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Documentation · 1938

Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test: Drawing-reproduction clinical test

Drawing-reproduction test using nine geometric figures. Lauretta Bender at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital adapted nine of Max Wertheimer's gestalt-psychology figures into a brief clinical test. The subject copies each figure; the reproductions are scored for distortions, rotations, perseverations, and other errors. The Bender Gestalt has been one of the most-used clinical tests for over 80 years, still in active use today (Bender-2, 2003).

Read About the Test

About the Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test

Lauretta Bender (1897-1987) was Senior Psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital in New York and one of the most influential American child psychiatrists of the 20th century. In 1938 she published A Visual Motor Gestalt Test and Its Clinical Use, introducing a brief clinical instrument based on the geometric figures studied by gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer.

The test is administered very simply: the examiner shows the subject nine printed cards, one at a time, each showing a geometric figure (intersecting lines, a row of dots, a wavy line, etc.). The subject copies each figure onto a blank sheet of paper. The whole administration takes about 10 minutes. Scoring assesses distortions, rotations, perseverations, fragmentation, and other errors that may indicate organic brain dysfunction, developmental immaturity, or specific neurocognitive conditions.

The Bender Gestalt became extraordinarily popular in clinical practice from the 1940s through the 1970s. It was used in neurological screening, intellectual disability assessment, learning disability identification, school readiness evaluation, and many other contexts. Estimates of its peak use suggest the Bender was one of the most-administered psychological tests in clinical practice during the postwar decades. The 2003 Bender-Gestalt II revision (Pearson) is still in active clinical use.

Copyright note: Bender Gestalt items and the modern Bender-2 are under Pearson copyright. This page documents the test's history and structure.

The 1 subtests

#1
9 geometric figure-copying items Nine printed cards showing geometric figures. Subject copies each with pencil on blank paper. Time about 10 minutes total.
Copyrighted

Sample Items (Illustrative)

The Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test presents geometric figures on cards which the subject must copy onto blank paper. The test is scored based on accuracy and precision of the copied figures, assessing visual-motor integration skills.

Sample 1 · 9 geometric figure-copying items
Card 1 displays a simple square with a diagonal line from one corner to the opposite corner. Please copy this figure onto the blank paper provided.
Example response: A square with a single diagonal line accurately drawn from one corner to the opposite corner.
Sample 2 · 9 geometric figure-copying items
Card 2 shows a circle with a small triangle inside, touching the circle at one point. Copy this figure as accurately as possible.
Example response: A circle with a small triangle inside, with one vertex of the triangle touching the circle's edge.
Sample 3 · 9 geometric figure-copying items
Card 3 presents a series of three parallel lines, each with a small square at the midpoint. Please replicate this pattern on your paper.
Example response: Three parallel lines with a small square centered on each line.

These are illustrative samples, not actual items from the protected test.

Source

All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from:

Bender, L. (1938). A Visual Motor Gestalt Test and Its Clinical Use. American Orthopsychiatric Association Research Monograph No. 3.

The 1938 monograph is available on Internet Archive: archive.org/details/visualmotorgesta1938unse. The Bender Gestalt and Bender-2 (2003) remain under PsychCorp (now Pearson) copyright; we only document the 1938 original and its history.

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This page is part of the Historical IQ Tests Archive. Editorial content, transcription notes, and curation are released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). Public-domain primary sources retain their public-domain status. BibTeX · RIS · CSL JSON

Historical test materials are obsolete and are not valid modern IQ assessments. This page is preserved for educational, research, and historiographic purposes.