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Discrepancies between the Pattern of Abilities for Normal and Neurotic Children

Institute of Psychiatry, Maudsley Hospital, London

ABSTRACT

Means, standard deviations, correlations and factor loadings for a sample of children attending a psychiatric clinic are reported for the subtests of the WISC, and the results are compared with the normative data given in the WISC Manual and with data for normal British children.

The mean scores for the psychiatric sample, as expected, were found to be lower than those for normal children, but apart from the Coding test—where the decrement is large—the discrepancies were on the average alike for "Verbal" and "Performance" tests. On the other hand the dispersions of the test scores were found to be consistently greater for the psychiatric sample than for the normal samples.

This is a bit surprising for it is reasonable to assume that most children referred to a psychiatric clinic are referred for reasons other than abnormal cognitive development. Because of this they would normally be thought of as providing a "selected" sample where intelligence is concerned and by virtue of such selection should show a dispersion of cognitive tests scores smaller than that obtained in the population at large. This problem requires further investigation.

Due, no doubt, to the greater dispersion of the test scores the intercorrelations of the tests for the psychiatric samples were found to be considerably greater than those for normal children—the "Performance" tests in particular being affected. The effect of these larger correlations shows itself especially in the loadings of the tests on a general factor of ability, which in the psychiatric sample is much more pronounced than it is in the normal sample. It is as well to note, however, that this increased emphasis on a general factor does not imply any diminution of emphasis on the group factors present, as is clear from Table V.

A few interesting associations between cognitive test scores and a number of "psychiatric" variables were also demonstrated. In particular it was seen that the lack of a father in the home tended to have an adverse affect on children's performance on some of the WISC subtests, for example on Comprehension, Picture Completion and Coding. Other interesting associations, for which ready explanations are not always available, are given in Table VI.