VISUAL EVOKED RESPONSE - A COMPARISON OF BRIGHT AND DULL CHILDREN

Visual evoked responses were recorded from central and occipital scalp of twenty bright children (Full Scale WISC scores ranging from 120 to 140, X = 130) and twenty dull children (Full Scale WISC scores ranging from 70 to 90, X = 79). All subjects were 10 or 11 years old and each group was composed of ten boys and ten girls. Results were: (1) The late components (100-250 msec) of responses recorded from both occipital and central scalp were reliably larger for the bright children. (2) Dull children demonstrated essentially no hemispheric differences between the amplitudes of the right and left central responses. The bright subjects had right central responses which were consistently larger than responses from the late components of the left scalp. This finding was consistent at several stimulus intensities. Differences between the bright and dull children did not appear to be simply a function of the maturational process. The bright children's VER amplitudes were similar to normal 13- and 14-year-old children's; however, the dull children's VER amplitudes were smaller than those of either younger children or normal children their own age. © 1969.