[Adaptation of Wechsler intelligence scales for children (WISC) to Argentinian subjects]

In this paper some objections were made regarding the order in which the elements in the Wechsler Intelligence Scale subtests for children are introduced, as it may prove wrong for Argentinian children. Besides it is important to specify which are the items that--due to their being in close relation to cultural characteristics--turn out to be irrelevant or inadequate for these subjecs. The sample consisted of one hundred pupils belonging to different social and cultural levels--attending the highest grade in Primary School--whose ages range from twelve to thirteen. These pupils have been given a translated and adapted version of the WISC. The difficulty presented by each of the items of the various subtests has been throroughly analyzed and it has been observed that the order of some of them did not answer the increasing difficulty criterion which they had been elaborated with. In the Information and Vocabulary Subtests, for example, some elements were shown to be more difficult than others, while some other elements turned out too easy for the order they had been placed in. Besides there are some words too sensitive to the subjects' cultural differences. In the Comprehension subtest some questions turned out too difficult due to the fact that the required information is less frequent in our environment. In the Arithmetic subtest one of the items would not meet the difficulty grading shown while the last two items offer very little possibility of success for all subjects.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)