ROLE OF PLANNING AND ORGANIZING IN SUCCESSFUL BENDER-GESTALT PERFORMANCE

Abstract

This study was conducted to examine the role of planning and organizing features on design reproduction. This was accomplished by providing first and second grade children with training in how to plan and organize their drawings. Instructions consisted of demonstrating and explaining specific strategies to facilitate the copying. The results of the study indicated that first grade children who received planning instructions improved more on the Bender Gestalt Test than first grade children who did not receive such training. Second grade children did not benefit significantly from such training. The results also indicated that some school children who have serious difficulty with the Bender Gestalt Test became "average" performers following the training.;Sex differences were apparent in response to the training. First grade boys benefitted more than first grade girls.;The results suggest that (1) a poor performance on design copying tasks does not necessarily reflect "perceptual" or "perceptual-motor" dysfunction and, (2) when such poor performance is used to diagnose certain disorders (e.g. minimal brain dysfunction) it cannot be said that the failure is necessarily perceptual or perceptual-motor in a narrow sense.;The results further suggest that planning and organizing play an important role in the child's ability to copy geometric designs.;The implications of the results for the views of Frostig, Kephart and Koppitz are discussed.