Intelligence and Development Scales-2 (IDS-2-BS) for Children and Adolescents with Blindness and Visual Impairments: Adaptation of the IDS-2 Intelligence and Development Scales for Children and Adolescents

For the planning and implementation of individualized educational programmes, assessing the intelligence and developmental status of children and adolescents with special needs is a key concern. The acquisition of knowledge and behavioural competencies differs between young persons with blindness or vision impairments and their sighted peers. In addition, assessment of their cognitive abilities and their developmental status requires specific, appropriate methods that take into account the unique perceptual impairments and abilities. Today, there is largely a lack of standardized tests for assessing the intelligence and general development of children with blindness and visual impairments not only in the German-speaking countries. In the practical field of education of children with visual impairments, there is a great need to fill this gap through adaptation of a comprehensive test.

The Intelligence and Development Scales-2 (IDS-2) (Grob & Hagmann-von Arx, 2018) for sighted children and adolescents from age 5;0 to 20;11 was published by Hogrefe Publishing in 2018. The IDS-2 allows comprehensive assessment of intelligence, general development, and school achievement in the areas of mathematical reasoning, verbal abilities, reading, and spelling. Due to its multifunctional concept, it is very suitable as a basis for visual impairment-specific adaptations.

Aims

The aim is to develop, based on the IDS-2, a comprehensive test to assess intelligence and developmental status of children and adolescents from age 5;0 to 21;11 with blindness or visual impairments (IDS-2-BS). Two versions of the IDS-2-BS will be developed, adapted, and standardized:

• IDS-2-BS VA for children and adolescents with blindness or severe visual impairments
• IDS-2-BS VB for children and adolescents with moderate and mild visual impairments.

Project organization and implementation

The research project heads are responsible for the entire conception and standardization of the IDS-2-BS VA and VB under contract with Hogrefe Publishing and in cooperation with the teaching materials department at the Zollikofen School for the Blind (in Bern, Switzerland).

The particular challenge in the adaptation of the test for children and adolescents with blindness or severe visual impairments is that visual tasks have to be transferred into haptic tasks but measuring the same (analogous) intellectual abilities. This is significant due to the differences between visual and haptic grasping of task constellations and problems. For example, due to the limited overview when touching, haptic tasks also always assess memory processes. With vision and touch there are different spans of perception and therefore different quantities of information that can be absorbed at the same time. Through touch alone a large portion of information is not available for the processing of cognitive tasks.

The two test versions are being developed in the following stages:

• Evaluation of practical and theory-based adaptations of the testing materials as prototypes.
• Based on the results of the evaluation, development of the tasks for all subtests, the test administration manual, and test protocol/score sheets.
• In pilot studies for all age groups, try outs of the entire test conducted by students at Heidelberg University of Education as a part of student research papers.
• Analysis of the results by the research project heads and determination of the adaptations needed for the tasks in all subtests and for the test protocol/score sheets and test administration manual.
• Creation of test sets (materials, manuals, and test protocol/score sheets) for the standardization process.
• Organization and conducting of the standardization of the two versions of the test in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
• Creation of the final versions of the manuals and test protocol/score sheets.
• In parallel, definitive designing of the subtests and the corresponding manuals.

The IDS-2-BS VA for children and adolescents with blindness or severe visual impairments will be delivered to Hogrefe Publishing the end of 2024 and the IDS-2-BS VB for children and adolescents with moderate and mild visual impairments at the end of 2025.

Bibliography

Grob, A. & Hagmann-von-Arx, P. (2018). IDS -2 Intelligence and Development Scales. Intelligenz- und Entwicklungsskalen für Kinder und Jugendliche. Bern: Hogrefe AG.