The use of the Canter Background Interference Procedure for the Bender Gestalt Test on alcohol abusers between the ages of 17 and 21 years.

Abstract

This study was designed to determine whether the Canter BIP Effect discriminated between individuals ages 17-21 years who were alcohol abusers and those who were not. Canter (1976) suggested that the alerting properties of the BIP Effect might prove effective in monitoring changes in an individual's central nervous system function. An incidental, nonprobability sample of 50 alcohol abusers were identified by observational criteria. They consented to serve as participants in the experimental group. A comparable group of 50 non-abusers were selected to serve in the control group. The test data were analyzed by using Student's t-test for independent data to compare the mean Difference Scores of the two groups. The data were analyzed further by utilizing Student's t-test to compare each design score between the experimental group and the control group. The analysis of data led to rejecting the null hypotheses of no statistically significant difference between the mean score of the experimental group and the control group on the Difference Scores and the mean scores on individual designs 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7, respectively. In all instances more errors were displayed by the experimental group which indicated the usefulness of the instrument in distinguishing between alcohol abusers and alcohol non-abusers.