How ‘flat’ are normal ability profiles in 4‐year‐olds?

Abstract

Group and individual ability profiles of 89 English 4-year-olds on the McCarthy scales of children's abilities (MSCA) are presented. The results suggest that at this age, there is a high expectation of obtaining at least one significant difference between a child's mean ability score and the individual ability of index scores. The direction of these significant differences in ability suggested that, in this age group, abilities measured by the MSCA verbal and perceptual performance indexes tend to be more advanced than abilities measured by the quantitative and memory indexes. Motor development is relatively retarded compared to these other abilities. (The results are at variance with the often accepted concept of a "flat' ability profile in normal children). The use of the MSCA on English children could result in over referral of normal children, especially boys, who appear delayed on the motor index, and under referral of children who were regarded as normal on the verbal and perceptual indexes.

A Factor Analytic Study of the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities

“…As diagnostic decisions concerning assessment and remediation are made on the basis of the child's ability profile, it is clearly important to establish the construct validity of the individual scales. This is particularly so since research in the UK has revealed a number of differences between the performance of American and English children on the MSCA (Lynch et al, 1982a(Lynch et al, , 1982b. A suitable empirical test of the MSCA's structure can be attempted using factor analysis, the results of which should reflect the structure shown in Table 1.…”

Developmental milestones or conceptual millstones? Some practical and theoretical limitations in infant assessment procedures.

“…In fact the meaning of variations in the profile is by no means estabhshed because of the problem of interpreting the significance of differences in subscale scores when there is low correlation between subtests (Mittler 1970b). In a recent study Lynch et al (1982) show that there is significant variabihty in profiles for normal pre-school children and that use of differences in subscale levels to interpret 'abnormality' is fraught with uncertainty.…”