INTELLIGENCE,
CREATIVITY,
AND
PERFORMANCE
ABILITIES
OF
ERIR PUPILS
309
SMITH,
R.
Creative thinking abilities of educable mentally handicapped children in t,he regular
grades.
American JOuT)tal of hfetital L)efLcieticy,
1967,
71,
571-575.
TAYLOR,
C.
Identifying the creative individual.
In
€3.
P.
Torrance
(Ed.),
Creativity proceedings
of
the
second Mimesofa Co?rference on gifLed childreii.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1959.
TAYLOR,
C. and HOLLAND,
J.
Development and application of tests of creativity.
Review
of
Educa-
tioiral Research,
1962,
32,
91-102.
TISDALL,
W.
Product,ive thinking in retarded children.
Exceptional Children,
1962,
2.9,
36-41.
TORRANCIC,
E.
P.
The Il‘orrauce Il’esls of Creative ‘I’hiirking:
Norms,
Technical Manual and Scoring
Guide.
WILSON,
It.,
GUILFORD,
J.
and
CHRISTI’:NSI’:N,
P.
The nieasiiremeiit of individual differelices
ill
origi-
nality.
YAMAMOTO,
K.
Evaluation of some creativit,y measures in a high school with peer nominations cri-
teria.
Princeton,
N.J.
:
Personnel Press,
1966.
Psychological Bulletin,
1953,
60,
362-370.
Journal
of
Psychology,
1964,
58,
285-293.
TEST
STI
4ULI
:
REPRESENTATIONAL LEVE WITH MIDDLE CLASS
AND HEAD START CHILDREN
MARCIA
SELLAND
KIERSCHT
AND
PETER
11.
VIETZE
George Peabody College
Low income and middle income
4-
and 5-year old children were shown stimuli
in three forms: objects, colored pictures, and black and white line drawings
taken from commonly used assessment instruments, and were asked to label
the
stimuli. Results indicated that both groups of children labeled the objects
more successfully than the pictures, although this discrepancy was greater for
the low income children. In addition, order of presentation influenced labeling
performance. These results suggest that attention be paid to the representa-
tional level of materials used with young children in testing and educational
settings.
In a study comparing scores obtained on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary
Test (PPVT) (Dunn,
1965)
and the Slosson Intelligence Test (SIT) (Slosson,
1964)
Raskin, Offenbach and Black
(1974)
found that nursery school and third-grade
children obtained significantly higher scores on the
SIT
than on the PPVT. Although
factors contributing to this difference were not discussed, the authors concluded
that “care should be taken when the
SIT
is
used
for
intellectual screening.” (p.
67)
Lamp and Traxler
(1973)
reported that the
SIT
had a high level of predictive
validity for a Head Start population. Conclusions based on their study indicated,
“that the SIT is a valid screening instrument for use in assessing intelligence and
predicting reading ability of young disadvantaged children.” (p.
29)
The present studies were carried out to determine whether differences in the
composition of the
SIT
and PPVT might be responsible for the results reported by
Raskin, et al. and by Lamp and Traxler. Perusal of the two tests revealed that
the PPVT
is
composed entirely of representational items (two-dimensional black
and white line drawings), while the
SIT
has
a
minimum of representational items.
There is evidence to indicate that Head Start children have difficulty in clas-
sifying representational material, i.e. pictures, that
is
not experienced when objects,
Requests for reprints should be sent to Marcia
S.
Kierscht, Demonstration and Research Center,
George Peabody College
for
Teachers,
Box
151,
Nashville, Tenn.
37203.