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
4. All the quotient methods of defining the borderline encounter a
serious practical difficulty in fixing the borderline for the mature, so
that it will be equivalent to that for the immature. With the Stanford
scale in calculating the quotient for adults, no divisor is used over 16
years. Yerkes and Bridges also think that this is about the time that
the development of capacity ceases. Kuhlmann and others use 15 as the
highest divisor. Wallin objects to either of these ages being used as
the age of arrest of mental development (_15_, p. 67). Both the methods
of the standard deviation and percentage have a similar difficulty, in
that the borderline for the mature has to be empirically determined on a
test scale. In this dilemma, however, the data collected with the random
group of 15-year-olds in Minneapolis and published in the present study,
places the borderline for the mature on either the 1908 or 1911 Binet
scale in a much safer position, so far as empirical data is concerned,
than the borderline for the mature for any other scale. This is true
whether that borderline be then stated in terms of either the quotient
or percentage methods. Translated into terms of the quotient, our
percentage borderlines for the mature with these scales, below X for
presumably deficient and below XI for the uncertain, would amount to
quotients .60 and .66 on the basis of our findings with this random
group of children who have presumably about reached adult development.
Pearson does not attempt to define any borderline for the adults on the
basis of the deviation, since Jaederholm tested only children. Moreover,
this is not possible empirically with our group of 15-year-olds, since
we tested only the lower extreme of this group.
Unfortunately, the borderlines of the mature for the Stanford and other
scales depend upon empirical results obtained not with random groups,
but upon a composite of selected groups of adults built up by the
investigator on an estimate that this combined group represents a random
selection among those with a typical advance in development, an almost
superhuman task. Fortunately the empirical determination of this
borderline for the mature might be improved later by obtaining data on
less selected groups. The clearer significance of the empirical data for
the borderline for the mature which I have presented for the Binet 1908
and 1911 scales from a random group of 15-year-olds seems to be an
important practical advantage. It provides an empirical basis for
judging the implication of test results with adults. It gives adults the
benefit of the doubt if they improve after 15 years of age.
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