Examined the relationship between WISC scatter and school competence measures for 101 boys at risk for psychiatric disorder. This sample, shown in previous research to be less competent in school than controls, was predicted to have greater scatter than a standardization sample. Further, within the high-risk sample, an association was predicted between two measures of scatter and lowered school competence, as measured by Fisher's (1980) peer and teacher ratings. The results suggested that the mean scatter variable available for both samples is significantly higher in the high-risk group than in the intelligence test standardization sample. This scatter measure also showed significant relationships with three of the five school competence measures. The second measure did not relate significantly to any of the school measures. These findings suggest that one of the two scatter measures is a valid index of less competent school functioning and may be in combination with other measures, a useful predictor of future psychopathology.
DAVID W. HARDER
This study derives from the University of Rochester Child and Family Study (URCAFS) (Garmezy, 1978) , a large longitudinal high-risk investigation of multiple aspects of child functioning, parent functioning, and family life in those intact families in which at least one parent (the "index" parent) has been hospitalized for functional psychiatric disorder, and there is a male child (the "index" child) age 4, 7, or 10. These children may be considered "at risk" for present psychopathology and for future psychiatric problems by virtue of severe pathology in a t least one parent, via environmental influences and/or genetic transmission. Though these children have not necessarily been diagnosed as having symptoms, they may be expected to show more difficulties in adjustment than would a normal control group. Indeed, in a previous URCAFS study these children were found to be functioning less well than control classmates in school (Fisher, Harder, & Kokes, 1980), as rated by their peers. These same measures and similar teacher ratings of behavioral school competence developed for the earlier study (Fisher, 1980;Fisher & Jones, 1980) also provide a means of validating the usefulness of another child functioning variable, inconsistency (or scatter) in performance on intelligence tests, as an index of current maladaptive behavior and possible future risk.
Scatter on adult intelligence tests has been linked clinically with psychopathology (Wechsler, 1958), and scatter on child intelligence tests has been found to be one sign that characterizes children with emotional disorders, both childhood schizophrenics (Wechsler & Jaros, 1965) and nonschizophrenic emotionally disturbed children (Kissel, 1966). Hanson, Gottesman and Heston (1976), in 'Portions of an earlier draft of this aper were presented at the Annual Convention of the Ameri-