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
There are on record but three calculators, who were personally examined
by psychologists, so far as the present writer can learn. Inaudi,
already mentioned, and Pericles Diamandi, a Greek grain merchant, born
in 1868, were examined by Binet. Arthur Griffith, son of a stonemason,
born in 1880, was examined by Lindley and Bryan, in the laboratory at
the University of Indiana, in 1899.
Binet concluded that Inaudi had no unusual ability except for mental
calculation, and that his auditory memory for digits was a special gift.
Diamandi, on the other hand, in addition to his ability in calculation,
knew five languages, was an incessant reader, and wrote both novels and
poetry. He entered school at 7, and remained until he was 16, always
heading his class in mathematics. His methods in calculation were
visual. “He has a number-form of a common variety, running zigzag from
left to right, and giving most space to the smaller numbers. This
number-form he sees as localized within a peculiar grayish figure, which
also serves as a framework for any particular number or other object,
which he visualizes.”
Griffith had, from the age of 3, a passion for counting and made fair
records in all studies. He entered school at 10, and attended school
seven years. In scope and tenacity of memory, and in rapidity at
calculation, he ranked with the best recorded cases, according to the
investigators who examined him. Memory was described as very systematic;
and rapidity was seen to depend on the great number of numerical
relations committed to memory, and upon reduction in number of
operations through short-cut methods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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