Deficiency and Delinquency: An Interpretation of Mental TestingMiner, James Burt
Science
Deficiency and Delinquency: An Interpretation of Mental Testing
Miner, James Burt
Children with mental disabilities; Juvenile delinquents; Mentally ill offenders; Psychological tests
Taking up the younger and milder girl delinquents, Dr. Haines reports
the examination of an unselected group of 329 at the State Girls
Industrial Home near Delaware, Ohio (_26_). They were all under 21 years
of age and represent less hardened delinquents than the older groups at
the reformatories for women. The Ohio group was tested with the Binet
1911 scale as well as with the Yerkes-Bridges Point Scale. Counting a
result of .8 of a year as placing the case under the next mental age
above, as we have in fixing the limits, we find that his results are
given with such excellent detail that we may fairly compare the
percentages with our standard for the Binet Scale. On this basis 70 of
these delinquent girls (21%) are clearly deficient and 55 more are in
the uncertain group, a total of 38%.
As a check upon results, we may compare the report of Miss Renz for 100
consecutive admissions to the same institution in 1912, tested with the
Binet scale (_47_). She found 29 tested IX or under, 49 tested X or
under, slightly more than was shown by the Haines tests. Miss Renz'
report, however, does not show how many of the girls were under 14 years
of age and might thus be excluded from the deficient groups.
In the California School for Girls, Grace M. Fernald[17] examined 124
cases as they entered the school. Twenty-four tested under XI with both
the Binet 1911 and Stanford revision. This is a further indication of
the less frequency of feeble-mindedness in the state schools for girls
than in the reformatories for women.
Dr. H. W. Crane reports the results of the Binet testing at Adrian, the
Michigan Industrial School for Girls, which receives only minors and
corresponds to the Ohio Industrial Home (_37_). The Binet 1911 scale was
used, but this grouping in mental ages may mean that a few more cases
are thus classed deficient than with our standardized borderlines which
place the subject in the higher age group when he scores .8. It is to be
remembered also that the borderlines for those whose life-ages are under
15 have not been as well standardized with the 1911 scale. The testing
was done under the direction of a state commission appointed to
investigate the extent of mental defectiveness (_37_). Dr. Crane was
assisted by three other workers. The results at Adrian show, among the
386 inmates, 131 or 34% tested in our groups of presumably or uncertain
intellectual deficients. Seventy-seven of these, in our uncertain group,
should only class as deficient because also delinquent. The
investigators give it as their opinion that 16.7% of the inmates were
feeble-minded but not reached by the tests.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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