Psycho-motor Norms for Practical Diagnosis, a study of the Seguin Formboard
- Author:
Wallace Wallin. Psychol. Monog. No. 94, August, 1916. Princeton,
J.: Psychol. Review Co. Pp. v+102, plates.
This monograph purports to have come out of its author’s “keen realization that no thoroughly satisfactory normal norms were in existence for the modified Seguin formboard.” What this formboard is, Dr Wallin does not tell us. He refers to his “conviction that the Seguin formboard, as modified by Norsworthy and Goddard, is one of the most valuable pieces of apparatus in the entire armamentarium of the psycho-clinicist.” Immediately below these words he prints a diagram labelled, “The Modified Seguin Formboard.” If the drawing is accurate in its proportions, and represents the formboard used in Dr Wallin’s investigation, it is neither the formboard of Norsworthy nor that of Goddard. Dr Norsworthy’s formboard was constructed by Dr. J. H. Bair. It was smaller than the standard formboard used by Dr Sylvester, its blocks were provided with handles, and instead of the star and cross it had a hexagon and an octagon. Dr Goddard made the board self-correcting, that is, he changed the proportions of the figures so that no block would fit into any recess but its own. In the diagram shown by Dr Wallin the square will go into the circle, rectangle, or hexagon, and the diamond also will go into the hexagon. Therefore it cannot be the Goddard formboard.
Still less is it the formboard used by Sylvester, as will be obvious from a comparison of this drawing with that which appears on page one of his monograph, “The Formboard Test” (Psychol. Monog. No. 65, 1913). If the facts are as they seem, it is hardly permissible to compare the results obtained by different methods with different pieces of apparatus, in the way Dr Wallin compares them.
Many studies of the formboard have been made since Dr Wallin’s monograph was completed for publication, and many more are under way, using an improved type of board and applying a more analytic method to the treatment of results. What place Dr Wallin’s work will take in the series will be seen within the next few years. A. T.
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