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
So far as the theory of sampling goes it would seem that these
borderlines for the mature are sufficiently accurate for correcting
present practise. On the other hand, the conditions in Minneapolis so
far as deficiency is concerned are probably better than in the country
as a whole, so that the borderlines here described might very well
exclude more than the lowest 0.5% and 1.5% in the country at large. But
if we shifted the definition so as to exclude the lowest 0.2% and 1.1%
(the percentages empirically found below the limits described), the
borders on the Binet 1908 scale would not be changed from the rough
measures IX and X which are as accurate as we should expect to define
our limits with the present data.
(b) THE PRESENT TENDENCY AMONG EXAMINERS.
Comparing the suggestions as to the borderline for the mature which have
heretofore been made, we find that they have gradually approached the
boundary now suggested by the percentage method. In 1910 the American
Association for the Study of the Feeble-Minded adopted a tentative
classification in which the upper limit of the feeble-minded included
those “whose mental development does not exceed that of a child of about
twelve years” (_64_). This was based mainly on the fact that Goddard had
found no case at the Vineland school for feeble-minded which tested
higher than XII. Huey later than this found only two such cases at the
institution at Lincoln, Ill., and Kuhlmann only ten cases at the
Minnesota State School for the Feeble-Minded.
There was an early statement by Binet which referred to the practise in
Belgium of regarding older school children as deficient when they were
three years retarded in their school work (_77_, p. 41). This practise
may have also contributed to this formulation by the American
Association. Binet, however, regarded a child of the mentality of twelve
as normal. In 1905, before his tests were arranged in age groups, he
said:
“Lastly we have noticed that children of twelve years can mostly
reply to abstract questions. Provisionally we limit mental
development at this point. A moron shows himself by his inability to
handle verbal abstractions; he does not understand them sufficiently
to reply satisfactorily” (_76_, p. 146).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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