Lauretta Bender
Encyclopedia
Lauretta Bender, M.D. was a child neuropsychiatrist, best known as the creator of
the Bender-Gestalt Test
.
s and learning problems, and their causes, when she was in third grade, around the age of eight. Because her handwriting was so poor and her reading was so slow, she was considered by school authorities to be slightly retarded, and they attempted to force her to go back to second grade. Her father, however, prevented this move, as he was aware that Lauretta’s reading and writing skills needed support, not punishment.
and an M.D. from Iowa State University
. She worked at Bellevue Hospital in New York City
from 1930 to 1956.
to 100 children, (among them was Ted Chabasinski
, now a human rights activist).
"Bender, who shocked 100 children, the youngest of whom was 3, abandoned the use of ECT in the 1950s. She is best known as the co-developer of a widely used neuropsychological test that bears her name, not as a pioneer in the use of ECT on children. That work was discredited by researchers who found that the children she treated either showed no improvement or got worse."
, considered in its broadest sense” (24). She felt that, although there were many possible reasons for the maturational delays, such as those resulting from poor social experiments at critical times of language development, there was a genetic
factor underlying some reading disabilities.
Bender viewed reading disabilities as evolving from a basic biological unevenness in maturation. She believed the reading disability itself to be but a manifestation of a more fundamental condition. Bender claimed that “children with various biological problems have a number of common problems", including: difficulties in patterned behavior in impulse
, motor, perceptual and integrative areas; severe anxiety
, also poorly patterned, with associated body image
and identification problems; and a great need for human support in relation to these areas.
With the help of Paul Schilder, Bender developed the thesis that many of the language problems facing children with reading disabilities may have as their basis difficulty with the temporal
ordering of sequences in a series of hierarchies
of organization. Such ordering and hierarchical sequences include the organization of phoneme
s in words, words in a sentence
, and sentences within paragraphs.
and schizophrenia
occupying the other. Although her views in this matter have been criticized, they essentially posit that autism and schizophrenia are biologically determined lags in maturity, just as reading disability is a biologically developed deviation. Bender does not imply that the causes of the afflictions are the same, but instead that their connection lies in the common symptoms of specific language dysfunctions.
Bender attempted to understand the vulnerability of the language function to all the developmental disorder
s. She recognized the biological nature of a group of learning disorders for which there was no clinical evidence of structural damage to the central nervous system
. She also understood that the learning problem was only one symptom of the biological defect which affects other areas of behavior, such as impulse control, motor coordination
, perception and integration, and that underlying the spectrum of deficits is basic dysfunction in special orientation and temporal organization. Bender also incorporated social factors contributing to language delay
.
Bender's research has been used to devise programs to prevent learning disorders. Her efforts contributed a wealth of knowledge in the field of learning disorders that is still called upon and serves as a foundation for many different pedagogies
.
, A Visual Motor Gestalt Test and Its Clinical Use. The test consists of reproducing nine figures that are printed on cards. The figures were derived from the work of the famous Gestalt psychologist
, Max Wertheimer
. The Bender-Gestalt test, as it is now often called, was typically among the top five test used by clinical psychologists. It was considered to be a measure of perceptual motor skills and perceptual motor development and gives an indication of neurological intactness. Underlying the use of this test was Lauretta Bender's false argument that a single measure that assesses gestalt could potentially identify brain damage. In the past two decades studies have repeatedly shown that the B-G is not sensitive to the identification of brain damage or emotional problems. It is therefore rarely taught or used by clinical psychologists.
Scoring systems include:
Patrica Lacks uses the BGT test as a screening device for brain damage
. Bender herself said it was "a method of evaluating maturation of gestalt functioning children 4-11's brain functioning by which it responds to a given constellation of stimuli as a whole, the response being a motor process of patterning the perceived gestalt."
Gestalt therapy
is a separate and distinct science from the Visual Motor Gestalt Test. The name "Bender-Gestalt Test" derives its name from an adaptation of the figures from Gestalt psychologist
Max Wertheimer
.
The Hidden Tragedy of the CIA’s Experiments on Children
August 12, 2010 posted by Michael Leon ·
the Bender-Gestalt Test
Bender-Gestalt Test
The Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test, or simply the Bender-Gestalt test, is a psychological test first developed by child neuropsychiatrist Lauretta Bender. The test is used to evaluate "visual-motor maturity", to screen for developmental disorders, or to assess neurological function or brain...
.
Early life
Bender began to be interested in the development of language disorderLanguage disorder
Language disorders or language impairments are disorders that involve the processing of linguistic information. Problems that may be experienced can involve grammar , semantics , or other aspects of language...
s and learning problems, and their causes, when she was in third grade, around the age of eight. Because her handwriting was so poor and her reading was so slow, she was considered by school authorities to be slightly retarded, and they attempted to force her to go back to second grade. Her father, however, prevented this move, as he was aware that Lauretta’s reading and writing skills needed support, not punishment.
Education and career
Bender received B.S. and M.A. degrees in biology from the University of ChicagoUniversity of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
and an M.D. from Iowa State University
Iowa State University
Iowa State University of Science and Technology, more commonly known as Iowa State University , is a public land-grant and space-grant research university located in Ames, Iowa, United States. Iowa State has produced astronauts, scientists, and Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, along with a host of...
. She worked at Bellevue Hospital in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
from 1930 to 1956.
Electroshock therapy on children
While at Bellevue Hospital, Dr. Bender administered electroconvulsive therapyElectroconvulsive therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy , formerly known as electroshock, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in anesthetized patients for therapeutic effect. Its mode of action is unknown...
to 100 children, (among them was Ted Chabasinski
Ted Chabasinski
Ted Chabasinski is an American psychiatric survivor, human rights activist and attorney who lives in Berkeley, California. At the age of six he was taken from his foster family's home and committed to a New York psychiatric facility...
, now a human rights activist).
"Bender, who shocked 100 children, the youngest of whom was 3, abandoned the use of ECT in the 1950s. She is best known as the co-developer of a widely used neuropsychological test that bears her name, not as a pioneer in the use of ECT on children. That work was discredited by researchers who found that the children she treated either showed no improvement or got worse."
Work in reading disability
Bender became aware of the need for a specialized teaching philosophy applicable to children with language disabilities. She recognized that children with learning disorders were best understood as suffering from a biologically determined disorder. She believed that there was “a functional defect of the maturation of those areas...needed for the development of languageLanguage
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
, considered in its broadest sense” (24). She felt that, although there were many possible reasons for the maturational delays, such as those resulting from poor social experiments at critical times of language development, there was a genetic
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
factor underlying some reading disabilities.
Bender viewed reading disabilities as evolving from a basic biological unevenness in maturation. She believed the reading disability itself to be but a manifestation of a more fundamental condition. Bender claimed that “children with various biological problems have a number of common problems", including: difficulties in patterned behavior in impulse
Impulse (psychology)
An impulse is a wish or urge, particularly a sudden one. It can be considered as a normal and fundamental part of human thought processes, but also one that can become problematic, as in a condition like obsessive-compulsive disorder....
, motor, perceptual and integrative areas; severe anxiety
Anxiety
Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. The root meaning of the word anxiety is 'to vex or trouble'; in either presence or absence of psychological stress, anxiety can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness,...
, also poorly patterned, with associated body image
Body image
Body image refers to a person's perception of the aesthetics and sexual attractiveness of their own body. The phrase body image was first coined by the Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst Paul Schilder in his masterpiece The Image and Appearance of the Human Body...
and identification problems; and a great need for human support in relation to these areas.
With the help of Paul Schilder, Bender developed the thesis that many of the language problems facing children with reading disabilities may have as their basis difficulty with the temporal
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
ordering of sequences in a series of hierarchies
Hierarchy
A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...
of organization. Such ordering and hierarchical sequences include the organization of phoneme
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s in words, words in a sentence
Sentence (linguistics)
In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...
, and sentences within paragraphs.
Work in language disability
Although Bender focused mainly on reading disability, she also spent a great deal of time working in the broad field of language disability. She viewed developmental language disabilities as occurring along a spectrum from least to most severe, with reading disability occupying the least severe end of the spectrum and the language problems of autismAutism
Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their...
and schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
occupying the other. Although her views in this matter have been criticized, they essentially posit that autism and schizophrenia are biologically determined lags in maturity, just as reading disability is a biologically developed deviation. Bender does not imply that the causes of the afflictions are the same, but instead that their connection lies in the common symptoms of specific language dysfunctions.
Bender attempted to understand the vulnerability of the language function to all the developmental disorder
Developmental disorder
Developmental disorders occur at some stage in a child's development, often retarding the development. These may include,psychological or physical disorders. The disorder is an impairment in the normal development of motor or cognitive skills that are developed before age 18 in which they are...
s. She recognized the biological nature of a group of learning disorders for which there was no clinical evidence of structural damage to the central nervous system
Central nervous system
The central nervous system is the part of the nervous system that integrates the information that it receives from, and coordinates the activity of, all parts of the bodies of bilaterian animals—that is, all multicellular animals except sponges and radially symmetric animals such as jellyfish...
. She also understood that the learning problem was only one symptom of the biological defect which affects other areas of behavior, such as impulse control, motor coordination
Motor coordination
thumb|right|Motor coordination is shown in this animated sequence by [[Eadweard Muybridge]] of himself throwing a diskMotor coordination is the combination of body movements created with the kinematic and kinetic parameters that result in intended actions. Such movements usually smoothly and...
, perception and integration, and that underlying the spectrum of deficits is basic dysfunction in special orientation and temporal organization. Bender also incorporated social factors contributing to language delay
Language delay
Language delay is a failure to develop language abilities on the usual developmental timetable. Language delay is distinct from speech delay, in which the speech mechanism itself is the focus of delay...
.
Bender's research has been used to devise programs to prevent learning disorders. Her efforts contributed a wealth of knowledge in the field of learning disorders that is still called upon and serves as a foundation for many different pedagogies
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....
.
Bender-Gestalt Test
Bender is best known for her Visual Motor Gestalt Test described in her 1938 monographMonograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
, A Visual Motor Gestalt Test and Its Clinical Use. The test consists of reproducing nine figures that are printed on cards. The figures were derived from the work of the famous Gestalt psychologist
Gestalt psychology
Gestalt psychology or gestaltism is a theory of mind and brain of the Berlin School; the operational principle of gestalt psychology is that the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies...
, Max Wertheimer
Max Wertheimer
- External links :* * * * *...
. The Bender-Gestalt test, as it is now often called, was typically among the top five test used by clinical psychologists. It was considered to be a measure of perceptual motor skills and perceptual motor development and gives an indication of neurological intactness. Underlying the use of this test was Lauretta Bender's false argument that a single measure that assesses gestalt could potentially identify brain damage. In the past two decades studies have repeatedly shown that the B-G is not sensitive to the identification of brain damage or emotional problems. It is therefore rarely taught or used by clinical psychologists.
Scoring systems include:
- Elizabeth M. Koppitz's system for children (1963)
- Pascal and Suttell system for adults (1951)
- Hutt and Briskin projective personality feature system (1960)
- Arthur Canter's Background Interference Procedure (BIP) test for organicity (1976)
Patrica Lacks uses the BGT test as a screening device for brain damage
Brain damage
"Brain damage" or "brain injury" is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells. Brain injuries occur due to a wide range of internal and external factors...
. Bender herself said it was "a method of evaluating maturation of gestalt functioning children 4-11's brain functioning by which it responds to a given constellation of stimuli as a whole, the response being a motor process of patterning the perceived gestalt."
Gestalt therapy
Gestalt therapy
Gestalt therapy is an existential/experiential form of psychotherapy that emphasizes personal responsibility, and that focuses upon the individual's experience in the present moment, the therapist-client relationship, the environmental and social contexts of a person's life, and the self-regulating...
is a separate and distinct science from the Visual Motor Gestalt Test. The name "Bender-Gestalt Test" derives its name from an adaptation of the figures from Gestalt psychologist
Gestalt psychology
Gestalt psychology or gestaltism is a theory of mind and brain of the Berlin School; the operational principle of gestalt psychology is that the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies...
Max Wertheimer
Max Wertheimer
- External links :* * * * *...
.
"Childhood Schizophrenia" LSD-25 Experiments
"From early 1940 to 1953, Dr. Lauretta Bender, a highly respected child neuropsychiatrist practicing at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, experimented extensively with electroshock therapy on children who had been diagnosed with “autistic schizophrenia.” In all, it has been reported that Bender administered electroconvulsive therapy to at least 100 children ranging in age from three years old to 12 years, with some reports indicating the total may be twice that number. One source reports that, inclusive of Bender’s work, electroconvulsive treatment was used on more than 500 children at Bellevue Hospital from 1942 to 1956, and then at Creedmoor State Hospital Children’s Service from 1956 to 1969. Bender was a confident and dogmatic woman, who bristled at criticism, oftentimes refused to acknowledge reality even when it stood starkly before her."The Hidden Tragedy of the CIA’s Experiments on Children
August 12, 2010 posted by Michael Leon ·