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
The Stenquist, Thorndike, and Trabue study of children 9 to 16 years of
age, who were county charges as delinquents or dependents in a single
county, provides results for a group of 104 delinquent boys. Translating
their records as I have explained for the girls in the group, we find 11
of these presumably deficient and 18 doubtful, a total of 28%. So far as
their delinquency is concerned these probably correspond to the local
institution groups. While there is little difference in the average
mentality of the groups of delinquent and dependent children in this
county shown by tests there is apparently some difference in the
frequency of serious deficiency. In their corresponding group of 63
dependent boys who were county charges, 2 are in the presumably
deficient group and 10 in the doubtful, a total of 19%. Miss Merrill
found only 0.8% in our presumably deficient group and 1.6% uncertain in
a group of 250 dependent children at the Minnesota State home (_149_).
Dr. Pintner reports the examination of 100 cases in the Columbus, Ohio,
Juvenile Court who were in the detention home waiting to be disposed of
or held for trial.[25] He does not say whether they were selected cases
among those in the home, but we may presume that they were more serious
offenders than the usual juvenile court cases not in the home. Their
ages ranged from 7 to 20 years. He used the Binet 1911 series and
allowed double credit for any test passed in the XV or adult series. By
placing his borderline so that a person testing 3.1 years retarded if he
scored under XII would be regarded as feeble-minded, Dr. Pintner found
46% feeble-minded in this group. Under the same standard about 20% of
the Minneapolis group would be classed as feeble-minded, instead of 2 to
7% under our more conservative borderlines.
In a preliminary report of the doctorate examination of Dr. Olga L.
Bridgman (_132_) I find that she reports testing 205 delinquents and 133
dependent children sent to the psychological clinic of the University of
California. She found 36% of the delinquent and 26% of the dependent
cases thus especially selected for clinical examination to be
“definitely feeble-minded,” but the preliminary report does not enable
one to judge the standard used for her borderline (_3_).
Ordahl's study[26] of 61 cases who were wards of the San Jose Juvenile
Court is not comparable with other groups since both sexes, both
dependents and delinquents and ages from 3 to 44 were included.
Dr. Hickson (_8_) reports concerning some 2700 cases selected especially
for examination from those passing through the municipal court in
Chicago, in the divisions of the Boys Court, the Morals Court and the
Domestic Relations Court. His tables state only average mental ages, and
he classes 728 boys who average XI.11 as morons, so that I am unable to
make any comparisons with his data.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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