Seguin Form Board

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.

 Obects 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, obects and the surroundings. "he child reali%es that shape or form of  obects obects 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 obects. $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 obects 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, 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