The Superior Child
A Series of Case Studies. :Author: Alice M. Jones, A.M., University of Pennsylvania.
In the last issue of the Psychological Clinic I presented case studies of four Superior Children chosen from my group primarily on the criterion of the exceptionally high Intelligence Quotient. The present group consists of children who are not only of superior general competency, but who, in addition, have already displayed some talent in the literary field. Two of these children are preadolescent, and two in the very early stages of adolescent development, so that one can only estimate their future productivity. If one may judge by the present output, however, all of them have at least the “germ” of real ability. It so happens that all of these cases are girls; I have not as yet examined a boy who possessed any marked literary ability, or even interest in writing. Whether there is any significance in this fact I am by no means certain; it may have been simply the result of accident. On the other hand, it may be true that the instinct for written language develops in boys relatively later than in girls, an assumption that might be justified by a comparison of the composition work produced by the two sexes at the High School and College levels. The cases presented range in age from six to twelve years.
Elsie, when examined at the Clinic, was six years and four months old. She was brought by her father, a physician, who handled her with the care evidenced by a hen who has hatched a charming, but bewilderingly non-conformed, duckling. There is no question but that Elsie is the undisputed ruler of the household, and that her personality is rapidly becoming fixed in a very unpleasing mould. Her voice is dictatorial, her manner overbearing, and on a somewhat sullen, dark little face already is written the story of selfishness and overwhelming conceit.
According to the usual procedure in the clinic, Elsie was first subjected to the performance tests. Her work in this field, although satisfactory for her age, showed no marked excellence. She did show good comprehension of the problems involved, but her manner of solution was very inefficient. The rate of movement displayed was slow; her coordinations were poor, as her hands are very immature. When she made errors, the manner of correction was frequently almost stupid. Because she realized her own inefficiency in this field, she criticized and ridiculed the tests, a reaction which occurs so seldom in the clinic as to be noteworthy as a personality index. The Healy Pictorial Completion Test A, however, testing as it does complexity of imagination rather than mechanical efficiency, was successfully solved in a short time, and elicited considerable interest. She has a visual memory span of eight digits, and an ability to repeat twenty-five syllables in a sentence. Although this is rather unusual in a six year old child, it indicates to my mind some specific language ability, rather than true integrated memory span. This supposition I believe to be confirmed by the general clinicial picture and the history of unusual attainment in the language field.
On the Binet (Terman Revision Shortened Scale) Elsie scored a basal age of eight years, and a mental age of nine years six months, which gives her an Intelligence Quotient of 150.0. This, although not so striking as many discovered in the group with which I am dealing, is still sufficiently high to place her without question into the Superior Group. Since success in the Binet tests is so closety related to language acquirement and environmental influences, it is natural to suppose that this girl’s high I. Q. is also more or less a function of her specific ability in the language field.
Just how great ability she has in this direction may be inferred from her early history. She talked at seven months, which is unquestionably rather early, and at twenty months was able to say her prayers. On her second birthday she was given a book of animals, which she memorized on that day. At two and a half years she had memorized all of Mother Goose and other verses. Before five years she was reading the newspapers, magazines, the Book of Knowledge, and other books. She has read, at present, about one hundred classics, including “Tom Sawyer”, “Huckleberry Finn”, “Pilgrim’s Progress”, “Little Men”, “Little Women”, etc. Her father insists that her favorite book is the Bible, a statement which was received at the Clinic with a very large “grain of salt”. A rough clinic test indicated that the child has about fifth grade proficiency in reading. I am inclined to believe that she does not read well enough to grasp the content of many books which she is alleged to have devoured, but without doubt she does possess a marked specific ability in the field of written language.
It is also in this direction that her creative ability lies. She began, at the age of five, to compose little stories, which she dictated to her mother. There is now a rather large blank-book filled with these stories, the last of which she herself has written in childish script. I read a few of the stories, and found them, although immature in content and style, exceptionally smooth and well unified, and not lacking either in incident or interest. A desire to have permanence assigned to her childish imaginings is certainly very unusual in a girl of her age, and would seem to indicate that the child possesses to an unusual degree the instinct for creative production. This tendency, I feel, should be fostered.
It is unfortunate, however, that the father, although a physician, has not realized the inadvisability of so over-developing the child in one direction. He has never encouraged her to form other child interests. It is almost impossible to force her to play with other children. Her coordinations have never been developed with any kind of handwork or toys of a mechanical nature, and as she appears to-day, the clinical picture is a very uneven one. She has been placed this year in an ordinary first grade, which may in some degree offset the former situation. To try to overcome these unfortunate sequellse of the child’s temperament and specific ability, it was recommended that an attempt be made to socialize her through enforced and constant contact with the play of other children. It was also recommended that, although she should by no means be prohibited from reading, some reason be exercised in the choice of books and the number of hours of reading. It was further suggested that she learn French at this time, since not only will it be a very easy acquirement, but will also open up to her an entirely new literature. This regime, plus some judicious discipline, may result in an amelioration of the personality defect which is sure to be the child’s greatest handicap.
Helen, aged nine years three months, is the other pre-adolescent member of this group. She is a charmingly wholesome child?one of the best, from the point of view of all-around development, in the entire group. She is in the sixth grade of a public school, having skipped twice, and is doing work of an excellent grade in all subjects. There is nothing priggish about this child; she is popular both with adults and other children. No juvenile function in her “set” is complete without Helen, and her mop of blonde hair is always to be seen at the center of an animated circle on the playground. A very sensible home regime has contrived to make her entirely lacking in the “sense of superiority” which in some cases sadly interferes with the attractiveness of members of this selected group.
A thorough-going clinical examination revealed no specific defects whatever. Her work on the performance tests was good; she passed all tests given in good time. Her memory span is as follows: auditory eight digits, visual nine digits, reversed six digits, and syllables twenty-five. Her mental age on the Binet scale is thirteen years, ten and one-half months, which gives her an I. Q. of 150. In the Binet the examiner noted marked qualitative excellence of language acquirement. She has a very quick verbal reaction time and instant comprehension of all questions. Her memory span is, of course, a factor in the high I. Q., but the child’s qualitative reactions are such as to make an I. Q. of 150 a rather true rating of her relative general proficiency. On the three written tests standardized on a group of high school girls1 Helen just barely passes the minimum score of the high school girls in silent reading and arithmetic, and falls into the second quintile on the Hard Directions Test. In order to handle these tests at all, however, a child needs far more proficiency in the three R’s than one would expect from a nine year old. Helen is unusually well-developed from the point of view of extra-curricular activities. Her music lessons are progressing very well; she is in a dancing class and a French class. One of her greatest assets is her ability to speak well on her feet, either extemporaneously or from an outline. She excels in dramatics and in debate. She is a great reader, and were it not for judicious home interference would devour seven or eight books a week. She especially enjoys reading books with a historical background, and fairy tales, the latter wholesome interest indicating that she is still, after all, a nine year old girl. Her creative work takes the form of plays and stories. In the former especially, I am assured by her teachers that she has real talent. I read one or two of her efforts, and find that she has, indeed, the rare gift of being able to express a situation through conversation, and consider all the details which make for an appropriate setting. Because of this creative ability, Helen’s ultimate rank order in my superior group will be considerably higher than performance tests and I. Q. alone would warrant. Because of her delightful personality, her real intelligence, and relatively high intellectual attainment, combined with a real talent, I predict without hesitation a high level of achievement for this small miss. In the phraseology of her beloved fairy tales, “And to the child’s christening came many fairy godmothers, each bearing a gift?one health, one beauty, one intellect; others charm, and personality and talent.” Whether among them was the rarest gift of all, genius, only time will disclose. 1 Woodworth and Wells Hard Directions Test, Monroe Silent Reading Test for sixth, seventh and eighth grades, and a Shortened Arithmetic Test, see R. E. Learning, Testa and Norms for Vocational Guidanc* at ? Fifteen-Year-Old Performance Level, Pbtcboloqical Clinic, XIV, 7, Decenlber, 1922, 193-220. Barbara, aged twelve years and seven months, falls unquestionably into the Superior Group, both on the criteria of the tests, and of general attainment level. At twelve years she is a high sophomore in high school, and is doing satisfactory work in all subjects. Her rapid progress in school is partly the result of the efforts of her mother, who is a teacher. She gave Barbara an early start in reading and in phonetics, so that after a week in school the child was skipped to the third grade. After a year in third she went into the fifth grade, and spent a year in each of the remaining grades. This brief career in the lower grades, followed by an entrance into high school at an early age, did not prove disastrous for Barbara, as she matured very early, and entered high school the equal of her associates in physiological, although not in chronological age. Her height and weight and general maturity are at present those of a sixteen year old girl. Barbara is not at all the “book-worm” type; she is very much interested in athletics and out-of-door activities of all sorts. She “goes in for” music, and dramatics, and dancing, and all the usual activities of the high school girl. She is attractive and wholesome looking, and remarkably well poised.
She was subjected to the same test which has been used by Doctor Learning on four hundred high school girls. Her I. Q. is 143, which is the maximum noted in the group of four hundred girls examined. Since her score matches the maximum, her rating becomes one on a group of two out of four hundred, or one in two hundred, which is well above that required for admission into the superior group. Her results on the written tests fall in all cases into the highest quintile. The only place where her results fail to reach the highest quintile is in the two mechanical tests, where her time scores fall just below the median. Of these tests, however, her qualitative rating was very high, as she worked deliberately and planfully, and seldom made a false move.
I shall permit her claim to admission in this group of children with some ability for writing to be justified by quoting two samples of her work. One of these was written as an ordinary English composition assignment; the other is entirely spontaneous work. A Wonderful Day.
My ideal of a perfect day is one spent on board ship in the early summer, when there is a fair breeze, and when the boat glides along in that rolling motion which I love. I come out on deck and take deep breaths of the exhilarating air. I go to the rigging, put forth my hand and swing myself up. Higher, higher, and still higher I mount. The very risk of losing my footing and falling into the blue depths below gives me a strange thrill. I am at the top of the rigging. I pull myself up on the cross-trees and am soon seated there holding to the nearby ropes for safety. A sudden puff of wind flies past. It lifts my hair and my scalp tingles. I close my eyes and feel the joy of living. My eyes open and gaze at the sea, far below. A small school of porpoises come by. How they leap and dive! They seem but streaks of silver against the blue. How alive they are! I am alive now, as they are, as I have never been before. There is a song of gladness in my throat. Those on the deck below are all forgotten in this exquisite moment; I feel apart from the rest of the world.
It is getting darker. I can see silver lights flashing here and there in the water. The stars come out, one by one. The moon comes up in a glow of beauty, and mounts into the sky. I heir voices on the deck and let myself down. When I reach the deck I close my eyes to feel again what I have felt, but it is gone. With the lights and human voices it has departed over the sea. The Corn Fields of Perrineville.
When we lived in Perrineville, our house was at the top of a little hill, from where we could see some of the surrounding country. One day I came out on the porch and gazed ahead of me. I saw the fertile fields filled with corn. They stretched as far as the eye could see; it looked as if the end came only with the end of the world.
Suddenly a tiny breath of wind came up from the calm. It swooped like a bird upon the fields of corn, and like a bird the fields would seem to rise and fall, rise and fall, as a swallow does while flying. The strange beauty of this scene held my eye. The wind made shadows on the fields, and then, having finished his playing, flew away.
A man and his son with their horses and plow came to a vacant lot near the corn fields and began to plow. A sultry sun had come out, and the corn looked parched and dry. It seemed to be calling for rain. The men worked untiringly in the fields. All at once the rain came, fresh, cool, and delightful. The farmers hurried to shelter, but the corn drank deeply.
Toward evening I heard a sharp noise. Tinning my face to the fields I saw the wind playing again with the corn. It sounded shrill and sweet, like a zither. The glorious colors of the sunset were slowly fading away, and enveloping the fields in a cloak of gray.
This work of Barbara’s is, of course, immature in construction; the girl needs training, but I feel that there is a hint of rhythm, and a richness of vocabulary and imagery which are indicative of an excellent style, once she has mastered the mechanics of her art. Margaret, aged eleven years eleven months, is without exception the most attractive girl I have examined in the course of my stu y. She is the “golden” type, red-gold curls that fairly scintillate, a ne white skin with a faint golden tinge, wide blue eyes, and a degree o poise and charm of manner most extraordinary in a child of ier age She has already matured, and in all physical characteristics sugges ^ a girl of sixteen years. Her entire social orientation is t a o adult. Yet there is nothing unpleasant or “superior” in the girl’s attitude; her manner is the golden mean between aggressiveness and girlish shyness.
Although Margaret is not yet in high school, for purposes of comparison she too was subjected to the tests at the fifteen year old level. Her work on the mechanical tests was exceptionally fine. She has beautiful hands and perfect coordination of movement. She attacks mechanical problems with a combination of intelligence and efficiency most unusual in a girl of her age. Her time on the Dearborn Formboard C was thirty-four seconds, nine seconds shorter than the minimum time recorded for a group of four hundred high school girls. On the Binet Test, her basal age is Average Adult, and her I. Q. 151, eight points above the maximum for the high school group. Her vocabulary score is seventy-six, which scores at the Superior Adult level. On the three written tests, here scores fall below the maximum, but above the median, on all three.
The tests alone show this girl to possess in a high degree intelligence, intellectual development, and efficiency. With these endowments alone, one might expect her to go far, but she has also the grace of a most charming personality, and?a specific talent for writing. The little sample of her work which I quote here does not compare very favorably with those of Barbara, quoted above, but it was merely a bit which the girl happened to have with her when she came to the clinic, and of the defects of which she was fully aware. I quote it merely to indicate the richness of vocabulary for a girl not yet twelve years old.
A Rainbow.
After a shower on a warm summer evening, a span of brilliant colors stretched itself across the azure sky. It lasted a number of moments and then gradually its brightness faded into softer tones, until it appeared to be a mass of pale clouds. Suddenly, in a flash, it again resumed its former splendour, spreading its gorgeous dies across the sky like a fairy bridge crusted with rich jewels, and colored in the radiant beams of the sun. Then slowly, ah so slowly, it grew paler, and melted away from sight.
Margaret’s teacher, who brought her to the clinic, tells me that the girl’s work in composition is of a uniform standard of excellence. She has recently justified her claim to some superiority in this field by winning a prize offered by a newspaper for the best essay. This was an open competition, and undoubtedly indicates that the girl has some real ability.
Each child in this group can claim by comparison with other children a ranking of “superior” on the basis of both tests and general attainment level. They fail, of course, even to approach “perfection” or the maximum possible attainment in all fields tested, but they represent the type of superior child who should be our chief concern, in that they possess that spark of creative imagination which of itself insures a fairly high achievement level, and without which a high intellectual level alone appears to be of relatively little permanent social value.
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.