The Intellectual Status of Children who are Public Charges
REVIEWS AND CRITICISM. :Author: J. L. Stenquist, E. L. Thorndike, and M. R. Trabue. Archives of Psychology No. 33, September, 1915. New York: The Science Press.
This monograph belongs to the none too large class of scientific books which succeed in being thoroughly dry and compact, but not at all dull. ” Two hundred and sixty-five children, including one hundred and eighty-three boys and eighty-two girls, were measured. They comprised about three-fourths of the children from 9 years 0 months to 16 years 0 months who were, at the time of the investigation, public charges in a certain county. The selection was random, except that none of the dependent children sent from the county to the state institution for the care of the feebleminded were included. … A comparison of the measurements of the children committed for delinquency with those committed for destitution shows no demonstrable difference either in the tests of abstract intellect or in the mechanical test.”
The Stenquist test of mechanical ability, which is the first reported in this monograph, aims to get as far as possible “from the child’s ability to read and to write and to deal with heard words. The general plan is to measure his ability to select the necessary parts and put them together properly to make certain things.” The materials were contained in a shallow box with a partition across the middle. In the farther half of the box, as placed before the child, were seven mechanical models correctly put together and set up. In the nearer half were the pieces for constructing a similar set of models. Photographs show the perfect models, the intermediate grades of accomplishment, and how they are to be scored. Thirty minutes was the time allowed, and one extra credit was given for each minute saved by the child.
Mr. Stenquist obtained median scores for each year from six to sixteen, by testing 432 children in two New York City public schools. From these data he computed the “probable true central tendencies for these ages.” From the corrected medians the standard scores for each year and fraction of a year were obtained, but he remarks, “The scores to fit ages below 6.5 and above 15.5 are frankly only estimates.” The “construction age” of any child can be computed by finding the age in the table which corresponds in score with the score made by the child. “Where the same score appears for several ages, the midpoint was taken.”
The second test given to the dependent children was the Trabue completion test, a series of fifty-six sentences with omitted words to be filled in. The directions were very clear, and in substance told the child to “put one word in each blank, so that the sentence will sound right and make good sense.” It was observed that “if the child had not understood from the class explanation it was almost impossible to make him understand by individual help. The examiner always went about the room, however, to do what he could for such cases… . Thirty-five minutes from the time the children began work, all papers were collected… . Each child’s paper was given a score for each of the fifty-six sentences, each sentence receiving a grade of 5 if perfectly com_ pleted, and 0 if not sensible at all. … If the sentence as completed by the child was only slightly imperfect, a grade of 4 was given it,” and so on. “In an effort to make the grading consistent an objective scale of value was made out for each of the fifty-six sentences.” Here Mr. Trabue adds a word of caution,?”One has to guard against depending too much on his mechanical device and failing to exercise his judgment at all… . After the sentences were graded, they were grouped for purposes of calculation into eight groups of seven sentences each… . Each group was treated as an independent unit in the record.” The standards of performance were obtained from tests given to 850 children in two public schools in New York, and graded as already described. The results indicated that “there is some relation between the ability which this test measures and the judgment of the school authorities who promote children from grade to grade.” The median child is defined as “that child whose ability is central,?who has just as many above him in ability as he has below him… . In order to reduce the chance of errors … it seemed best to use the median of the scores made by those children who had made normal progress in school.” Mr. Trabue presents a table of “median scores in each section of the completion test for each year-age group of ordinary children,” and gives in another table the “ages corresponding to each degree of achievement in each section of the completion test.” He illustrates the use of these tables to compute for any individual child his “median inferred mental age by completion test as a whole.” The Goddard revision of the Binet-Simon tests was the third series of tests used, and the procedure is described in full detail. “The standards of performance to be counted as satisfactory and the credit to be given for each test, as well as the form in which the test was presented, were those described by Dr Goddard, except where study of the methods used by others and the examiner’s own experience convinced him that modifications were desirable.” After filling in the preliminary data on the record sheet, the examiner began with the test of memory span for digits. “This test was chosen to be given first because it gives the quickest indication of the child’s level of ability, it is easily understood by the child, it begins at a point where any of our children could do it successfully, and it gets the child into an attitude of attention which is very valuable.” Next the memory test for sentences was given. Mr. Trabue, who did nearly all of the Binet testing with these dependent children, remarks, “The results from these two series of memory tests gave a good indication of where to begin with the other tests… . We grouped the tests according to their methods of application… . Each group was given separately, beginning at a point where … the memory test had given promise that he would be successful, and going from the easy to the more difficult until the child showed clearly that he was unable to do any that were more difficult. No child was given all the tests of any group, but each was given all those in any group between the point where he showed full ability to do anything easier and the point where he showed complete inability to go higher.”
Dr Thorndike had previously found that “the mental ages as calculated by the Binet-Goddard scheme are, after 8.6 years, too low for ordinary American children.” The corrected Binet ages were presented by him in The Psychological Clinic, Vol. VIII, No. 7, and are given again in this monograph.
The fourth and final test was of ability to read certain passages and answer questions or perform acts based on them. The passages and questions were selected from those published in the Teachers College Record for September, 1914. This test is considered by the authors of the present monograph to be “in some measure a means of discriminating between constitutional dulness and lack of training… . The matter is not sure, for it is not absolutely certain that the abilities required by the Binet test are less dependent on home and school training than those required for intelligent reading.” The method of giving and scoring the reading test is explained. “The standards defining the achievement of ordinary children in these reading tests were obtained from about 700 children tested in a public school on the upper east side of New York City.” A table shows the frequency of the scores attained by these ordinary children, and another table rearranges these facts for convenient use in determining the “reading ages” from the gross scores.
In combining the results of all four tests and computing the retardation (or acceleration), the experimenter took the chronological age as “determined by the child’s statement, corroborated or modified by the records of the institution or county wherever possible… . There is reason to believe that the semi-official age is often simply a record of age based on a previous statement by the child. There is also reason to believe that the semi-official record is often in gross error (as when a large boy in a high grade who says he is fourteen is recorded as only seven). Consequently when we put the mental status of each child in terms of ‘underageness’ we use as his chronological age the average of his own statement and the report of the institution or county records, or, if the two differ by three years or more, choose the one which best fits his bodily appearance and score in the tests…
They found, as might be expected, that “these dependent children as a group are much below ordinary children of corresponding ages in the sort of abilities tested by the Binet, completion, and reading tests. They differ of course among themselves. We find one child of much promise, forty-nine of nearly average ability or better, while forty-eight are four years or more behind and the remaining three-fifths are from half a year to four years behind… . In the mechanical test also the dependent children are notably inferior, though not so much so as in the more abstract abilities… . The increase in underageness as we go from lower to higher ages in the dependent children is greater than would be expected from the increasing range of individual differences in general.” After enumerating several causes for this selection, the authors conclude, “From the point of view of social economy this excess-dulness of the older children means that being a public charge is more and more symptomatic of dulness, the older the child is. Probably the adults up to beyond the prime of life who-are public charges would be found to be even duller than these children of fourteen to sixteen.”
In a supplementary chapter on “Heredity versus environment as the cause of the low intellectual status of dependent children,” the authors report measurements of nine pairs of siblings who have been in institutions for five years or more, and compare with them the measurements of nine other pairs of siblings who have been in institutions from one to three years. “It appears that, as far as our data go, equalizing opportunity, as by institutional life, for five years or more for children three to nine years at entrance upon it, does not reduce original likenesses within families and differences between families to any notable extent. This conclusion,” they add, “should be tested with a larger group of children and also by repeated measurements of the same pairs of siblings. In connection with the experimental results when groups of individuals are given equal amounts of practise, however, and the facts for twins, the facts given here put the burden of proof upon those who attribute any great share in the resemblances found in siblings, under the same general conditions of life during the same decade in the same community, to their similarity in home training.”
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