Seguin Form Board Seguin Form Board as a measure of general intelligence in typical as well as children with developmental disabilities. Despite lapse of about a century since the design and development of form boards in the context of testing and training senses in children with intellectual disabilities, the humble device continues to remain one of the most popular, easy-to-use, and simplest tools being used by rehabilitation professionals.
Obects in space are !-dimensional. "hey are perceived by the human eye as #-dimensional images. Form perception allows the perception of a #-dimensional retinal image as a coherent !-dimensional form and entity. "he way adults perceive the world is totally different from the child. $ child initially views the world in a state of flux. From that state, emerges a sense of permanence for self, obects and the surroundings. "he child reali%es that shape or form of obects obects do not change change despite despite apparent apparent changes changes in color, location, location, si%e, movement or color. color. "his is perceptual constancy. Soon, the child understands that there is a cause-effect for things or events in environment. &ith rudimentary development of imagery, along with traces of memory, the child grasps that there is a past and present. "his will be later added with the notion of a future. $t this stage, there may be still fre'uent confusions between imaginary and actual actual,, past past and present, present, fact fact and fiction, fiction, self self and world, world, part part and whole ()ay, ()ay, #**+ #**+ &rightson, /0. Beginning a stage of sensory fixation, by five months, through locali%ation and trac1ing, infant infantss li1e li1e adults, adults, are capabl capablee of using using variou variouss cues cues to percei perceive ve !-dime !-dimensi nsiona onall images images including depth and shape. "hey may be yet unable to discriminate motion and color of two or more obects. $dult li1e form perception (also called contour perception0 involves sensory discrimination of a pattern, shape or outline. 2estalt psychologists have long recogni%ed certa certain in grou ground nd prin princi cipl ples es base based d on whic which h huma human n bein beings gs are are beli believ eved ed to nego negoti tiate ate or acco accomp mplis lish h the the tas1 tas1 of dayday-to to-d -day ay form form perce percept ptio ion. n. "hey "hey are3 are3 simil similar arity ity,, cont contin inui uity ty,, proximity, proximity, symmetry, symmetry, closure and pragnan% or figure-ground. CLASSIFICATION OF FORMS Forms or shapes are of many 1inds and they can be classified in many ways. $ useful classification for understanding form perception of children in a developmental perspective is divided as primary, secondary and tertiary shapes. 4rimary shapes are simple forms li1e circle, s'uare and triangle. Secondary shapes are derived or extended from primary shapes, such as, rectangle, oval, ellipse, semi-circle, rhombus, diamond, simple 'uadrilaterals and parallelogram. "ertiary shapes are combination of primary and secondary shapes, such as, hexagon, pentagon, heptagon, oxagon, nonagon, decagon, dodecagon, hospital plus, simple or 5hristmas star. From a developmental perspective, children first ac'uire primary shapes at 1indergarten level followed by attainment of secondary shapes by primary school and later master tertiary shapes during middle and high school years. 6n other words, children below five appreciate primary shapes, those between five and eight or nine can handle secondary shapes as the older children are proficient with tertiary shapes. "hus, the development of form perception appears to be lin1ed to developmental age levels (7rogh 8 Slent%, #**0. "his observation is the basis for development and standardi%ation of tests of intelligence such
as 2esell Drawing "est, Draw a 4erson "ests, 9ouse "ree 4erson Drawing "est, 5ow 4ersonality "est, :orschach 6n1blot "est, Furham Shape and 5olor "est, etc. TESTS INVOLVING FORM PERCEPTION "he measurement of spatial visuali%ation or visual spatial ability involving manipulation of #dimensionl and !-dimensional obects or figures may involve use of form boards, paper folding tas1s, manipulation of cubes, reversal of needles on cloc1s, ma%e route finding tas1s, etc. $mong all of them, the form board tests are the most popular. Based on single factor theory of intelligence, form board tests measure speed and accuracy apart from a child;s eyehand co-ordination, visuo-motor s1ills, shape-concept, visual perception and cognitive ability. "here are several variants of form board test. "he simplest is three to five, six and0 and &itmer Form Board (?oung, @0. )aria )ontessori was the first to apply form board device for training normal children. "he form board was first used as testing device by Aaomi Aorsworthy in her study of mental defectives (Aorsworthy, *@0. "he board had a hapha%ard mix of primary, secondary and tertiary forms even with handles to place or retrieve them. 2oddard brought the board to its present si%e, removed the handles and complex forms which used to be preset in its earlier version (2oddard, +0. dwin B. "wittmyer adopted 2oddard=s arrangement and si%e of forms, but revised their order, made the recesses shallow, used hard wood, and gave the overall attractive appearance that it has today ()ittler, #**/0. TYPES OF FORM BOARDS
$part from !-dimensional wooden form boards, investigators have designed, developed and standardi%ed paper form boards too. "he Minnesota Paer Form Board Test contains @> multiple choice items arranged in order of difficulty. 6t contains five figures and one of the figures is displayed in disarranged parts. "he Art!ur Point Per"orman#e S#a$e (Cester, # &orthington, #@ $rthur, #/ # Dearborn, $nderson 8 5hristensen, @0 is a combination of color-form test, five form board tests, a triangle performance test and a chair construction test with varying degrees levels of performance difficulty "he Mare and Foa$ Pi#ture Board Test falls under picture form board variety. "he board carries the picture of a mare and foal in a field with two sheep lying down and three chic1ens in foreground. 6n the bac1ground, two houses are seen at a distance. "he %&Figure Form Board was devised with the idea of ma1ing the test somewhat more complicated than SFB. For this reason, each one of the cut-outs is divided into two pieces with the exception of one that is divided into three pieces. 6n SFB, each is a full piece.
"he '&Figure Form Board has only a s'uare and cross. 6t was also devised by 4aterson to be much more difficult than the -Figure Form Board and SFB. arlier called (no) Im*e#i$e Form Board , the Casuist Form Board Test was designed by 7nox (>0. "he test consists of a board with three circles of varying si%es and a fourth aperture in the shape of elongated oval with the side parallel part of the way. $nother adult form board called +Arro, Board- is described and partly standardi%ed by Dunham (@0 on /> high school pupils aged -/. "he number of subects tested and the nature of selection of subects ma1e the test of little value in practical clinical wor1 at the present time. "he Triang$e Test was devised by 2wyn and Diagona$ Test was devised by 7empf as described by 7nox (>0. "he triangle is cut into two pieces and the diagonal into four pieces. "he .ea$/ Pu00$e (Bruc1ner 8 7ing, @ 9ealy 8 Fernald, 0 contains four rectangular pieces of different dimensions which when assembled will fit into a form board. "he Mani1in Test was devised by 4inter for young children. 6t demands the same 1ind of ability as in Feature 4rofile "est. "he Feature Pro"i$e Test2 designed by 7nox and 7empf, is apt for !-year old children and above (7nox, >0. "est administration, instructions, scoring and interpretation are similar to )ani1in "est described above. "he Mar*$e Board Test (&erner, >>0 was developed and standardi%ed on mentally retarded children between mental ages of +-. "he test performance re'uires duplication of six mosaic forms on a marble board of ten rows of ten holes each. SEG3IN FORM BOARD
O. douard Seguin (/#-//*0 and E..D. s'uirol (++#-/>*0 were two French physicians who revolutioni%ed thin1ing about persons with mental retardation. "hey lay the foundation for later development of Binet tests. 6n those days, mental retardation was called idiocy= and mental illness was referred as dementia=. s'uirol recogni%ed three levels of mental retardation3 those using short phrases, those using monosyllables and those with cries only, no speech. "here was no classification of mental retardation as mild, moderate, severe and profound as done today. Seguin established a new humanism toward mental retardation in the late /**s. $s a student of s'uirol and fellow mate of E)2 6tard (++>-/!/0, who is well 1nown for his -year attempt to train the &ild Boy of $veyron=, a feral child who lived in the woods for the first ten of life, Seguin constructed a teaching aid under physiological method= for children with mental retardation (6tard, !# Seguin, @ /@@0. 6n @, Seguin, 2oddard and Sylvester developed the non-verbal test of intelligence called SFB. "he idea of using form boards began by the turn of th century. "he first effective use of SFB to assess general intelligence covering mental functions li1e form perception, visual matching and discrimination, eye-hand or psycho-motor coordination and cognitive
perceptual abilities in children was followed (Spearman, #+0. "here are several norms available for the SFB as there are different procedures for their administration, scoring and interpretation. Some of the earliest norms were given by 4inter 8 4aterson, (@0, &allin (@a @b0, &hipple (>0, Sylvester (!0, 2oddard ( #0, etc. "he SFB is probably one of the most widely use performance tests of general intelligence for young children. "he simplicity of the test, 'uic1ness and ease of administration, portability, facility to arouse attention or sustain interest, and temporal brevity are some reasons for its continued popularity (Sha1ow 8 7ent, #0. Originally designed for use with intellectually disabled children as propaudeutic tas1 in a sensory-motor training paradigm by the so called Gphysiological methodG developed by Seguin, formal norms for SFB was developed (5attell, !0 as GgG (general0 measure of intelligence (Spearman, #+0. &hile the test is most diagnostic as measure of mental age and
three trials is the often recommended procedure for test scoring, in view of the findings on the efficacy of having increased trials, this area re'uires closer research. "he phenomenon of test scatter is also reported. $lso called dispersion, this involves children showing inconsistencies in their time ta1en across trials to complete the test tas1. xpectedly, the time ta1en by a child to complete one trial must decrease in the next trail. "his may be due to the effect of familiarity as well as practice. 9owever, in some cases, when a child ta1es more time and commits more errors in later trials than in the initial ones, it implies that certain extraneous factors are at wor1 that is impeding the optimum performance of the child. Obviously, there must be some mechanism to discount such nuisance factors while calculating the final score or interpreting the test results. Scatter can also occur owing to temporary lac1 of attention, motivation, disinterest, boredom, monotony, etc. F3T3RE DIRECTIONS "he SFB is not to be rec1oned as a closed chapter. 6t is neither to be deemed as a departed test deserving a re'uiem. On the other hand, it holds potential for becoming a revived or reuvenated tool if only contemporary researchers awa1en to view the humble device from innovative perspectives. S3MMARY 6n sum, this paper has attempted to trace the historical bac1drop of SFB-which happens to be close to celebrating its hundred years of existence. ven as this device for intelligence testing continues to be used by psychologists and rehabilitation professions all over the world, very less is made available on its hoary past. Despite its age, and even after having weathered several storms owing to the much assailed concept of intelligence upon which it rests, the humble device continues to find its place upon the table of almost all examiners wor1ing towards diagnosis, program planning and remediation of children with special needs both inside as well as outside the country. 6t continues to hold promise for new avenues of research-albeit differently, which is also an invitation and innovation being put forth in this paper.
