A STUDY TO DETERMINE THE RELATIONSHIPS EXISTING BETWEEN SENSORY INTEGRATIVE FUNCTIONING AND PERFORMANCE IQ IN CHILDREN WITH MYELOMENINGOCELE

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between sensory integrative functioning, as measured by the Southern California Sensory Integration Tests, and cognitive abilities, as measured by the Performance Scale of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised, in children with myelomeningocele, the most common form of spina bifida. The two tests were administered to 30 children with myelomeningocele who had a minimum Verbal IQ of 80 and who had no other complicating neurological or behavioral problems. Their ages were six years, eight months to nine years. Nine of the children had verbal-performance discrepancies of 15 points or more and all of these were in the direction of high Verbal IQ, low Performance IQ. A correlative coefficients were obtained for each set of bivariate data. Using all possible subtest combinations from the two instruments, this yielded a matrix of 102 correlation coefficients of which 40 were found to be significant at the .01 confidence level. All Performance IQ subtests related significantly to sensory integrative functions to some extent. The five which were most extensively related were those which comprise the Perceptual Organization factor on Kaufman's 1975 factor analysis of the WISC-R standardization sample. The three which were most extensively related were Picture Completion, Block Design, and Object Assembly which parallel a triad of Performance subtests characteristic of three different theoretical models as follows: Bannatyne's Spatial category; Goodenough and Karp's field independent cognitive style; and Das and Kirby's simultaneous mode for neurological processing of information. When sensory integration subtests were grouped according to Ayres' sensory systems model, significant relationships with Performance IQ were found to exist for all three levels of the model--basic sensory channels, intermediate processes, and end product skills. Results of the study suggest that for children with myelomeningocele who have below average Performance IQ with deficits in the triad of subtests cited referral for full assessment of sensory integrative skills would be one beneficial approach.