THE COMPARISON OF VISUAL-MOTOR INTEGRATION SCORES BETWEEN LEARNING DISABILITY AND NORMAL CHILDREN

Abstract

This study aimed to compare the visual-motor integration’s scores between 30 children who got diagnosed by psychiatrists as Learning Disability (LD), and 30 normal children who were comparable in ages, genders, and levels of education with LD group. Data was collected with three standardized tests, including (1) SPM-Parallel to measure IQ, (2) WRAT-Thai to evaluate academic achievement, and (3) Bender-Gestalt II to assess visual-motor integration. The scores of the Bender-Gestalt II in Copy phase and Recall phase, the amounts of time spent on the tests for both phases, the number of recall-figures, as well as the scores of Perception and Motor Tests will be considered.

Results showed the profile of visual-motor integration in the LD children that they got the scores of Copy and Recall phases within average (M = 93.63 and 96.43, respectively). Regarding the time spent, the LD children were rapid on the tests for both phases (M = 8.51 and 2.57 min, respectively). The number of recall-figures was little (M = 4.53), while the scores of Perception and Motor tests were high (M = 11.23 and 9.07, respectively). When compared with the normal children, the LD children obtained significantly lower scores of Copy phase and Recall phase at the level of .01. They also spent less time in Copy phase at the level of .05. However, the time spent in Recall phase, the numbers of recall-figures, the scores of Perception and Motor tests were not significantly different between the LD and the normal children. This result benefits for psychologists to define criteria and profile of Bender-Gestalt II in LD children in order to employ them as inferential information later on.