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
Kuhlmann, with the assistance of twenty teachers whom he started in the
work and whom he regards as “untrained examiners,” measured “the public
school children from the first to the seventh grade, inclusive, in a
Minnesota city.” The essential figures from his results are given in
Table VI. These results are not directly comparable with those of
Goddard using the 1908 scale, since Kuhlmann tabulates the nearest ages
instead of the actual ages. His age groups would therefore average a
half year younger chronologically than Goddard's. Moreover, the exact
amount of retardation to tenths of a year was then calculated from the
exact age, and it is to be remembered that the method of calculating the
mental age was changed in 1911 so as to start with a basal age in which
all tests were passed. The effect of these changes would be that some of
those recorded in Kuhlmann's table as two years retarded might easily be
a year more retarded under the same methods of calculation that were
previously used. Using his method of computation, it is clear that the
general borderline for the immature with this scale would not be as low
as we have indicated for the 1908 Binet scale. It would apparently be
about a year less, _i. e._, two years of retardation for those six to
nine years of age, and three years retardation for those 10 or above in
order to fall within our doubtful group. The 13 year old group are not
included here. They would not be even approximately random since those
who had reached the eighth grade or above were not examined. It is
interesting to note that the break in frequency of serious retardation
again occurs in the change from those chronologically 9 years of age to
those 10 years of age.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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