Clinic Reports VII
When Daniel was first brought to the Psychological Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania in November, 1915, he was six years and eleven months old. At that time he was in a Montessori school, and was referred by his teacher to the Clinic for a mental examination because of his failure to make normal progress. He was a well set up boy, physically attractive, with a pleasing manner. His conversation was good for a child not quite seven.
Daniel’s mother brought him to the Clinic and gave the following history: The boy’s birth was normal, but at that time, and in fact all during her pregnancy, his mother was nervous and fretful, and much disturbed mentally. Her nervous condition was due to the fact that her husband was drinking heavily and mistreating her. At the time of this examination she had obtained a complete divorce. There was nothing significant in the boy’s medical history. There had been two children before Daniel, the first a premature birth at six months, the second, a child born at full term, who died shortly after birth. Daniel’s mother reported that he very easily became excited. He was sent for medical and physical examinations to the University Hospital, with a recommendation to investigate the possibility of epilepsy. The medical examination revealed nothing positive concerning epilepsy, but Daniel’s case was pronounced a “hard one,” and the examining physician thought the boy a eunuch.
Daniel’s social competency and proficiency were not normal for a boy of seven years. Although he cared for himself at the toilet he was unable to dress himself. He did not enter into play normally with other children. He allowed them to impose upon him?a privilege not granted to others by wide-awake boys of seven. ,
During the mental examination Daniel appeared very nervous. He failed completely on the first trial of the Witmer form board. His performance with the test revealed bad distributive and analytic attention. The significance of his failure is emphasized when it is known that some two year old children are capable of performing the test without instruction. After his failure the blocks were returned to their proper recesses and he was given another chance. He then completed the task twice but his shortest time was 4 m. 45 a. Dr. Young found the longest time made by a four year old child was 60 s. Daniel’s understanding was slow and his persistent attention very bad. This was especially well brought out with the peg board. He did not know the different color names so was told to match the colored pegs, putting in pegs like a sample. For a while he would work attentively, but his attention soon wandered and he would peg aimlessly paying no attention to color. He did not understand the expression “just like that.” Daniel displayed poor coordination and muscular control, and his observation was below normal for seven year old children. When tapping blocks which the examiner had previously tapped, he would tap an indefinite number of times and continue until stopped. He knew some of the alphabet names but could not designate the letters. At times he seemed to know A, B and C, but the examiner was not convinced that he was sure of them. His memory span was only four digits. Children of five frequently give six digits. His Binet age was only 3.5 years?showing a retardation of 3.5 years. This would indicate marked deficiency, especially when coupled with poor results in other tests.
The boy was returned for re-examination in October, 1916. There was no apparent improvement in his mentality. He behaved in a listless, inactive way except when nervously excited. His attention at this time was exceedingly poor, as were also his retentiveness and intelligence.
The diagnosis returned was feeblemindedness not higher than low-grade imbecility (Barr classification).
Natalie A. Bassett, A.M. VIII. Saul was brought by his aunt to the Clinic in February because he was backward in school. He was an average sized boy of 13, with normal appearance except that his eyes were crossed. The chief interest in the case lies in the clearness with which the Witmer Cylinders revealed the deficiency of the boy In replacing the Cylinders he made a great many errors. The first and second trials were complete failures. In the beginning he placed a large block in a wrong hole. This left him with the next largest block to place. He worked with this for some time and then gave it up and worked with the others. There was apparently no relation between the size of the block and the size of the hole into which he would try to place it. At the end of 5 minutes he had placed only four blocks correctly. In the second trial he began again with the large blocks and for the moment it seemed as though he had some idea of the test. It soon became evident that this was an accidental development. In fact he had learned nothing from the correction of the blocks at the end of the first trial. For the third trial he was told to place the blocks so that they were smooth on top. With this idea in mind he began to place the blocks in the proper openings. In each case he selected the largest block and put it into one opening after another until it was even with the top. It was not until he had placed nine blocks that he left one wrongly placed. In this trial he succeeded in getting all the blocks correct in 4 min. 26 sec. In a fourth trial he became very much interested, and worked rapidly and systematically; time 1 min. 36 sec. It is evident that the test was just beyond his ability, and that he could just learn how to do it. The formboard was easy for him though he worked slowly and without much show of interest. He had worked with the design blocks before so that his good record with them had little meaning. The Healy Construction tests were also too difficult for him and he had to be shown how to do them several times before he was successful. His memory span was four digits. In school subjects he was not really able to do first grade work. His home life seems to be unsatisfactory. His mother looked very dull and took little interest in the preceedings. His aunt was the one to answer questions. He gets along poorly with other children, and is not able to dress himself. His babyhood shows some retardation. The first tooth came at 11 months, he walked at 13 months, and talked at 19 months.
The family history shows tuberculosis on both the mother’s and father’s side. His father’s mother and father and the latter’s father died of tuberculosis. The insufficiency of his performances of tests and the non-conformity of his behavior coupled with lack of attention indicate a diagnosis of low grade imbecile. Such a diagnosis is borne out by the individual and family history. As the family is dependent, the recommendation was for institutional care. Donald M. Marvin, Graduate Student.
CLINIC REPORTS. 33 IX. Adam, 5 years, 2 months old, was brought to the Psychological Clinic by his mother at the instigation of an undergraduate student in Psychology, because he does not talk. His physical development is retarded nearly a year; his height, weight and head girth are all below the minimum for a child of five years. His eyes were recently fitted with glasses to counteract strabismus, but with the glasses he does not see well enough to avoid objects in his path. Test materials were held close to the face for observation. Only one word, “home,” was used while he was at the Clinic, but grunts separately vocalized expressed his emotions. The mental examination showed that Adam is retarded about two years.
His work with the formboard and cylinders indicated poor observation, persistency of attention and analytic attention, but this was due, partially at least, to his eye defects. He recognized colors and matched them when one block was used as a model for his selection, but he was unable to choose either the correct colors (one or two) or the correct number of blocks when more than one was shown. He held up one finger when the experimenter did so, but did not hold up two when he saw two. He could imitate by touching four blocks in succession but could not skip from the first to the third, and then to the fourth. It seems probable that his memory span is short and his concentration of attention poor. The diagnosis was two years of retardation, due to physical causes. It was recommended that he be taken to the Nervous Dispensary to determine whether there was glandular insufficiency to account for the retardation, or whether the poor sight and absence of speech were connected with a brain lesion in the visual and voco-motor centers. The physical examination was not made, but a Wassermann test was suggested. Gladys G. Ide, Graduate Student.
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.