Kaufman ABC Tests

The original Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC), a standardized, individually administered test of processing and cognitive abilities, was first published in 1983. At the time of its development, the K-ABC was innovative because it was both theory based and empirically grounded. Yet, the revision of the K-ABC, the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children—Second Edition (KABC-II), substantially improved the quality of the measure in both theory and structure. This entry describes the K-ABC in its new revision and approaches to interpretation of the scores.

Although the original K-ABC was based on a single theory, A. R. Luria's neuropsychological model, the KABC-II has dual theoretical foundations with the addition of the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) model. The dual theoretical approach offers flexibility in interpretation because a clinician can choose an interpretive approach (either Luria or CHC) that suits a child's background, the reason for referral, and the clinician's orientation. Luria's theory posits that there are three functional blocks of the brain: arousal and attention (block 1); the analysis, coding, and storage of information (block 2); and executive functions for formulating plans and programming behavior (block 3). The second theory, the CHC model, is a hierarchical theory composed of three strata: general intelligence (g; stratum III), broad abilities (stratum II), and narrow abilities (stratum I). The KABC-II measures six broad abilities—fluid intelligence (Gf), crystallized intelligence (Gc), short-term memory (Gsm), long-term retrieval (Glr), visual processing (Gv), and quantitative knowledge (Gq)—and provides a g score as an overall score. Because of the two sets of scores in the CHC approach, it is possible to identify gifted children both from a general ability perspective and a specific ability perspective.

The KABC-II provides two global scores for a child's overall cognitive level: the Mental Processing Index (MPI) for Luria's theory and the Fluid-Crystallized Index (FCI) for the CHC theory. The biggest difference between the two global scores is that the MPI excludes acquired knowledge or Gc. Kaufman and Kaufman recommend that the CHC model be preferred to the Luria model because knowledge is an important aspect of cognitive functioning. The CHC theory is particularly relevant to assessing children for giftedness, mental retardation, learning disabilities, and so forth. In relating the CHC factors measured by the KABC-II to giftedness, Gc, Gf, and Gv are associated with higher-order thinking abilities and Gq is often related to specific forms of academic giftedness (e.g., mathematics). The remaining CHC factors, Glr and Gsm, however, do not appear to have clear relevance to giftedness in isolation. However, the Luria approach is useful in situations where including measures of Gc compromises the validity of the FCI (e.g., assessing children from nonmainstream cultural backgrounds).

Another important aspect of the KABC-II is its cultural fairness in assessing children from diverse minority groups. Ethnically diverse children tend [Page 508]to score lower relative to Caucasian children on traditional intelligence tests. However, the KABC-II as well as the K-ABC reduced the global score group differences by incorporating teaching items and conducting expert bias analyses, item response analyses, and cultural validity studies, including nationally proportionate representations of ethnic minorities in the norm sample, and eliminating Gc from the MPI.

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