This is the supposition which was critically considered in Chapter III, and shown to be irreconcilable with facts known to psychology. Hinshelwood did not make mental examinations of the cases which he describes, by standard psychological methods. He did, however, work out by experience a method of teaching, whereby all the non-reading children described learned to read. This consists simply in returning to the primitive method of instruction, beginning with the letters of the alphabet as units of perception, and proceeding by teaching the spelling of words. The necessity of individual teaching is insisted upon. Aside from the improbabilities of neurological theory, this work is a valuable contribution to the study of children who have special difficulty in reading. It calls attention to the needs of such children, and shows that they can be taught. V. PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES OF SPECIAL DEFECT IN READING In 1917 Bronner published several interesting cases of special backwardness in reading, studied by the methods of psychological analysis. Bronner states that deficiency in reading, in children of normal sensory capacity and intelligence, sometimes is related to special deficiencies in making visual associations or auditory associations. In the former case the visual details of the word would be elusive. In the latter case, the phonetic elements would be inadequately heeded. Since ordinary success in reading arises through both these avenues of approach, deficiency in either might result in poor reading. Bronner suggests that the avenue which is most approachable in these cases be specially utilized. All children cannot easily learn to read by the method which serves the majority. Bronner does not give results of experimental teaching in the cases analyzed. In 1918 Schmitt reported thirteen cases from the Chicago Schools, with many details of mental and physical examination. Unfortunately, systematic standard tests of general intelligence were not given, which must be considered a defect in the study, since exact comparisons of reading deficiency and mental age, or IQ, cannot be made. We have the investigator’s assurance that “sufficient tests were given to establish normal intelligence.” The conclusion that special deficiency in reading ability was present, was made upon the following criteria: (1) regular school attendance; (2) reasonably good health and physical condition; (3) no sign of visual defect; (4) persisting slowness in learning to read, or total inability manifested over one or more years of school life; (5) general mental ability good or average; (6) no other interfering factor, such as foreign language in the home, dislike of school, abnormal unresponsiveness to school, or other social situations. Where all these conditions were satisfactorily met, central deficiency in capacity for learning to read was assumed to characterize the child.