The Survey, Volume 30, Number 2, Apr 12, 1913Various
History
The Survey, Volume 30, Number 2, Apr 12, 1913
Various
Charities -- Periodicals; Social problems -- Periodicals; United States -- Social conditions -- Periodicals
The Binet-Simon test is the nearest approach to a scientific and
accurate scale for measuring intelligence that has yet been devised. It
is now being used extensively in many parts of the world, particularly
in the United States. The work of Dr. Wallin with the epileptics at
Skillman is of value in several directions, not the least being its
value in testing the Binet scale itself, which has been used repeatedly,
at intervals of a year, upon the inmates of the Vineland school, with
results which show remarkable accuracy.
It will be readily seen that an accurate test of feeble-mindedness which
can be applied by a careful and intelligent observer who has not been
specially trained in psychology would be of the greatest possible value.
Realizing as we do the absolute necessity of segregating, or in some way
controlling, the feeble-minded of every class, the question of how to
tell who is feeble-minded is one that is continually recurring.
The scale has been tested quite widely both on normal and defective
children, the most important test on normals being that of Goddard who
tried it on nearly 2,000 public school children.
Dr. Wallin found at Skillman that either the Binet scale was not
accurate or else that the conditions surrounding epilepsy make the scale
less applicable to that class than to normals or feeble-minded. This
observation confirms similar facts disclosed at Vineland and elsewhere
in connection with epilepsy and insanity; that is to say, both of these
conditions produce eccentricities which the scale does not exactly meet.
While the Binet scale is an extremely useful device and one which will
be more used, it is only reasonable to suppose that it will be modified,
in the future, as it has been in the past, by Goddard and others. But no
matter how carefully modified, it is not claimed to be, and will not be
claimed to be, an all-sufficient test on such questions as
sterilization, final segregation and other very important things.
Physical tests of various kinds will also be used.
Dr. Wallin’s book concludes with a copy of the Binet scale with
directions for its use, all of which are very valuable. On the whole the
book is a distinct contribution to the literature of the subject and it
is to be hoped that the author’s example in testing out large numbers of
abnormals of different kinds and then publishing the results will be
followed. We know qualitatively a great deal about the feeble-minded and
epileptic, but our quantitative knowledge is still far from complete.
ALEXANDER JOHNSON.
PATHFINDERS IN MEDICINE
By VICTOR ROBINSON. Medical Review of Reviews. 317 pp. Price $2.50; by
mail of THE SURVEY $2.67.
This book contains a series of papers most of which have already
appeared in the _Medical Review of Reviews_, the _Medical Record_, and
other magazines. It is dedicated to Ernst Haeckel. Dr. Abraham Jacobi
wrote the preface.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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