Chair: Nadine Schuchart

Overview:

Living in a world of increasing cultural diversity both across and with nations demonstrates daily the necessity of developing multilingual, nonverbal and adaptive psychological tests with high standards. In particular, this need also appears in the area of measuring developmental and intelligent functions of children and young people.

Two different test designs were developed to meet these demands. On the one hand the SON-R: a nonverbal intelligence test which can be applied across cultures and nations as it is designed to be applied without the use of verbal or written instruction. And on the other hand the IDS: a highly differentiating test battery assessing developmental and cognitive functions. To meet the unique cultural differences the IDS are offered in different languages and item adaptations to meet differences in culture and language.

Indeed the first paper in this symposium lights up the specifics of three different versions of the nonverbal intelligence test SON-R (2½-7, 2½-7a, and 6-40). The second paper gives an overview of assessing cognitive and developmental functions across childhood with the IDS. Moreover highlights of the newest development named IDS-2 are presented. The third paper considers clinical applications of the IDS and shows possible directions of IDS development in the future. The final paper tells the story in which way the IDS became successful on the Polish market based on a survey among Polish school psychologists.

*****

Paper 1: Assessing cognitive abilities of children and adolescents with SON-R intelligence tests

Jaap A. Laros

Introduction: The first version of the SON test (Snijders-Oomen Nonverbal intelligence test) was intended for the intelligence assessment of deaf children in terms of learning ability and the extent to which children can profit from instruction at school.

Objectives Purpose of this presentation is to show the general structure and specifics of three SON-R versions.

Design and Conclusions: At the moment, there are three versions: (1) the SON-R 2½-7, for children between 2½ and 7 years, (2) the SON-R 2½-7[a], the abbreviated version of SON-R 2½-7, and (3) the SON-R 6-40 for people between 6 and 40 years. The SON tests are especially suited for the intelligence assessment of children with hearing-, speech- and language problems. The SON tests differ in several essential aspects from traditional tests of intelligence: the examinees do not need any specific language abilities; an adaptive testing procedure is used during the presentation of the items, and after each item feedback is given, which gives the examinee the opportunity to learn during the test administration. Another aspect refers to the procedure of determining the norm scores. For each SON test a mathematical model is elaborated where the score distributions for all age groups are fitted simultaneously as a continuous function of age. This way the norms can be based on the exact age of examinees, which is especially important in the age range from two to seven years during which the test performance improves very strongly. The SON-tests are used in various countries, like Germany, France, England, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Romania, China and Brazil. The research results with the various SON tests indicate that they are useful instruments for the nonverbal examination of the cognitive ability of children and adolescents with high score reliability and ample indications of the score validity.

Paper 2: IDS and IDS-2: Overview, Goals and newest Developments

Alexander Grob

Introduction: The Intelligence and Development Scales (IDS) have their roots in a complete reconception of the Kramer Intelligence Test, which in turn directly refers to the Binet-Simon Test. The IDS bridge intelligence and developmental testing: They include a measure of general intelligence and additionally provide a developmental profile for the functional areas of Cognition, Psycho-Motor Skills, Social-Emotional Competences, Mathematics, Language, and Achievement Motivation.

Objectives: The aim of the presentation is to show the general structure of the IDS and newest developments of the IDS-2.

Design and Conclusion: The IDS allow detecting early developmental abnormalities and serve as an instrument for health care. The IDS can be applied for the complete range of developmental and achievement assessments, for school enrolment as well as for the clinical domain. The standardization sample includes 1.330 children in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Construct validity for age trends, subscaleintercorrelations, and factor structure were tested. Moreover, checks for criterion validity were done through comparisons with HAWIK-IV (German version of the WISC-IV), scholastic achievement tests, and parent’s and teacher’s reports. Differential validity is shown for gifted children, learning-disabled children, children of foreign-language, children with hyperkinetic disorder, children with Asperger’s syndrome and children with aggressive behavior in differences in mean values as expected. The new Intelligence and Development Scales for Children and Adolescents (IDS-2) are globally the first test procedure providing a measure of general intelligence and developmental domains for children and adolescents aged 5 to 20 years. Highlights of the newest development are: more than 22.000 subjects, specific cultural adaptions, and different language versions.

Paper 3: Clinical application of Intelligence and Development Scales for Children aged 5-10

Diana Fecenec

Introduction: Many psychometric tests were primary intended for assessing general (healthy) population. But very often as tests are being revised they evolve to become more useful in clinician diagnosis – to assess special population or/and to use it in differential diagnosis. That need was also revealed in results of survey study conducted in Poland and regarding application and use of Intelligence and Development Scales (IDS).

Objectives: Purpose of this presentation is to show what was done in a field of clinical applications of IDS.

Design/Methodology: Presentation refers to results of validation studies presented by authors of original version (Grob, A., Meyer, C. S., & Hagmann von Arx, P., 2009) as well as authors of different language adaptations. Children with various disorders were assessed with IDS. Their scores were compare (t-student) to results obtained by children from general population (parallel groups were equal with respect to age, gender, mother’s education level and place of residence). Children of clinical groups in most studies systematically scored lower than children from normal population.

Conclusions: Results showed that IDS as multidimensional tool can be very useful in differential diagnosis. Although validation data largely meet expectations of practitioners still there is something to do in this matter. Therefore last issue of presentation concerns developing and improving IDS in a way to make that tool more useful for clinical diagnosis.

Paper 4: The source of the IDS success on the Polish test market

Introduction: Intelligence and Development Scales (IDS) had a great success in Poland. After two years of its presence on the Polish test market IDS became one of the most popular tests for children aged 5–10.

Objectives: The aim of the presentation is to find out what is the source of IDS success and try to determine the conditions that must be met by a new test if it is supposed to become popular and commonly used.

Design/Methodology: In 2015 the survey on test use was carried out among the Polish school psychologists. The questionnaire was filled out online or in paper version by 584 psychologists.

Results: 81% respondents use IDS for the assessment. Almost half of them participated in the training workshops dedicated to IDS. IDS have been used for different purposes in psychological practice. Psychologists enumerated many advantages and disadvantages of IDS.

Conclusions: To fulfill the expectations of the test users, IDS should be systematically improved, so that the possibility of using it was widened.