Of 228 children who were given a screening test in kindergarten, 163 were followed to the end of grade 2. At that time they were given an achievement test, and school progress was reported by their teachers. Over 70% of the children had been classified correctly as to their achievement on the basis of the kindergarten screening test. The individual test items or subsets of them predicted better than the composite score. Of the 196 psychological, neurological, and academic measures taken on an intensively studied sample of 50 children. a small number was highly predictive of grace 2 achievement. When achievement by diagnosis was considered, only 11% of the children diagnosed in kindergarten as having minimal brain dysfunction were ready for grade 3, as contrasted to 86% of the normals.
To avoid emotional and learning difficulties in children with minimal brain dysfunction (MBD) early detection is desirable, and a battery of tests has been devised to achieve this. The battery was administered to 228 children at the start of their kindergarten year. Of 49 children who failed the battery, 25 were matched with 25 controls and were examined in detail neurologically and psychologically. The battery distinguished normal children (who passed) from those who failed. In the latten group, two types of children were found: (1) children clinically diagnosed as having MBD, (2) children thought to be immature, some of whom improved on readministration of the test battery eight months later and who are expected to show continued improvement but will likely have difficulty in Grade I. However, three false positives and one false negative were found. On 11 of the 12 tests the mean scores of the immature were better than those of the MBD.
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