PERFORMANCE OF LEARNING-DISABLED AND NON-LEARNING-DISABLED CHILDREN ON THE REY-OSTERRIETH COMPLEX FIGURE - VALIDATION OF THE DEVELOPMENTAL SCORING SYSTEM

We evaluated performance on the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure (ROCF) test of 323 children between 7 and 14 years old who were referred for evaluation as learning disabled (LD) as well as 353 non-LD controls. The Waber-Holmes developmental scoring system (Waber and Holmes, 1985, 1986), which quantifies organization, style, accuracy (organizational scheme [OS], incidental feature [IF]), and errors, was employed. There were reliable group differences for all, outcomes, the magnitude of which was age related. Children in the non-LD group showed marked improvement between 8 and 9 years old in organization, style (more configurational), and the number of organizational-structure components reproduced, with steady but more gradual improvement at older ages. Frequency of errors among non-LD children declined with age. There were no age-related effects for any outcome for the LD group, whose performance remained at the normative 8-year level through age 14. For LD children, the ROCF is sensitive to metacognitive skills that might reflect neurodevelopmental events occurring during middle childhood involving frontal brain systems.