Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test in Adolescents: Relationship between Visual-Motor Development and the Tanner Stages

Abstract

Visual-motor skill is fundamental to human development and is an important component of psychological evaluations. The goal of the present study was to determine whether there is a correlation between visual-motor development, as measured by the Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test (Bender test), and sexual maturity in adolescents, based on the Tanner Stages in Adolescents. 134 adolescents from 10 to 15 years of age participated in the study. The Bender test and the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test were employed. The measures were administered individually and information on sexual maturity and the presence of developmental disorders was collected from medical charts. The results of the Bender test were not affected by gender, age, schooling, or changes stemming from puberty, but were significantly affected by having repeated a school year and by developmental disorders. An association was found with Raven's scores. The Bender test proved sensitive to developmental disorders in adolescence. No association was found between visual-motor development and sexual maturity in adolescents.

Perceptual-Motor Maturity in Adolescence and the Tanner Stages: A Study with Bender-Gradual Scoring System

“…Children with a high functioning autism spectrum disorder (Volker et al, 2009), Attention Deficiency Hyperactivity Disorder (Allen & Decker, 2008) or dyslexia (dos Santos & de Jorge, 2007) had worse scores in the Bender test compared to the control group. Similar results were found by Keppeke et al (2013), where adolescents with various developmental problems had significantly lower visual-motor performance compared to healthy adolescents. Noronha et al (2013), also observed the same in a sample of children, adolescents, and adults with intellectual disabilities.…”

“…In a previous study using the Bender Test according to the Koppitz (1989) system, we did not observe any association between visual-motor skill and age variables or maturation related to puberty (Tanner`s stages and growth spurt) in a sample of Brazilian adolescents, although we found a correlation between visual-motor skill and the repetition of a school year and developmental problems (Keppeke et al, 2013). In the current study, to further explore the correlation between visualmotor development and pubertal stages in those adolescents, we re-evaluated visual-motor development through the Bender-Gradual Scoring System (B-GSS) of Sisto et al (2006).…”

“…It can also be inferred from the results that poor visual-motor condition is related to pathologies, which, in turn, hamper learning in school. In our previous study, it was found that there was a higher proportion (85.7%) of adolescents with some developmental disabilities among those who repeated a school year (Keppeke et al, 2013). Several previous studies had found a relationship between developmental problems and poor Bender test results (Allen & Decker, 2008; Ferreira et al, 2009; Pacanaro et al , 2008; dos Santos & de Jorge, 2007; Volker et al, 2009).…”

“…Studies that measured visual-motor skill through the Bender test and measured intelligence with various tools, observed better performance in intelligence tests for participants with higher visual-motor maturation (Böhm, Lundequist, & Smedler, 2010;Keppeke, Cintra, & Schoen, 2013;Labin et al, 2015;Pacanaro et al, 2008;Romi & Marom, 2005;Sisto, Bartholomeu, Rueda, dos Santos, & Noronha, 2008).…”

A model of cognitive evaluation battery for diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment and dementia in educated and illiterate Egyptian elderly people

“…-Nine words were chosen from the paired associate and inserted among other 18 words from the same category to act as a novel prototype 2. Bender Gestalt (BG) copy and memory -Participants were asked to copy a figure to measure visual-motor skills [34] and then to copy it from their memory 10 min later to measure visual memory.…”