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 Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Scale (_57_) has
included a percentage designation of the degrees of ability by a
classification of intelligence quotients (I Q's). It is interesting to
find the percentage method of setting forth the borderlines is utilized
to supplement the intelligence quotients in this important revision of
the Binet-Simon Scale. It shows how the method may be adapted to testing
of intelligence quotients. For fixing the borderline for the immature
the Stanford scale affords the best means provided by any of the
revisions or adaptations of the Binet scale. The amount of data on
randomly selected groups of school children, by which these borderlines
were determined, is, however, less than with the 1908 Binet Scale as
given by Goddard and summarized in our Table V. The Stanford Scale was
standardized for the immature by testing 80 to 120 native born school
children at each age from 5 to 14 inclusive, a total of 905. While the
1908 scale gives corresponding distributions for 114 to 222 children at
each age from 5 to 11 inclusive, a total of 1269. Using the I Q's
adopted by Dr. Terman for the Stanford Scale, the lowest 1% of the
children were found to reach only an I Q of 70 or below, 2% to reach 73
or below, 5% to reach 78 or below. The author designates below 70 as
“definite feeble-mindedness,” 70-80 as “borderline deficiency, sometimes
classified as dullness, often as feeble-mindedness.” His “definite
feeble-mindedness” thus includes somewhat fewer than our “presumably
deficient” and “uncertain groups” combined. The distribution of the
intelligence quotients was “found fairly symmetrical at each age from 5
to 14.” The range including the middle 50% of the I Q's, was found
practically constant (_57_, p. 66). The data for the extreme cases have
not been published except for ages 6, 9 and 13. For these ages 1% were
75 or below at 6 years, 2% at nine years, and 7% at 13 (_197_). The
results with the extreme cases at each age are the most important factor
in fixing the borderline. The combined per cent. results with I Q of 905
children at different ages, which show 0.33% testing 65 or below and
2.3% 75 or below, may be deceptive for separate ages.
It seems clear that the criterion for tested deficiency suggested by our
study is more conservative than that of the Stanford scale which says:
“All who test below 70 I Q by the Stanford revision of the
Binet-Simon Scale should be considered feeble-minded, and it is an
open question whether it would not be justifiable to consider 75 I Q
as the lower limit of “normal” intelligence. Certainly a large
proportion falling between 70 and 75 can hardly be classed as other
than feeble-minded, even according to the social criterion.” (_57_,
p. 81)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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