Normalizing the Mental and Motor Test for Iranian 1-30 Month Old Infants of Mothers Who Work at Medical Centers

Measurement as one of the important objectives in developmental domains enables the scholars to study developmental changes and retardation and provides insights into educational solutions. One of the most important and reliable scales for measuring development in younger children was designed by Brunet and Lezine in France; But, to use it in Iran, its reliability and validity are required to be assessed. The present research was carried out to study factor structure, reliability and validity of the scale for Iranian infants of mothers who work at medical centers by considering their job position.

This is a descriptive survey project. Also, given the comparison of the elements of mental and motor scale for two genders in the project, it is also causal-comparative. The research sample include 536 younger children of mothers who work at medical centers (327 girls and 209 boys) selected by convenience sampling.

The results of Cronbach’s Alpha showed an acceptable level of reliability for most of sub scales. Reliability coefficient for each of subscales included: positional control of body 0.76, ocular-motor co-ordination 0.74, listening and speaking language subscale 0.58, sociability subscale 0.77, and Cronbach’s Alpha for total scale 0.89. By using factor analysis, we extracted 4 factors: positional control of body, ocular-motor co-ordination, listening and speaking language, and sociability.

Results of this study showed that children mental and motor development BRUNET-LÉZINE scale has the psychometric properties to be utilized in psychological researches about younger children.