An Incestigatoin of Eighteen Children fron an Orthogenic Backward Class and Forty-Three Suspects from Grade One to Six
- Author:
Charlotte Easby, A.M.,
University of Pennsylvania.
At the request of a special class teacher in a Philadelphia school, who is also a student in psychology at the University, an examination was made of eighteen orthogenic backward cases, comprising her special class, and forty-three suspects from grades one to six inclusive. These suspects were chosen by their grade teacher, either because of failure to be promoted, or on account of other stigmata which, in the teacher’s judgment, placed the child below the norm of his group.
The school is situated in a factory district and draws its attendance, in a large measure, from the homes of foreign born parents. Within the group tested, were children of Italian, Austrian, Russian, English and Irish parentage as well as five colored children. The social grade of the children examined was, in no case, very high. The grade pupils were tested with the recommendation of special class always in mind.
In choosing a battery of tests, an effort was made to have the completed examination present a balanced clinical picture of the child’s ability. The tests included the Terman revision of the BinetSimon test, the Witmer cylinders and formboard, Healy puzzle A, auditory and visual memory span for digits and a general estimate of reading and arithmetic proficiency. The Binet test was used mainly because the intelligence quotient, chronological and mental age represent terms with which most schoolmen are familiar. Since the investigation was made primarily for the benefit of the school, it was essential that there should be at least one concrete result, which both examiners and principal understood.
The Witmer formboard was chosen as a test at the four year level with which there could be more than a fifty per cent expectancy of success even with retarded cases, since the group included children from six to sixteen and one-half years of age. The performance of this test was regarded as an evidence of the individual’s degree of discriminability and as a means of winning the child’s confidence. Three trials were given with a limit of five minutes on any single trial. At the end of this time, if the child had failed, he was instructed in the solution of the problem, which could then on subsequent trials be regarded only as a test of trainability and not of intelligence. The Witmer cylinders present a more complex test which gives an opportunity for manifold qualitative judgments. Two trials were given with the same time limit and same conditions of instruction as for the formboard. Healy puzzle A furnished a rapid means of rating the child’s trainability. Three trials were given with the same requirements as the other performance tests. With both auditory and visual span only one series of digits was presented until the child failed. Upon failure, a second series of digits of equal length, was presented. Upon a second failure, it was considered that the limit of the memory span had been reached. The learning span was not explored because of the adverse conditions under which the testing was carried on and the lack of time. The test of Reading proficiency was made from the child’s own reader, merely to satisfy the examiner that the teacher had not given a prejudiced judgment. The Number proficiency was tested with simple mental arithmetic and a few written examples where the work of the grade was sufficiently complex to warrant it. Both of these tests of school proficiency were very cursory, the teacher’s estimate, for the most part, being considered more valuable than a superficial judgment. Of the eighteen special class children tested, nine had already been given thorough psychological examination. Of these nine, seven had been definitely diagnosed as feebleminded. Five were classified as low grade imbeciles, another as middle grade imbecile, and one as idio-imbecile?Barr classification. This means that over thirty-three and one-third per cent have been diagnosed as deficient to such an extent that institutional care is the logical recommendation. Of the other two examined, one is a case of deficiency due to malnutrition and the other, normal intelligence with deficiency of intellect and efficiency. Three at least, of the nine examined for the first time, may be classified as markedly deficient on the basis of memory span and intelligence quotient alone, without the other tests to substantiate this evidence. Case No. 6 has a visual memory span of 4, an auditory of 3 and an intelligence quotient of 50.0; Case No. 16 (colored) has a visual and auditory memory span of 4 and an intelligence quotient of 57.9; Case No. 2 has a visual memory span of 4, an auditory of 3, and an intelligence quotient of 73.8. All three of these cases are over ten years of age.
In the class were found a Mongolian, a microcephal, a case of deficiency due to infantile paralysis, a post-meningitic and a syphilitic degenerate; types of such low grade that even the most hopeful can promise little improvement from training. The only requirement for entrance to the class is that the child must be able to look after his own bodily needs. In age, the children vary from nine to sixteen and one half years?in grade competency and proficiency from below first to the seventh grade.
The cylinder test brought three failures on the first trial: the Mongolian, the microcephal and the post-meningitic all failed although they had performed the test before. There were no failures with the formboard, the time varying from eighteen to one hundred eighty-six seconds. Three failed on Healy puzzle A, although the teacher had used it as didactic material in class work. On the whole the three performance tests: Witmer formboard and cylinders and Healy puzzle A, in comparison with the other tests re-establish the fact that it is easier to develop efficiency with mechanical work than with intellectual material with these orthogenic backward cases.’
With the memory span test alone, the mode is significant. The modal auditory and visual span is four digits. Sixty-one per cent of the class have visual and auditory spans of 4 and 5. Two cases fell as low as 3 on the auditory span and three reached 7 digits. On the visual span, the minimum is 4 and the maximum 8. It was impossible for the Mongolian to give a visual span, since she could not identify or name the numbers.
The intelligence quotients range from a minimum of 45.8, made by the microcephal, to a maximum of 88.0. Of those tested before, the greater part gained, in some slight degree, in the re-examination on the Binet, due either to improvement through school training or increased familiarity with the test. At least five out of the eighteen children have distinctly poor health. A large proportion are under weight and under height. The class at first glance may be divided into two groups: the small children, of whom there are eight, and the remaining ten who are decidedly larger. These are the groupings according to which handwork may be done?the smaller children doing simpler work as a whole. For the purpose of school work other than manual training, the class has five divisions. Each one of these sections, in turn, receives individual instruction from the teacher. The whole group needs no expert judgment to reveal that it is a special class. The children, in addition to the disparity of their ages, have in the majority of cases physical stigmata definitely indicative of abnormality.
The social background of these children fills in the picture much as one would expect. There is little money in the group and their homes, as a whole, are poorly equipped. Education means nothing to the children or the parents and the older normal children are anxious to leave school and go to work.
Ernest, a big slow colored boy, has a stepmother?the history of his own mother being unknown. His father is a bricklayer. There is another brother with a very low mental level. James, in contrast to Ernest, is a slender alert colored boy with something suggestive of the Spaniard about him. His father is a laborer, and his mother does work by the day. He is legally an adopted child but it is thought, that he may really be the mother’s illegitimate child.
Walter, an engaging small boy, comes from a factory worker’s home. His father’s family is of low grade and known to be heavy drinkers.
Matthew is an appealing Italian child, his natural attractiveness marred by big steel-rimmed glasses. He is one of ten children, all of whom are “slow” although the older ones are able to maintain themselves. The red-haired, typically imbecilic boy is Edward, whose mother and father are both machine operators in a factory. The mother is reported to be deficient, and home conditions have been so unhappy that she and her husband were separated for a long time.
Harry, who tests quite high, has a tubercular father. His mother does cleaning work and his sister is a salesgirl. Their life is complicated by great financial problems.
Russell is an attractive alert boy the son of a gardener. His mother is tubercular, and has no control over the boy. He runs away from home whenever the spirit moves him.
Peter is the son of a feebleminded mother and has other deficient brothers and sisters. He himself looks like a normal fun-loving Irishman, but has a specific intellectual deficiency.
Albert is “light fingered,” having gained his skill from his mother, a shop-lifter diagnosed at court as feebleminded. The whereabouts of his father are entirely unknown.
A pale slender boy with a face fit for an artist’s study, is Jesse, whose mother and sailor father are divorced. His maternal grandfather was a paretic, and his mother’s family are reported degenerates. Louis is the typical, unattractive feebleminded boy with three feebleminded brothers. His father works in a big hat factory.
Alva’s father is a chauffeur and his mother is employed as a housekeeper. He also has a feebleminded brother.
Frank, six feet tall, well dressed and apparently normal, was put in a special class originally as a disciplinary case and has stayed there. His father was a huckster but is now a pool room owner, suspected of keeping a gambling den and selling liquor. He is continually quarreling with his wife and frequently beats her. Mildred is an engaging little Italian lady, a lovable but hopeless case, a Mongolian. Her father is a contracting builder and her mother makes a home for a family apparently all normal but Mildred. A cripple because of infantile paralysis, Caroline, with her beautiful copper curls and peaked white face is a pathetic picture. Her father is a contracting bricklayer with five other normal children. From old Virginia mountain stock comes Lucille?long, lanky and microcephalic, a specimen of “po’ white trash.” Her father is dead and her mother has remarried, and her husband is reported to give a positive reaction to the Wasserman test. Harry lives with his uncle, a Navy Yard employee, in a boarding house where he gets no home life. His mother and father are divorced Sam is a strong looking Italian boy, a member of a laborer’s family. They all go berrying in Jersey during the summer and, although of a low social group, have more money than most of their neighbors.
The regular grade children, forty-three in number, present a very different picture, practically the same sort of social background and environment, but another type of child. In only one case is there a pronounced stigma which immediately marks the child as abnormal. To the more careful observer, the groups of suspects, as a whole, might present a picture of lack of alertness and slow comprehension, but at a casual glance they are an ordinary group of school children, chosen at random. Within the group of fortythree children nearly every type of school problem is represented; lack of energy due to poor physical condition, language deficiency due to the use of a foreign tongue in the home, lack of comprehension of school work due to an intellectual deficiency, problems of discipline and motivation, and poor school progress as a result of inadequate teaching in fundamentals. Our problem with these children was not merely to determine their levels, but to make some suggestion to the school principal as to a method of dealing with the case in order to benefit both the child and the school. A result which should be obtained if the system of school promotion is practically applied, is evident from the fact that the number of children considered backward or retarded, decreased in the higher grades. The supposition is that the backward children have been eliminated in the lower grades, and not permitted to hold up the progress of the pupils in the upper grades.
In the first A and B grades, seventeen children were tested, the largest total number in any grade. In grades 2A and 2B, eight children were suspects, ranging from seven years eight months to ten years two months. The group of nine children in grades 3A and 3B varied from nine years five months to thirteen years seven months. In grades 4A, 5B, 6A, 6B, only eight children were tested with ages from twelve years six months to fifteen years two months. Within each group there is a spread of at least three years in age. This variation immediately presents a problem in dealing with these suspects. Even on the supposition that the school were able to remove these children, from the grades where they are now, in the hope that with special teaching they would cease to be misfits in their grades, the ten-year-old child, for instance, who is getting along smoothly in the second grade is still a misfit. He is at least two years retarded in school proficiency, but in most cases not retarded physically or socially. He is bigger and has more energy at his disposal than the seven-year-old who belongs in this grade. The ten-year-old’s longer experience of life, since the years from seven to ten are so full of new sensations and emotions, has made him more mature. Thus the teacher who has the problem of dealing with a retarded ten-year-old and the seven-year-old, in the same class, has a distinct difficulty merely from the point of view of age difference. In our suggestions to the principal therefore, we were obliged to take into account the practical solution of the difficulty from the standpoint of age as well as deficiency.
The intelligence quotients varied from 58.8 to 127. In general it may be said that the intelligence quotient correlated fairly well with the memory span and grade level tests, although these intellectual explorations sometimes differed radically from the estimates formed through the performance tests. In the first grade, five out of seven children examined failed the eight year comprehension tests. This group as a whole seemed unusually well oriented socially considering the poor school proficiency. In the vocabulary tests at the higher ages certain mistakes were prevalent; for instance, almost all the children gave the meaning for “election” when asked to define “lecture.” In very few cases did they know the meaning of “civil” or “ramble” and in almost every case they gave the correct explanation of the word “insure.” Whenever they did not know the meaning of a word, if it could be misunderstood through mispronunciation, they misinterpreted it; for example, “gallon” for “gown” and “Alfred” for “outward,” etc. No other generalizations on the Binet can be made?the individual tests varied normally with the type of child examined.
There were ten failures on the first trial with the cylinders and two technical failures; that is, successful completion in slightly over five minutes. This test furnished an excellent opportunity|to make a judgment of the child’s intelligence, in the sense of his ability^to 186 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. solve a new problem, a task of sufficient complexity for all ages in this particular group. The examiner was able to estimate roughly the child’s comprehension, his cooperativeness and his physical energy from the observation of his performance on the cylinders. These three qualities, one mental, another social and the third physical, may be said to represent the judgments most important to a school in dealing with the individual child.
The formboard did not give any significant results except as a means of putting the child at his ease and gaining his cooperation and confidence. Among the forty-three children tested only one failed with the formboard and most of them completed the test well under two minutes. Therefore, nothing more than the advantage of observing some sort of behavior under specific conditions, could be gained from the use of this test.
Healy puzzle A, as we have stated before, was used as a test of trainability and imageability. There were nineteen failures on the first trial, two on the second and none on the third. The failures are scattered throughout the grades, although of course, the majority occur in grades 1A and IB. The test is a simple one, once the child has been instructed how to solve it, but it offers a good opportunity for a quantitative estimate of trainability and imageability. We realized after using the test that the trainability and imageability displayed in this mechanical work does not have any relation to the exercise of these same abilities in the acquirement of school fundamentals. The modal audito-digit memory span for the group is six. Sixty-seven per cent have an auditory span of 5 or 6, which cannot be considered below normal. The modal visual memory span is five, practically fifty-five per cent of the group have a span of 4 or 5. This larger modal auditory span is rather unusual. As a rule, if there is a difference, the visual span is greater. In eveiy case but one, where the memory span was four or less, the child’s grade proficiency tests were below the standard. A longer memory span, however, did not always indicate a higher grade of school work, but the memory span from these results proves itself of definite diagnostic value with this group. The reversed digit span, had it been possible to give it, would probably have given even more clear cut results.
In every case examined, the child was definitely below a good standard of grade proficiency. In cases where credit is given for proficiency up to the grade, this means only that the child has enough mentality to conform to the minimum demanded by the school curriculum. With most of the pupils there was a definite retardaORTHOGENIC BACKWARD CLASS. 187 tion, either in reading or arithmetic, or in general- comprehension. Briefly, this group was sufficiently retarded to warrant examination and diagnostic work.
There is a distinct difference in the impression left with the examiners by this group of grade suspects in contrast to the contact with the orthogenic backward class. Only two of the grade children unmistakably belong with the special class. The others, to one familiar with the improvement which can be wrought by individual or special diagnostic teaching, seem merely to point to the active need for “restoration classes” or diagnostic teachers in every school. These classes or teachers would not offer a complete solution of the problem. Cases of poor health or malnutrition, without the additional help of home, school doctor and school nurse would not be improved by special teaching. That forty-three definitely retarded or misfit children should be clogging up the grades is not fair to the normal children, whose progress must be held back for the slower pace of their duller classmates. The investigation also gives additional evidence of the benefit in efficiency of organization which the school might derive from the systematic psychological grading of all children at entrance.
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.