Sebastian
(The Effect of Increased Physical Fitness on Mental Test Results) :Author: William F. Lutz, A.B., University of Pennsylvania.
The work with Sebastian has centered around an attempt to correlate certain factors of efficiency in adolescence and an analysis of increased Binet I. Q. with increased physical fitness. Sebastian comes of American stock of average social status. His parents are of average mentality. There is no history of specific disease, but for some ten years the family finances have been at a very low level with the result that very often food has been insufficient both in quality and quantity. The result, of course, has been that the children are all handicapped by malnutrition and anemia. At the time of the first examination, two years ago, Sebastian was fifteen years old, listless, indifferent, stooping, with pasty complexion and mongoloid eyes, two inches under height and twelve pounds under weight. He worked after school and on Saturdays, was very fond of athletics and regularly overtaxed his strength. At this time the first mental test was given, resulting in a Binet I. Q. of 93, which placed him on the Binet scale in the lower quintile of normal intelligence, not far removed from “dullness.” A year later, after a bad winter, financially, and an attack of influenza, he came down with pleurisy with effusion and made a slow convalescence. During this time the family finances improved and Sebastian was provided with plenty of good food and milk and his over-exercise controlled.
Six months later the second Binet test was made. He had now come up to normal height and weight for his age and was in better physical condition than for many years. Glasses had been provided and the mongoloid appearance of the eyes seem to be improving with the improvement in nervous and muscular tone. Mild tics which had been in evidence, from a slight chorea in childhood, showed marked improvement.
In the first examination made in February, 1920, the I. Q. was 93. In the second examination, December, 1922, the I. Q. was 107, the auditory memory span showed no change, being 7 on both trials. In the first Binet test he failed in problems of fact, arithmetic, fables and enclosed boxes; in the second he passed all of these, showing an improvement in ability to apply knowledge and in the logical integrity of mental processes and also an improvement in constructive visual imagery. In the first examination there was a marked irregularity in the score, five failures below chronological age and no successes above it. In the second examination there were no failures below the age and three successes above it. This is in accord with a report made by Dr Pressey in the Psychological Clinic for May 15, 1919, that a high irregularity shows the presence of some more or less irrelevant factor, preventing a standard measurement of the intelligence. In this case it may have been due to the anemia and malnutrition which prevented the central nervous system from functioning at the highest level of which it was capable. When this loss of tone and mal-adjustment was remedied there was a corresponding rise in the mental level. This, of course, can only be expected when there is no congenital or traumatic etiology and when failure to function is due to removable mal-adjustments.
The first examination gave an epideictic rather than an hyparctic rating, which seems to show that perhaps in many cases of apparent dullness if we would reserve judgment until a thorough physical and medical examination had been made and acted upon we would do more justice to the case in hand. In this case the first examination would have, apparently, allowed a judgment of low average intelligence. The second, after physical readjustment, would allow a judgment of high average intelligence.
The Witmer formboard on first examination gave 32-23-15; on the second the time was 25-18-13. The Witmer cylinders first time gave 120-45-58; on the second the time was 65-48-40. There were no errors, although the energy displayed was somewhat below normal. It seems to me that if a sufficient number of examinations showed this improvement in intelligence ratings correlating with improvement in physical condition among school children it would impress upon parents the value and relation of the sound body to the sound mind. In the Canadian Journal of Mental Hygiene for July, 1921, Prof. Sandiford says: “If intelligence implies the power of adapting oneself to novel situations it certainly demands facile adjustments in the nervous system.” He says, also, that “at bottom, intelligence is nothing more or less than a function of the central nervous system. If a person has a nervous system which integrates easily and tenaciously, he is likely to be bright and intelligent. If, on the other hand, his associative connections are made with difficulty he is likely to be dull and stupid.” This would seem to be in accord with the results shown in these two examinations. In connection with the foregoing I have been making a dailyrecord of pulse and systolic blood pressure at the same hour extending at present over some forty observations on the above case. It has been primarily as a test of physical fitness based on Crampton’s article in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, November, 1920, page 721. The indices of efficiency in this case (and in quite a number of cases found in an investigation that I am making at the Y. M. C. A.) are quite in accord with Crampton’s results. The question arises whether there is a relation between this and intelligence levels, but the work is not sufficiently advanced to warrant any conclusions as yet. I am inclined to believe, however, that systolic blood pressure is in the higher normal quintile for higher intelligence and that the lower levels of intelligence show a lower level of blood pressure in the normal range for physiological age. This is, of course, discarding pathological conditions. Dr McCurdy of Clarke University in a recent pamphlet, the result of some similar investigations, says that in a number of instances he noted that a high heart rate, a large variation and a low blood pressure went with poor scholarship, but that so wide a difference was found in the marking standards of teachers that it was difficult to draw conclusions of much value. As I am making both the mental and physical tests, I should be able to get results in which that factor of error is of much less weight. Dr Clarke thinks that we need two sets of indices. First: “Indices of the intellectual health, organic soundness, and efficiency of the central nervous system. Second: Indices of organic efficiency (which the Crampton index seems to give). That, as in the Hughlings Jackson’s three level theory, the low level centers regulate the organic life, the high level centers are related to the intellectual and emotional life. The higher centers are built upon the lower ones, therefore the relation of intelligence and morality to the physical integrity of the lower centers.”
I am hoping that further investigation on these lines will enable me to find some relation, some indices, for expressing the relation between mental and physical efficiency in school children.
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