Misleading Report of Poor Screening Power of the Bender Gestalt: Comment on Margolis, Williger, Greenlief, Dunn, and Gfeller (1989)

Abstract

In this article, I criticize the recent conclusions by Margolis, Williger, Greenlief, Dunn, and Gfeller (1989) that the Bender Gestalt (BG) test shows poor diagnostic sensitivity for dementia in older adults when compared with common neuropsychological (NP) tests. I show that application of age-adequate norms would result in substantial reductions in degree of assumed impairment on NP measures and dissipation of large and illusory diagnostic differences between BG and NP measures.