closure. This is basically a test of

organizing processes at this level. It asses-

ses the child's ability to fill in an incom-

plete auditory presentation and to produce a .

complete word.

c. Sound Blending. This is another test of the

child's organizing processes at this level,

or the child's ability to combine into a whole

the examiner's individually pronounced vowels

and consonants.

d. Visual Closure. This test assesses the child's

ability to identify common objects from incom-

plete visual presentations.

Sequential Memory. These tests assess the ability

of children to recall short-term memory sequences.

a. Auditory Sequential Memory. This is a test of

child's ability to reproduce from memory se-

quences of digits increasing from two to eight

digits. The test is similar to the repetition

tasks of the Stanford-Binet and WISC.

16

b. Visual Sequential Memory. This assesses the

child's ability to reproduce sequences of non-

meaningful geometrical designs from memory.

The child is allowed to view the sequence of

symbols for five seconds and then is asked-to

put a corresponding group of symbols in the

same order.

Procedure

All of the tests were administered by qualified exam-

iners who met the employment requirements of the clinic.

Most of the cases paired a Negro examiner with Negro child-

ren and a white examiner with white children. This elimi-

nated one factor that can effect the establishment of rap-

port with the children. The battery of tests included the

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). All of the

twenty-seven black children were grouped into either male

or female groups, then matched with a white subject of the

same sex on the basis of IQ scores obtained from the WISC.

Where more than one white subject had the same IQ, there

was a second matching on the basis of age.

Statistical Evaluation

Statistical analysis will evaluate each of the twelve

subtests separately. A t-test of significance was applied

to each subtest to determine if the group means differ.

17

The matched groups design eliminated large differences that

could exist in a small group. The .05 level of signifi-

cance was required to accept the hypothesis.

Supplementary Analysis

A further analysis of data was necessary to determine

if any of the twelve subtests were affected by a socio-

economic variable. The fathers' levels of education were

obtained for thirty-one of the subjects, as a measure of

the child's socioeconomic status. A correlation of all

available father's level of education was computed with

each of the twelve subtests of the ITPA.

An intercorrelation of all the children's scores on

the twelve subtests of the ITPA (Table VI) was accomplished,

Table VI, showing these correlation coefficients, can be

found in the Appendix. Table V shows the correlation be-

tween the children's WISC IQ scores and their subtest

scores on the ITPA, and is also located in the Appendix.

CHAPTER III

RESULTS

It was hypothesized that white children would attain

significantly higher scores than black children on all of

the subtests of the ITPA, except the Auditory Sequential

Memory and Visual Sequential Memory Subtests. As may be

seen from Table I, there was a significant difference be-

tween the mean scores of the black and white children on the

Auditory Reception, Visual Closure, Auditory Sequential

Memory, and Sound Blending Subtests of the ITPA. The white

children scored significantly higher than the black child-

ren on the Auditory Reception and Sound Blending Subtests,

as was hypothesized. The black children scored signifi-

cantly higher than the white children on the Auditory Se-

quential Memory and Visual Closure Subtests. The results

on the Visual Closure Subtest not only disconfirmed the

hypothesis, but revealed converse significance. The differ-

ence on the Sound Blending Subtest was found to be highly

significant. The results indicated no significant differ-

ences between black and white children (Table I) on eight

of the subtests, and only one of these-, the Visual Sequent-

ial Memory Subtest, confirmed the hypothesis.

18

TABLE I

ITPA Means, SDs and t Values for the

Black and White Groups

19

ITPA Subtests White (N=27)

Black (N=25)

t-Value ITPA Subtests

Mean S.D. Mean S.D.

t-Value

1. Auditory Reception 28. 59 7.11 24.41 7.66 2.26*

2. Visual Reception 34. 89 3. 77 32.30 8.26 1.47 '

3. Auditory Association 2 8.11 7. 36 25.67 7.30 1.74

4. Visual Association 28.93 4. 89 29.70 6.02 - .55

5. Verbal Expression 34.33 6.78 33.48 5.73 .84

6. Manual Expression 32.96 5.93 34. 33 4.73 - .97

7. Grammatic Closure 23.48 8. 72 19.59 8. 85 1. 80

8. Visual Closure 32.70 5. 75 36. 52 5. 81 -2.22*

9. Auditory Seq. Memory 30.70 3.54 34.33 6.28 -2.40*

10. Visual Seq. Memory 32.11 5.49 31.56 7.27 .31

11. Auditory Closure 24.41 8. 31 25.52 7.94 - .59

12. Sound Blending 38.00 7.52 28. 33 4.95 5.72**

*p < .05

**p < .01

That possible sex differences exist in the linguistic

development of blacks and whites is apparent from examining

Tables II and III. For the females (Table II) the only

significant difference was on the Sound Blending Subtest.

TABLE II

ITPA Means, SDs and t Values for the

Female Black and White Groups

20

ITPA Subtests White Black t-Value (N= 11) (N = 11)

Mean S.D. Mean S.D.

1. Auditory Reception 26.18 7. 05 21.00 8.04 1.65

2. Visual Reception 34.18 3. 84 32. 82 5.25 .65 -

3. Auditory Association 24.45 5. 85 23.55 6.79 .51

4. Visual Association 28.55 3. 86 27. 82 5.02 .40

5. Verbal Expression 34.91 9.13 33.27 4. 84 .80

6. Manual Expression 31. 55 5.84 34.00 3.92 - .96

7. Grammatic Closure 24. 82 8.18 19.55 8.54 1.55

8. Visual Closure 34.18 3.92 36.00 4.15 -1.14

9. Auditory Seq. Memory 20.27 3. 85 33.91 8.70 -1.07

10. Visual Seq. Memory 33.27 6.37 29. 36 5. 28 1.47

11. Auditory Closure 23.91 9.50 26.36 LI. 15 - .81

12. Sound Blending 34.27 6.57 28. 36 2.62 2.56*

*p < .05

The white females scored significantly higher on the Sound

Blending Subtest. Significant differences were found for

the slightly larger sample of males (Table III) on the two

subtests , Auditory Sequential Memory and Sound Blending Sub-

tests. The white males scored significantly higher than the

21

TABLE III

ITPA Means, SDs and t Values for the

Male Black and White Groups

ITPA Subtests White Black t-Value <N=16) (N=16)

Mean S.D. Mean S.D.

1. Auditory Reception 30.25 6.87 26.75 6.65 1.51

2. Visual Reception 35. 38 3.76 31.94 9.98 1.30

3. Auditory Association 30.63 7.38 27.13 7.49 1.73

4. Visual Association 29.19 5.60 31.00 6.46 - .90

5. Verbal Expression 33.94 4.88 33.63 6.41 .30

6. Manual Expression 33.94 5.98 34.55 5.33 - .38

7. Grammatic Closure 22.56 9.23 19.63 9.34 1.02

8. Visual Closure 31.89 6.66 36.88 6.83 -1.94

9. Auditory Seq. Memory 31.00 3.41 34.63 4.19 -3.06**

10. Visual Seq. Memory 31.31 4.84 33.06 8.19 - .76

11. Auditory Closure 24.75 7.69 24.94 5.07 - .08

12. Sound Blending 40.56 7.22 28.31 6.16 5.58**

**p < .01

black males on the Sound Blending Subtest. The black males

(Table III) scored significantly higher than the whites on

the Auditory Sequential Memory Subtest.

22

TABLE IV

Correlations Between Father's Level of Education and Scores

of Thirty-One Children on the Subtests of the ITPA

ITPA r

1. Auditory Reception .2807

2. Visual Reception 1571

3. Auditory Association . .0409

4. Visual Association 1914 .

5. Verbal Expression 1520

6. Manual Expression .0914

7. Grammatic Closure -.0058

8. Visual Closure -.0494

9. Auditory Sequential Memory .1475

10. Visual Sequential Memory 46 82*

11. Auditory Closure . 2028

12. Sound Blending 0456

*p < .05

An examination of the level of education of the child-

ren's fathers indicated a significant correlation on the

Visual Sequential Memory Subtest. Table IV shows the

correlation coefficients of each subtest of the ITPA with

the children's fathers' educational levels.

CHAPTER IV

DISCUSSION

The significantly higher scores made by black children

on the Auditory Sequential Memory and Visual Closure Sub-

tests might be accounted for by some as cultural factors

operating in the IQ scores used to match the subjects. The

results seem to indicate that more than cultural factors

affect the children's scores. Skinner (196 9) traces the

emergence of the concept of contingencies of reinforcement

and its use in the interpretation of cultural practices and

the prediction of human behavior. Skinner explains the in-

teractional history of the children and its effect on their

performance on the ITPA or any test. The children used in

this study have spent a vast majority of their time in the

home. It could be expected that the home has produced most

of their interactional history. Bijou's (1971) behavioral

analysis of intelligence explains the significance of

environmental variables in the person's interactional his-

tory. He defines the interactions in a child's history as

the opportunities for the development of cognitive reper-

tories that later add direction when responding to test

material. The environment must contain four ingredients

23

24

for proper development of these cognitive repertories.

The ingredients are physical stimuli, social arrangers,

kinds of reinforcers, and schedules of reinforcement.

A test that requires knowledge about a telephone will

place a child who has not seen a telephone at a distinct

disadvantage when this physical stimulus is presented.

The degree of availability of the physical stimuli does

not alone assure the development of the cognitive reper-

tories.

The social arrangers are people who arrange the phy-

sical stimuli into situations that enhance cognitive deve-

lopment. It is expected that parents were the primary

social arrangers in this study. They knowingly or unknow-

ingly program contingencies to shape responses and bring

responses under stimulus control.

Positive reinforcers must be in effect in the cogni-

tive learning situation to enhance cognitive development.

The parents and teachers use mainly positive reinforcing

contingencies for favorable development, and aversive,

random, or neutral stimulus contingencies for unfavorable

learning situations.

The schedules of reinforcement are another important

ingredient in the development of cognitive repertories.

Children will profit if several persons within their en-

vironment frequently schedule contingencies of reinforce-

ment in ways which maintain and extend their cognitive

25

repertories. Opportunities for acquiring cognitive reper-

tories are hampered in situations where parents, siblings,

and others do not provide contingencies of reinforcement

on schedules which would support the acquired cognitive

repertories. All children may receive equal enhancement

in three areas of interaction, but the black children may

receive a more favorable kind of reinforcer than the white

children. This would develop skills that accounted for the

higher scores that blacks attained on the Auditory Sequent-

ial Memory Subtest. The Auditory Sequential Memory and

Visual Closure Subtests both require an element of atten-

tion. This would indicate that blacks' attention was dir-

ected more to the test than whites'.

The black children may receive reinforcement in the

home for black English, which is not the proper language

when they enter the testing situation. The white children

are reinforced by their parents for using standard English.

This may account for the extreme difference between black

and white children on the Sound Blending Subtest.

The Auditory Reception Subtest measures the ability

to comprehend verbally presented material, and white child-

ren did significantly better than black children. The

white children may have experienced a higher saturation of

people who scheduled contingencies of reinforcement in ways

that use, maintain, and extend their abilities to compre-

hend verbal material. This scheduling may account for the

26

significant differences between black and white children on

the Auditory Reception Subtest.

A larger sample of children could have possibly pro-

vided statistically significant differences on the Grainmatic

Closure and Auditory Association Subtests. An analysis of

the dimensions of cognitive abilities shows that white child-

ren performed significantly better than black children on the

Auditory Reception Subtest. This was the only subtest mea-

suring the auditory channel at the representational level of

reception process.

The children's fathers' levels of education, a measure

of the socioeconomic status of the children, was correlated

with each of the subtest scores, and only the Visual Sequent-

ial Memory Subtest reached the level of significance. From

the data it would appear that the fathers' educations had

little effect on test scores. The mother may possibly be a

more significant factor in the child's cognitive development,

as she spends proportionally more time in the home.

It would appear that sex differences exist in linguis-

tic development of blacks' and whites' children. The Audi-

tory Sequential Memory Subtest indicated highly significant

differences between black and white males, while there was

little difference between black and white females on the

subtest. This difference would reinforce the thesis that

the child's developmental experience, rather than race, is

the important factor in the acquisition of cognitive reper-

tories needed to score high on the ITPA.

CHAPTER V

SUMMARY

The purpose of this study was to compare black children

with white children to determine if a significant difference

existed between their scores on the subtests of the ITPA.

Twenty-seven black children were matched with twenty-seven .

white children from a much larger group of white children.

The subjects were matched on the basis of sex and scores on

the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. As an index

of the possible effect of socioeconomic status on the ITPA

scores, correlation coefficients between fathers' education-

al levels and ITPA scores were computed.

The children who served as subjects in this study had

sought diagnostic assistance at a mental health and mental

retardation clinic. A majority of the children had been

referred by the city school system because of learning dis-

abilities .

Black children obtained scores that were significantly

higher at the .05 level on the Visual Closure Subtest and

at the .01 level on the Auditory Sequential Memory Subtest.

White children obtained scores that were significantly

higher at the .05 level on the Auditory Reception Subtest

27

28

and at the .0001 level on the Sound Blending Subtest. The

difference between black and white females on the Auditory

Sequential Memory Subtest was not statistically significant,

but the difference between black and white males on this

subtest was significant at the .01 level.

The only subtest which yielded a significant correla-

tion with fathers' educational level was the Visual Sequent-

ial Memory Subtest. There was no difference between black

and white children on this subtest.

The hypothesis that the white children would score

significantly higher than black children on all subtests of

the ITPA except the Auditory Sequential and Visual Sequent-

ial Memory Subtests was not supported. Only four of the

subtests yielded significant differences between the groups.

The Auditory Sequential Memory and Visual Closure Subtests

were significantly higher for blacks. No differences were

found between black and white children in any particular

sensory channel except the auditory channel at the repre-

sentational level. This was measured by only the Auditory

Reception Subtest.

The results seem to strengthen the argument that the

children's scores on the ITPA were influenced by environ-

mental factors. A behavior analysis seems to reflect the

differences between black and white children on the ITPA

subtests.

29

It is concluded that the cognitive repertories needed

to improve children's subtest scores are developed by ex-

perience in the home. Children in this study had a minimum

amount of experience in the school system. Therefore, their

parents and others in the home have acted as their social

arrangers. This would indicate that black children's par-

ents provided experiences that developed cognitive rep-

ertories that were needed on the Auditory Sequential Memory

and Visual Closure Subtests, while white children's parents

provided experiences that developed cognitive repertories

on the Sound Blending and Auditory Reception Subtests.

The home must offer the appropriate physical stimuli, social

arrangers, the proper kinds of reinforcement, and the as-

surance that the reinforcement will be properly scheduled.

APPENDIX

30

3 1

TABLE V

Correlations Between Fifty-four Children's WISC IQ

Scores and ITPA Subtest Scores

ITPA Subtests r

1. Auditory Reception -.0256

2. Visual Reception 0617

3. Auditory Association 2048

4. Visual Association 0530

5. Verbal Expression . -.1830

6. Manual Expression 0556

7. Grammatic Closure . . . -.0564

8. Visual Closure .0201

9. Auditory Sequential Memory.. 1206

10. Visual Sequential Memory 1315

11. Auditory Closure -.1265

12. Sound Blending -.00 84

32

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