Special education and psychological procedures in diagnostics and evaluation of treatment: What do we actually evaluate?

Abstract

With the aim of researching relation among the constructs that form the base for the instruments of special education diagnostics and clinical psychological evaluation that are standardly used in diagnostics of neurocognitive disorders in developmental age and evaluation of treatments, we applied correlation analysis to the results of WISC and seta techniques of special education diagnostics obtained at the sample of 100 children with typical development, aged from 6.8 to 7.6 years. The results, at large, showed very high correlation of test measures of "verbal intelligence" with the indicators of the level of development of semantic, gnostic and practognostic abilities; these test results confirm affinity of the compared procedures as measures of "natural" elements of cognitive organization, regardless of their different theoretical concept, while from the point of view of clinical practice, this suggests that common analysis of the child’s achievement by these techniques could offer a clearer picture of the "primary deficit", than in case of separate interpretation. In addition to this, the test results indicated the necessity for reevaluation of the "norms" of some important instruments of special education assessment, like the Gesture imitation test and the Scale for assessment of knowledge of body parts.

Sa ciljem da istražimo međusobni odnos između konstrukata na kojima se zasnivaju instrumenti defektološke dijagnostike i kliničke psihološke procene koje standardno koristimo u dijagnostici neurokognitivnih poremećaja razvojnog doba i evaluaciji tretmana, primenili smo korelacionu analizu na rezultatima WISC i seta tehnika defektološke dijagnostike dobijenim na uzorku od 100 dece tipičnog razvoja, uzrasta 6.8 do 7.6 godina. Rezultati su, u celini, pokazali visoku korelaciju testovnih mera verbalne inteligencije sa indikatorima nivoa izgrađenosti semantičkih, gnostičkih i praktognostičkih sposobnosti. Ovakav nalaz potvrđuje srodnost upoređivanih dijagnostičkih postupaka kao mera prirodnih elemenata kognitivne organizovanosti bez obzira na njihovu različitu teorijsku koncipiranost, dok iz ugla kliničke prakse sugeriše da bi zajednička analiza uspeha deteta na ovim tehnikama mogla ponuditi jasniju sliku primarnog deficita no kada se tumače odvojeno. Analiza uspešnosti na primenjenim tehnikama u odnosu na gestualnu lateralizovanost dece u uzorku nije potvrdila pretpostavku o ambideksterstvu kao pokazatelju nezrelije kognitivne organizacije. Osim toga, pokazalo se da su postavljene norme za neke od važnih instrumenata defektološke procene - kao što su Test imitacije gestova i Skala za procenu poznavanja delova tela - nedovoljno diskriminativne, bar za uzrast obuhvaćen ovim istraživanjem.