Abstract
The Frostig Developmental Test of Visual Perception and Frostig Progam for the Development of Visual Perception are about to be used widely in schools and clinics in Japan. However, some cautions should accompany the use of these materials, since theoretical and practical questions have been raised by American researchers. Most questions are focussed on the indepndence of the Frostig subtests in terms of factor analytic studies. While Corah and Powell initially extracted two general factors, intelligence and developmental changes in perception, most studies reported that the Frostig five subtests measure a common perceptual function. These findings may lead one to a serious question of the validity of the test. Yet, since the question of the subtest independence has not been resolved, one could expect PQ of the test to measure the whole process of a child's visual perception. The relationships between the test scores and the school readiness are also controversial issues. It is understandable that most research failed to find significant evidence of the relationship between them, because school achievement is made up of various psychological and educational functions. Thus, one should regard perceptual skill as one of the settinge necessary for school achievement. In a similar way the literature showed little evidence that perceptual training using the Frostig Program for the Development of Visual Perception had significant effects on academic improvement. In contrast to this negative evidence Halliwell and Solan demonstrated the positive effects of perceptual training on reading improvement. They attributed this success to the fact that their experiments were carried out with more instructional time, more comprehensive programs, better trained personnel, and smaller groups of students than any of the studies reporting insignificant findings. The Frostig Test shows up a scoring problem in which a poorer raw score would receive a higher scale score and succeedingly a higher PQ at a certain age level. The misuse of the conversion table standardized in the Unied States of America. should be corrected by using the forthcoming Japanese standard. The present writer concludes that although the Frostig Test is an incomplete instrument we can utilize it accompanied by other diagnostic techniques.
