A LONGITUDINAL STUDY USING THE WPPSI AND WISC‐R WITH AN ENGLISH SAMPLE

Abstract

Summary. An unselected sample of 139 English children from a rural area completed the WPPSI at the age of 4½ years and the WISC‐R four years later. Comparison of WISC‐R results for this sample and Wechsler's standardisation sample indicated that although this test yields IQ scores close to expected values, distributions of scores on some subtests, especially Similarities and Coding, are less satisfactory. Significant sex differences, in keeping with previous research, were found on some WPPSI and WISC‐R subtests. The association between verbal‐performance discrepancies on the two tests was statistically significant but relatively weak. The results indicated that children who refused to co‐operate with one or more of the WPPSI subtests were more likely than not to develop normally, but there was a raised incidence of WISC‐R IQs below 85 in this group. A high proportion of low IQs was also found among children who missed the pre‐school assessment because of family crises or parental refusal.