Psychometric Test Scores and School Behavior of Girls Identified as Daydreamers by Their Teachers

To obtain information about the academic function of 9-year-old children from their school teachers, we created a short, forced-choice questionnaire that asked about the child's knowledge and use of arithmetic tables, reading, spelling, persistence at tasks, flexibility of approach, ability to function independently, distractibility, daydreaming, impulsivity and overexcitability, hyperactivity, and ability to follow simple and sequential directions. Questionnaires were collected from the teachers of 3451 white children whose mothers had enrolled in the National Collaborative Perinatal Project. Six syndromes in girls and five in boys were identified by both cluster and factor analyses of these data. Common to both sexes were five syndromes we labeled arithmetic, tasks (ie, impersistent/dependent/inflexible), reading, attention, and hyperactive. A syndrome characterized by difficulty following directions was seen in girls only. The prevalence of these syndromes ranged from a low for hyperactivity of 2.3 per 100 girls to a high for the attention syndrome of 27.6 per 100 boys. The congruent results obtained with clustering and factor analysis, and the agreement between the observed prevalence of syndromes and prior expectations suggests that the Boston Teacher Questionnaire, as this instrument is called, identifies learning problems in 9-year-old children.

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Reaction Times and Digit Symbol Test Scores of Girls Identified as Daydreamers by Their Teachers

Leviton

Schulman

1976

Percept Mot Skills

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Reaction times and Digit Symbol scores of 14 9-yr.-old girls identified as "daydreamers" by their teachers were compared with those of 14 9-yr.-old girls not so identified. Daydreamers tended to have longer mean reaction times under all test conditions but the differences were small. The daydreamers completed significantly less of the Digit Symbol test than did the non daydreamers and also recalled significantly fewer symbols. The daydreamers had significantly larger variances for three of the four measures of outcome of the Digit Symbol test. These data support the hypothesis that girls identified as daydreamers on a questionnaire completed by their teachers did less well on certain tests of attention than girls not so identified.

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Psychometric Test Scores and School Behavior of Girls Identified as Daydreamers by Their Teachers

Cited by 3 publications

References 3 publications

Methylphenidate therapy for inattentiveness in selected school children

Methylphenidate therapy for inattentiveness in selected school children

The Boston Teacher Questionnaire. 1. Definition of Syndromes

Reaction Times and Digit Symbol Test Scores of Girls Identified as Daydreamers by Their Teachers

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