A Comparison of Two Cases
- Author:
Cornelia Mann,
Senior, University of Pennsylvania.
James,1 a fifteen-year-old Italian boy of average height and a little above average weight, gave us anything but a good impression when he arrived at the Psychological Clinic for examination. His personal appearance was slovenly and unkempt, for his heavy hair was mussed, his naturally dark skin smudged here and there with dirt, his brown suit spotted and wrinkled and his stockings bagging over his scuffed shoes. He walked clumsily and slouched when he sat down. He was not alert and looked dully ahead of him, his mouth open, until he was told to do something.
Mary presented an entirely different picture. She was an Italian and of the same social standing as James, but the similarity between her and the boy ended there. She was a bright-eyed, rosycheeked hoodlum of five who dominated all the children with whom she was thrown in contact. In her gay red dress she could always be detected in the center of her group, for she was a leader of the others. Her hair was dishevelled and her face dirty, but no amount of dirt could cover up the brightness of the face with the flashing eyes, the snub nose and the sensual lips. She was ever moving and ever ruling her companions. It was she who dominated them all. In the performance of the formboard test there was a striking similarity between Mary and James. Both disregarded the directions to “work as fast as you can.” There was no conception of hurrying displayed by either one. Both exhibited about the same amount of discrimination, coordination, and distribution of attention. The one way in which the two performers differed on this test was in their attitude. Mary was interested and James was not. In replacing the blocks of the Healy A puzzle, there was a slight difference in the performances. Both were shown the completed puzzle before beginning. On the first trial James failed. He was not interested and gave up trying after he had placed only four of the blocks. He had to be urged to go on three times and was finally taught. Mary, on the first trial, worked hard, giving concentrated attention to her problem. She completed the puzzle in 299 seconds. On the second trial James did not remember what he had been shown. He first misplaced the smaller of the two largest blocks,
1 Case No. 3499.
but he saw his mistake immediately and worked for 50 seconds until he fitted all the pieces correctly. Mary completed the puzzle in 44 seconds on the second trial. She remembered how she had done it the first time but confused the two long blocks. On the third trial James remembered the position of the blocks. Mary again had trouble with the two long pieces.
In performing Healy A, James possessed superior discrimination in that he readily distinguished between the two long blocks. But it was not until the third trial that he had a sufficiently distinct picture of the blocks to enable him to replace them immediately. Mary, on the other hand, had enough imageability to do the test after the first trial, but she was lacking in discrimination. She again displayed more interest and initiative.
James had a memory span of two, succeeding in three on three repetitions and failing in four on eight repetitions. Mary’s memory was three and was not raised to four by eight repetitions. Here again is a similarity in ability.
According to the Binet scale both James and Mary have a mental age of five years and two months. Mary passed all the threeyear tests and all those of the fourth year that did not involve memory span. James failed on the memory span at both three and four years. In the five-year series, both failed on the colors and the commissions. James succeeded in the rest but Mary failed on the aesthetic comparison. On the six-year tests Mary succeeded only in counting thirteen pennies and in telling whether it was morning or afternoon. James was unable to do the latter but answered the comprehension questions correctly. In the seven-year tests both succeeded in tying a bow knot and counting their fingers, but Mary gave an adequate description of the pictures and James utterly failed. There was a great similarity in the attempt to draw the diamond. James looked at it and said he couldn’t do it. When urged he tried but failed. Mary tried without urging but failed too. Neither had any notion of how to turn the angles. Both had drawn a good square. Neither succeeded on any other of the series.
The results of the Binet tests showed that there was little difference in the language ability of the two. From the results of the test we might suppose that both had had the same experience in life, for both seem to have acquired the same amount of information. Both could count to twenty-five though neither had any combinations. Neither knew right from left nor the colors, but both could tie a bowknot. In comparing the performances of the two we found that they were much alike. With the exception of Mary’s inferior discriminaA COMPARISON OF TWO CASES. 201 tion, which is a function of age, she measured up to James in everything and surpassed him in imageability and initiative. But Mary was only a five-year-old child who had had no special care or training, while James was fifteen and for eight years had been attending a public school. To be sure he still remained in the first grade, though class after class had come and gone, but he had had the opportunity of learning. It was ability that he lacked. From the results of these tests we could say that James had barely the ability of a five-yearold, and he certainly lacked the competency of a normal six-yearold child. His case was just another illustrating that the competency of a six-year-old must be reached before an individual can be called normal. James was feeble-minded and he had not six year competency. Here again these two facts went hand in hand.
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