PATTERNS OF PERFORMANCE ON WISC SIMILARITIES IN EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED AND BRAIN-DAMAGED CHILDREN

Matched 120 emotionally disturbed and 120 brain-damaged children in a public school setting for WISC Full Scale IQ, CA, and sex. An analysis was made of the similarities subtest responses using the error-analysis approach previously used for differential diagnosis of institutionalized adults' performance on the WAIS Similarities. The Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks technique was used in analyzing the data. Brain-damaged Ss made significantly more restrictive errors while emotionally disturbed Ss produced significantly more inadequate attempts at conceptualization. The discriminatory power of this error type achieved significance at the .01 level when comparing males alone, while it achieved only the .05 level of significance when applied to the female subgroups. Frequency of errors of the descriptive type and of positive correct responses did not distinguish between the 2 groups. Dynamic implications of findings were discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1969 American Psychological Association.