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Testing the Cross-Cultural Clinical Utility of the VMI for Palestinian, Israeli, and American Typically Developing Kindergarten Children

Tamara Avi-Itzhak, Doris R Obler, Taisir M. Abdallah, Batya Engel-Yeger and Naomi Josman

Purpose: To assess the cross-cultural clinical utility of the Visual Motor Integration (VMI) standardized U.S. norms for typically developing Palestinian, Israeli, and American kindergarten children. The cross-cultural comparisons tested the extent to which the VMI standardized U.S. norms for all three tests (a) are appropriate for use with the aforementioned groups without the need for cross-cultural adaptations, and (b) have adequate rates of test sensitivity and specificity such that study classification results are comparable with those obtained using the VMI U.S. norms. Methods: The sample was comprised of 134 typically developing kindergarten children. Results: The observed mean performance scores were not significantly different from the published U.S. norms on all three tests for the Palestinian group and significantly higher for the Israeli group on all three tests. For the American group, scores were higher on the Visual Motor Integration and Visual Perception tests, but lower on the Motor Coordination test. The sensitivity rates for eight of the nine calculations resulted in perfect agreement between the study classification results and the VMI standardized classification of true positive cases. The specificity rates for the Palestinian group demonstrated perfect agreement between the study classification results and the VMI standardized U.S. norms. The specificity rates obtained for the Israeli and American groups were moderate. Conclusions: These exploratory findings merit additional research to further assess the clinical utility of employing the VMI U.S. norms with or without cross-cultural adaptations for these specific or any other cultural groups.