The Frequency of Eye-Movement on the Bender-Gestalt Test as a Measure of Attention Breadth

This study examined if the Bender-Gestalt eye-movement score is reliable and valid for measuring the breadth of attention. The Bender-Gestalt test was administered to 116 psychiatric or neurologic patients. The results showed that the score is very reliable and has significant construct validity. When the patients were grouped according to -their clinical diagnosis and compared on the score, it was found that the score is also valid for diagnosing neuro-psychiatric patients. Attention has increasingly become the focus of interest of the psychologist recently. The concern with this concept in abnormal psychology was reawakened by Silverman (1964). He interepreted many schizophrenic symptoms as an indication or result of attentional disturbance, and showed, for example, that the paranoid is significantly different from the non-paranoid schizophrenic on the extensity of attention, the former's being unusally extensive and the latter's remarkably narrow.