Visual spatial characteristics of eleven to thirteen year old learning disabled children

A visual spatial battery consisting of the Rorschach Inkblot Test, Judgment of Line Orientation, the Embedded Figures Test, and the Conners Rating Scale was administered to twenty-nine dyslexic children with intelligence quotients within the normal range, who had no history of psychiatric or neurological disease or injury. Their scores were compared with normative data and a control group of twenty-nine children matched for age and sex. T-tests and simple correlations were used to analyze the data. The learning disabled group had a greater number of simple cognitive complexity responses on the Rorschach than the normal group. There was also a difference found between the learning disabled group and normative data on Judgment of Line Orientation and the Embedded Figures Test. Positive correlations were found between simple, integrated, articulated, cognitive complexity, B+%, and the Embedded Figures Test; and between integrated cognitive complexity and Judgment of Line Orientation. Negative relationships were found between simple, diffuse, and arbitrary cognitive complexity, and Judgment of Line Orientation; and between arbitrary cognitive complexity and the Embedded Figures Test. The learning disabled group was also found to have higher scores than the control group on the four Conners rating scales; conduct problems, hyperactivity, inattentive-passive, hyperactivity index. Thus, this study further documents the presence of perceptual spatial problems in older dyslexic children by using more complex tests of visual spatial abilities than have been previously employed: the Rorschach, Embedded Figures Test, and Judgment of Line Orientation.