The Picture Interpretation Test and its relationship to the Stanford-Binet.

Abstract

Textbooks for introductory psychology courses occasionally mention that perception and verbal learning are related (Munn, 1966; Kimble & Garmezy, 1968) . Visual perception of and comprehension of pictures are apparently learned through looking ac pictures in books, asking questions abour them, and being encouraged to make judgments about them (Torrance & Aliotti, 1968) . Joesting and Joesting (1971) previously obtained a Pearson product-moment correlation of .65 ( p = .01) between raw scores on the Picture Incerpretation Test (PIT) and Stanford-Binet Form L-M (S-B) MAS for 27 children who ranged in age from 4-9 to 13-8 yr. The purpose of this study was to replicate chat study, testing a similar but larger sample of children with school problems. The first author administered both the PIT and S-B to 51 children who ranged in age from 6-5 to 13-0 yr. ( M = 9.8, SD = 1.85) as part of a counseling and evaluation procedure. The two sets of scores from these children were correlated. The PIT was administered by showing the child a drawing from the Verbal Form B of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking Ability (Torrance, 1966) . The child was asked to answer 12 yes or no questions such as Are the children wearing shoes? Is the girl carrying a pot? (Torrance & Aliocti, 1968) . The sers of scores from these children were correlated. A product-moment r of .58 ( p = .001) was obtained between the P I T raw scores2 ( M = 7.2, SD = 1.95) and S-B MAS ( M = 8.79, SD = 2.61). Torrance (1967) has found thac children's pre-primary scores o n the PIT improved significantly after the children have experienced educational stimulation. It may well be that children's IQs may be increased significantly by exposure to educational stimulation both in a preschool day-care center and within the kindergarten and elementary school curriculum.