Dp. Flanagan et al., INCIDENCE OF BASIC CONCEPTS IN THE DIRECTIONS OF NEW AND RECENTLY REVISED AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE-TESTS FOR PRESCHOOL-CHILDREN, School psychology international, 16(4), 1995, pp. 345-364
The purpose of this paper was to provide comparative data as a follow-
up to Bruce A. Bracken (1986) regarding basic concepts contained in th
e test directions of five new or recently revised American intelligenc
e tests for preschoolers. Two measures of basic concepts, the Bracken
Basic Concept Scale (BBCS; Bracken, 1984) and the Boehm Test of Basic
Concepts-Preschool Version (Boehm-Preschool; Boehm, 1986), were used t
o assess: (a) the presence of basic concepts in the directions of inte
lligence tests; (b) the percentage of preschool-age children who under
stand these terms; and (c) the frequency with which basic concepts occ
ur throughout test administration procedures. Results indicated that u
se of the Boehm-Preschool alone or an examination of only the presence
of basic concepts and the proportion of children who understand them
provide limited information about the difficulty of test directions. I
t is not until one tabulates the total number of times (that is, frequ
ency) that each basic concept occurs in test directions that their tru
e complexity is realized. This review showed that all intelligence tes
t directions contain excessive use of difficult basic concepts. Althou
gh data are not available to examine the extent to which children from
countries other than America are likely to understand test directions
, in light of the present results, it seems reasonable to assume that
all young children may have difficulty comprehending intelligence test
directions, regardless of country of origin.