The purpose of this study was to examine how children with emotional disturbance responded to the Bender-Gestalt Test, or BGT, by taking Perticone(1998)'s symbolic meanings and interpretative hypotheses of individual BGT designs into account. The rese...
The purpose of this study was to examine how children with emotional disturbance responded to the Bender-Gestalt Test, or BGT, by taking Perticone(1998)'s symbolic meanings and interpretative hypotheses of individual BGT designs into account. The research questions were posed as follows:
1. What types of unusual design features do emotionally disturbed children exhibit in their BGT design copy?
2. Which design is copied by emotionally disturbed children and non- disturbed children in a significantly different manner?
3. What is the major personality traits of emotionally disturbed children's behavior in light of the symbolic meanings and interpretative hypotheses of the BGT designs? and does teacher observation produce the same results about their major personality traits?
The subjects in this study were 15 children with emotional disturbance and 15 children without emotional disturbance, selected from among the first and second graders in elementary school in the city of Pohang, North Gyeongsang province. The former group turned out to be disturbed emotionally
by teacher observation checklist. They were tested according to the BGT standard procedure, and their copies were analyzed on the basis of Perticone's unusual design features and each design's symbolic meaning and interpretative hypotheses. The scoring reliability ranged from 83% to 93%,
which proved to be very good after the ratio of conformity between this researcher and a specialist was investigated.
The findings of this study were as below:
First, the significantly unusual design features of the emotionally disturbed children's BGT copies included plainness/dull angles, repeat, duplicated line description, and confused design arrangement.
The first feature, plainness and dull angles, referred to unique deviation related to distorted form, and the second feature, repeat, suggested the existence of anxiety or impulsiveness. The third one, duplicated line description, indicated the existence of aggressiveness or impulsiveness, and the fourth, confused design arrangement, indicated mental confusion and pre-planning difficulties.