A process approach to the bender-gestalt test and its use in differentiating schizophrenic, brain-damaged, and medical patients

Developed a processing model that would account for the shifting of attention that occurs as individuals copy Bender-Gestalt designs. Process-oriented variations of the Bender-Gestalt test were designed that emphasized each of the three processes hypothesized to contribute to Bender-Gestalt performance: Perceptual-motor integration, attentional factors, and short-term memory. A standard Bender-Gestalt and the three variations were administered to 24 schizophrenics, 24 brain-damaged patients, and 24 medical patients, matched for intelligence and sex. Protocols were scored blindly by the Pascal-Suttell and Hain methods. Discriminant function analysis based upon the four versions of the Bender-Gestalt test classified patients as schizophrenic or brain-damaged at a significantly higher rate than the standard Bender-Gestalt scored by either the Pascal-Suttell or Hain system.