Special talents and defects : $b Their significance for educationHollingworth, Leta Stetter
Science
Special talents and defects : $b Their significance for education
Hollingworth, Leta Stetter
Educational psychology; Educational tests and measurements; Exceptional children
In 1910, Brown undertook to determine whether there is a special
capacity for mathematics, and concluded from his correlations that there
is an especially close relationship among tests involving mathematical
performance. Ten years later, Collar made an effort to secure further
data as to whether arithmetical ability, as a unitary combination of
capacities, exists. Two hundred schoolboys were tested in the
investigation. Results led to the conclusion that arithmetical ability
tends to be represented in two main divisions: (1) the power to compute
with ease and readiness, and (2) the power to solve problems by
arithmetic, which involves the application of a higher degree of ability
than is required in computation.
Arithmetical tests of various kinds correlate more closely than do
arithmetical tests with non-arithmetical tests. “Hence we are compelled
to interpret this relationship as evidence distinctly in favor of Burt’s
suggestion, that there is an essential unity in arithmetical ability.”
All investigators have agreed in finding the correspondence between
computation and problem-solving much less than that found among the
various processes of computation alone. The facts are here analogous to
certain facts noted in the study of reading, in Chapter IV. There it was
seen that between proficiency in the mechanics of reading and
comprehension in reading there may occur marked disparity; and that it
is in mechanics that special discrepancies may be found between reading
ability and general intelligence.
In arithmetic the same observation may be made. Marked special defects
and talents are found in the mechanics of arithmetic, that is, in
computation. But problem-solving in arithmetic is closely correlated
with general intelligence, for it involves the capacities required for
problem-solving anywhere,—response to many subtle elements, the weighing
of these one against another, and choice of the procedure that will
yield solution. These are the same capacities that underlie
comprehension in reading, or grasp of any other situation offered by
life. They are all functions measured in tests of general intelligence.
In school, arithmetical problems are usually presented as reading
matter, so that reading for the comprehension of sentences is in itself
of first rate importance for achievement in problem-solving.
V. PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES OF SPECIAL DEFICIENCY IN ARITHMETIC
Studies of children especially backward in arithmetic, with the accounts
of the results of experimental teaching, have been contributed by Uhl,
Smith, Schmitt, and others. Bronner has also contributed accounts of the
psychological examination of such children.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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