A Case of Deficient Retentiveness
DIAGNOSTIC TEACHING :Author: Rebecca L. Leaming, Senior, School of Education, U. of P.
Saul came to the clinic for examination the first time on February 1, 1919. The diagnosis given at that time by Dr Humpstone was “Five years retardation but not qualitatively feebleminded.” The recommendation given was “Special training and diagnostic teaching at the Psychological Clinic.”
Saul is thirteen years and very small for his age. His face is small and looks rather old. He has a constant worried expression as if he were trying to fathom some deep problem. He reported that he got a hundred every day in arithmetic in school, but that he could not do spelling and reading at all. He said that he had missed a lot of school in moving about from place to place, and that he was always put down when he changed schools. He said also that when he went back after being out he “Felt like a dummy and never caught up to the rest of the children.” At the time of his examination he was in the second grade.
I made my first attack with Saul’s memory span. I found it to be six definitely, but I also found much to my surprise that I could not get him to give seven even with an unlimited number of repetitions. I then tried him out with number work and found that he had a good idea of large and small numbers, counting, and number combinations. He knew his tables up to seven and said that they were learning the eight times table in school at that time. He could add, subtract, multiply and divide with a fair amount of accuracy, and on the whole I would say he had full second grade, if not more, proficiency in arithmetic.
I next turned to his spelling and here I encountered difficulty right away. I gave him a list of five five-lettered words to study just as long as he wanted so as to know them well enough to spell them correctly for me at the end of the time. At the end of six minutes he said that he knew them. I asked him to spell them and found that he had no idea at all of how to spell any one of them. He would give ridiculous combinations of letters. Often there would not be one of the right letters in the word present in the combination that he would give.
I next tried out his reading, and here I found several things. First of all he recognized all of the letters and would spell out the words to himself as he went along. Second, the letters conveyed no sound idea whatever. He would spell out a word and then give it a quite absurd name. The sounds of the letters did not influence him in giving the word its name any more than if they had not been there. Third, he would look at the pictures in the book, get an idea of the story from the two or three words that he got with my help, and then he would proceed to make up a story and read any words that came to his mind regardless of whether they were in the book or not.
I next tried giving him a thorough drill on three of the small words in the lesson, having him spell the word, pronounce it, find it in the lesson, build it with the Pittsburgh word-builder and write it on the board. Then I gave him some alertness exercises for a few minutes, to waken him up and to determine his ability in this line. He knew his right and left hand and followed the exercises and commands very well. Then I turned back to the words that I had drilled on and found that they were absolutely strange to him. He might just as well never have seen them before. This led me to believe that one of his chief defects and reasons for retardation was a very poor retentiveness. I tried him out on several other things and found this to be true.
This completed my exploration examination. Having read over the case history and the results of his examination in the clinic very carefully I determined to spend my clinical teaching periods with Saul in trying to determine how much progress he was capable of making with his reading and spelling. I decided to leave arithmetic alone, for he was so much ahead of his reading and spelling in that branch. Saul wrote legibly and with a fair degree of efficiency so I decided not to work with his writing.
Since I had discovered that the letters meant nothing to Saul as far as sound went I first of all gave him a good drill in phonetics. This was absolutely new work to him, and he liked it very much. He seemed to take great delight in sounding out the combinations and words. After I had given him about thirty minutes of drill, I took Book I of the “For the Children’s Hour” series and had him read the first story which happened to be the story of “Chicken Little.” I chose this particular book because it has a great deal of repetition in it, and it enables Saul to become familiar with the words by seeing them again and again, especially in the same sentences. He did much better as a result of the phonetic drill he had had. The improvement was remarkable. He still spelled out the words and often read words that were not on the page at all, but he made a very real and earnest attempt to sound out the words, and although he often got very curious results from his attempts still he got quite a few words correctly from his sounding out process. He wanted to read on and on and was much disgusted when I made him stop and turned to spelling. First, I asked him to pick out five of the words in the lesson that he had not known until he read the lesson. He chose them and then I asked him to study how they were spelled and sounded from the book and then to close the book and make them for me with the Pittsburgh word-builder. He made three errors in all but they were not the wild and foolish type of errors that he had made before. He spelled chicken “Chickin” and leaves ‘’leavs.” But on the whole he showed that he had some idea of the sound of the words in relation to their spelling. I was anxious to see whether Saul would retain these words until the next week when we had our lesson. I found to my surprise that he remembered them fairly well. He still spelled chicken “Chickin,” leaves “leavs,” and rabbit “rabit” as he had done on the first day. But he got the other two words correct and when I told him that there was something the matter with the three words he corrected them himself without any assistance from me. Later I had him make with the Pittsburgh word-builder sentences about what he had read, and he did this very well. For example?one day he read the story of “Little Iialf-Chick,” and when I asked him to write some sentences about the story for me he made the following with the letters on the table:
“Little Half Chick went in the woods.” “Little Half Chick went to the king.” “He would not help him out of the brook.”
When I looked at his sentences the first time he had “wood” for would. I told him that was not right. Then explained to him what a “wood” was and asked him if he meant that. He said 110, that he meant like “I would help you if you wanted me to.” Then I told him how to spell it and he corrected his sentence. Altogether I had Saul for eight lessons of approximately two hours each. On two of these occasions I had another child with him and could not give him my whole attention. Each time I tried to follow a kind of schedule. As a rule I followed this order of work with him: Phonetic drill?Reading (while the phonetic plan was still fresh in his mind). Alertness and Breathing Exercises?Short Arithmetic Drill in number perception?throwing out large and small numbers of colored straws and getting him to tell me how many I threw out each time. Reading again?Spelling (orally, written and with the Pittsburg word-builder). Sentences about the reading lesson of the week before and of the reading lesson of the day?and finally reading again.
Saul certainly made progress in the short time that I had him. When he first came to me he could not read at all?he had not efficiency in reading. At the end of eight lessons he had not acquired proficiency in reading but he had acquired a certain degree of efficiency and I am convinced that with practice under careful supervision, in order that he may be broken of his bad habits of spelling the words out each time and reading words that make the story sound well but which are not on the page, Saul can acquire proficiency in reading. With his spelling, more drill is necessary on making him see that letters have sounds and that the word is the summation of the sounds of the letters. Also that he can discover in a large measure how to spell words by sounding out the words and then using the letters that have those sounds. I am not sure that there is not some other specific defect that works against Saul in his spelling, but in the time that I had him I was unable to analyze out any one defect apart from his extremely poor retentiveness that would hinder him from learning to spell with a fair degree of efficiency. After working with Saul for eight weeks I am convinced that the original diagnosis is corect?he is not qualitatively feebleminded but is very much retarded. This retardation may be due to many causes, some of which may be: poor home environment, lack of proper care and nutrition, constant moving from one school to another, lack of any real foundation of the fundemental operations in the three R’s and an attempt to pile up knowledge on a foundation which is not there, specific mental defects (one of which is his poor retentiveness and perhaps others which did not manifest themselves in the short time I worked with him). All of these things may have had a part in his retardation.
Saul gave promise of being able to make a good amount of progress, and one was encouraged to go on working with him. He had good persistent attention, energy enough to see him through when he was interested. He had good planfulness, and his ideas always appeared to be a step or two ahead of the game. He would lapse into a kind of absentness or vacancy when he was not interested, but this did not happen often. He insisted that he liked to learn and said that he would rather come to the clinic to be taught than to play, but that he hated to go to school for they “made him feel like a dummy and treated him rough”?the exact meaning of which I was never able to discover.
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