Responses of emotionally disturbed children to PPVT-R items of human versus nonhuman content: extension of Shipe, Cromwell, and Dunn.

A group of 22 children with diagnoses indicating one of the severe developmental disorders were tested for differential response patterns on the PPVT-R, in an extension of earlier research carried out by Shipe, Cromwell, and Dunn in 1966. Data supported the prediction of the children's greater difficulty with PPVT-R items featuring human content than with those featuring nonhuman content. In addition, children's relative success rates on human-content items correlated positively with a measure of differentiation of the children's drawings. The results suggest that the asociality of certain disturbed children may selectively lower intellectual efficiency and lead to underestimation of their intellectual potential.