The purpose of this study was to determine if socioeconomic differences among a population of mildly mentally handicapped school children exist on the Coloured Progressive Matrices. This information was sought in order to assist school psychologists in achieving the nondiscriminatory evaluations of handicapped children required by federal law.The theoretical base upon which this study rests is Catell's concept of intelligence. It was Catell's contention that the general ability factor measured by intelligence tests actually consisted of two factors, crystallized and fluid intelligence. Crystallized ability reflects previous education and experience while fluid ability is exhibited in adaptation to new situations where crystallized skills are of no particular advantage. The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for ChildrenRevised was assumed to measure crystallized ability and the Coloured Progressive Matrices was assumed to measure fluid ability. Given that the Wechsler scales are among the primary instruments used to assess children for placement into programs for the mildly mentally handicapped, it was conjectured that assignment to this group has been based on crystallized, and hence culturally biased, abilities. It was hypothesized that among an identified population of mildly mentally handicapped school children, those children from low socioeconomic backgrounds would demonstrate significantly greater fluid intelligence as measured by the Coloured Progressive Matrices than children from high socioeconomic backgrounds.There were a total of 25 subjects in the study. These students had been previously identified as mildly mentally handicapped and placed in programs for students so diagnosed. The subjects were Caucasian male and female students who ranged in age from 8 years, 0 months to 12 years, 11 months of age. Each subject was designated as belonging to either high or low socioeconomic groups depending upon the occupation of the head of the household in which they lived. The data for this study was gathered by school psychometrists during the administration of the triennial retest cycle.To determine whether differences in mean scores between socioeconomic groups were significant, statistical analysis was applied. Statistically, the hypotheses were treated as null hypotheses with the .05 level of significance necessary for rejection. The hypotheses were tested through a t-test to determine statistical significance.The low socioeconimic group obtained a mean raw score of 19.85 on the Coloured Progressive Matrices while the high socioeconomic group's mean raw score on this measure was 18.17, The difference in mean raw scores between high and low socioeconomic groups on the Coloured Progressive Matrices was not significant at the .05 level of confidence.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/178577 |
| Date | 03 June 2011 |
| Creators | Miller, John Michael |
| Contributors | Wenck, L. Stanley |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | iii, 64, [1] leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
| Coverage | n-us--- |
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