Visual scanning strategies of neurologically impaired, percepually imfaired, and normal children viewing the Bender-Gestalt designs

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The purpose of the present study was to describe and compare the visual encoding processes and copying performance of normal children and children with perceptual and neurological disabilities viewing the Bender-Gestalt designs. The eye movements of these children were recorded as they examined the nine designs of the Bender-Gestalt test. In addition, protocols of the test were obtained in the standard way. Clear qualitative and quantitative differences in the scanning strategies were found among each of the three diagnostic groups. No differences were found in the reporductions of the designs for normals and perceptually impaired children. However, the designs of the neurologically impaired children were significantly different from those of either of the other two diagnostic groups. The results are discussed with respect to the use of eye movement data as a technique to examine visual perceptual deficiencies indepently of motoric functions. Encoding processes charactersitic of the three groups are inferred from their scanning strategies and the relationship between these encoding processes and psychosenory learning disabilities is discussed.