Date of Award
1989
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Psychology
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Allan Berman
Abstract
A scoring system was devised to measure the Bender Visual-motor Gestalt recall segment. Three dependent measures were analyzed: number of retrieved designs; "quality recall" such that recalled figures were compared to a child's original Bender drawings; and "average quality per design" in which the average degree of distortion per recalled design was calculated. Seven, nine, and eleven year old reading disabled and nondisabled children's memory performance was compared. It was hypothesized that a complex visual memory task, such as the Bender recall, and analysis of errors or distortions in memory would significantly discriminate between the two reading and among the three age groups. A Multivariate Analysis of Variance indicated significant main effects for age (F = 5.69, df = (6,224), p<.001) and for the two reading groups (F = 6.21, df = (3, 112), p<.001). A discriminant analysis revealed each of the three dependent variables significantly discriminated between reading groups, with "quality recall" accounting for the largest portion of the variance (13%). Also, a trend analysis revealed significant linear trends across age for each reading group and on each dependent measure. T-tests indicated reading disabled subjects lagged behind nondisabled readers in support of a developmental lag hypothesis. It was concluded that the Bender recall segment may be an adequate measure of visual memory and that distortion in recall may be worth further exploration with reading disabled children as well as with other memory deficient populations.
Recommended Citation
Evans, Bernadette F., "Examining the Bender Recall as a Test of Visual Memory" (1989). Open Access Master's Theses. Paper 1683.
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/theses/1683
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