James Burt Miner

“ On account of the great attention that has been paid to individual differences in recent years, on account of their importance for diagnosis, for determining the causes of deficiency, and for planning for the training of deficients, we have come almost to the point where we forget the significance of the average as the most common condition with which we have to deal. The lack of complete correlation between abilities of an individual does not make us hesitate to use the concept of his average ability ”

“ Since social failure is our final criterion for judging deficiency, we must further consider that it is easier for a person to survive in one environment than in another: in the country, for example, than in the city. This sort of problem has led to considerable confusion. Goddard remarks: “In consequence of this it happens that a man may be intelligent in one environment and unintelligent in another. It is this point which Binet has illustrated by saying 'A French peasant may be normal in a rural community but feeble-minded in Paris.'” (117, p. 573.) ”

“ As the curves stand, they show the norms for each age for any test, as if placed on its own objective scale, and the various objective scales have been harmonized on the assumption that the norms at 8 and 9 years are accurate. We thus have a simple representation of the absolute changes in the abilities tested from age to age by the same tests relative to a single objective scale. It will not give a seriously erroneous picture for any tested ability so long as the units in which the particular test is scored may be presumed to be objectively equal. ”

“ The concept of the same relative amount of ability measured in physical units, so soon as the form of distribution varies from age to age, thus loses significance in terms of the struggle for existence. In that struggle, a vital question is—do the individuals at different ages have to struggle to overcome the same relative number of opponents of better ability at their age? If they do, the individuals might properly be regarded as in equivalent positions in the struggle for social survival, disregarding how far the next better individual is above them on the objective scale. ”

“ In the face of the fact that mental deficiency is undoubtedly the most important single factor to be considered today in the institutional care of delinquents, one hesitates to correct even the most exaggerated impressions as to its importance. On the other hand, it seems time to modify opinions which raise false hopes as to solving the problem of delinquency by caring for the feeble-minded. ”

“ There is plenty of congenial work to be done by those whose sympathies may exaggerate the influence of heredity, contagion, or training. As in the control of tuberculosis, so with the diathesis of delinquency, some effect is produced by predisposition, by training, and by external influences. Unless the present evidence, however, is outweighed by improved data obtained in the future, the most strategic point for attacking persistent delinquency is through the relation to deficiency, with heredity holding the heights. ”

“ In case we suddenly segregate for life all those who are so deficient that we are justified in isolating them, 250would that solve the problem of delinquency for the next generation? Although this would be the most important attack which could be made on the most important known cause of delinquency, we must still answer that the results would hardly be comparable with a jail delivery. There is nothing to be gained by turning our backs upon the facts. Goring has estimated that 7.2% of the male population of England and Wales commit crime before death. ”

“ In our attempt to interpret the volume of results concerning tested delinquents, we have accepted the common conception that the feeble-minded are those who, through lack of mental development, are social deficients. They cannot survive in society without supervision. In the words of the English Mental Deficiency Act, “they require care, supervision, and control for their own protection or for the protection of others.” Our present scales of development tests do not detect those deficients whose failure is not directly due to intellectual incapacity. ”

“ When that percentage is determined for the environment available in the community all those who fall within it might even turn out to be of one sex or of one nationality or of one social position, without affecting the question whether they should be cared for by society, or what grade of intellect is not socially passable? Temporary social handicaps, such as lack of familiarity with the language, lack of training, etc., must, of course, be allowed for so far as they affect the individual's test record. ”

“ But the ability of an individual in one distribution can hardly be compared with that of an individual in another distribution in a biologically significant way by their actual positions on the physical scale. A physical unit, does not measure the same sort of fact of development in a scale for the immature that it measures in the scale for adults or that it measures in another dynamic scale for the immature. This can be seen when a physical unit is compared with the amount of standard deviation which it measures in the different scales. ”

“ But not out of 50,000, nor out of 100,000 normal children, could we obtain children with the same defect of intelligence as some 50% of the feeble-minded children. In other words, when the deviation of a so-called feeble-minded child from the average intelligence of a normal-minded child is six times the quartile or probable deviation of the group of normal children of the same age, it falls practically outside the risk of being an extreme variation of the normal population. ”

“ In regard to the borderline for the mature with the Stanford scale it is especially important to note that at present no randomly selected mature group has been tested with this scale so that we are at a loss to know what would be a safe borderline for adults with it. It is peculiarly unsafe, it seems to me, to carry over an intelligence quotient which may shut out the lowest 1% of children who distribute normally, to the uncertain borderline of an adult group composed of thirty business men, 150 migrating unemployed, 150 adolescent delinquents and 50 high school students. ”

“ The borderline for the mature is the first difficulty which a court examiner will encounter when he attempts to obtain assistance from an objective system of measurement. Very little experience will convince one that it is not enough to describe the deficient ability of an adult in terms of years of retardation. It is widely agreed that at some age during adolescence practically all the mental processes are available that will be found in the mature. ”

“ For the problem of social care the borderline position on a scale is immensely more important than higher ability. It seems advisable, therefore, to define this borderline ability with some suitable allowance for variability in mental processes. It is far safer to judge an individual's chance of survival by his average or general tested ability than by the little knowledge that is as yet available regarding special abilities. ”

“ As a possible serious source of delinquency, bad adjustment to school work should be studied further, since it is a matter that could be easily corrected by the assistance of special teachers. With the earlier discovery of deficient children by means of mental tests, it should also be possible more definitely to direct the training so as to build up resistance to worldly temptations. How much could be done in this direction we cannot yet say. We have undoubtedly wasted much effort in the past in trying to create intellectual capacity in those who are innately deficient in intellect. ”

“ We have reason to think that a development equivalent to the normal average at 9 years of age is the minimum below which the individual is incapable of getting along without tutelage in the conditions of modern life. A certain number of facts suggest this view and are mutually confirmatory. Nine years is the intellectual level found in the lowest class of domestic servants, in those who are just on the border of a possible existence in economic independence; it is, on the other hand, the highest level met with in general paralytics who come under asylum care on account of their dementia ”

“ Moreover a dull mind is often the reason for beginning school at an older age and for staying away from an unsuitable school environment as much as the law will permit. In any particular case, it is to be noted, however, that all of the excuses for backwardness in school are not likely to account for more than one or two years of lagging for other reasons than dullness.
We cannot hope at present to get nearly so accurate a judgment about the frequency of deficiency in groups by means of any school test as by the psychological tests. ”

“ Goddard has reported tests upon the same group of 346 inmates in an institution for the feeble-minded who were tested three years in succession (117) . The paper suggests that the idiots, as a group increased less in absolute ability than those of higher mental age. The average gain for 55 idiots who tested I or II mentally was about half a test in the two years. In order to reach our present problem, however, we must know that the idiots, for example, developed relatively less mentally than did those of the higher grades of ability in the imbecile and moron groups of the same life-ages. ”

“ It is one thing to say that it would be desirable for the state to assume the indefinite care of a particular person, it is quite another thing to say that it would be advisable for the state to assume that care immediately, when one remembers the crowded condition of the institutions, the necessity of caring for the worst cases first, the possibility of the person being cared for by his own family or in a local school, the added public expense, the necessary neglect of other movements for social welfare if society assumes this expense, etc., etc. ”

“ Now, if the child is in the fifth grade or lower, or entered such a grade at the time he was of this age, one should investigate the question of feeble-mindedness. Unless more than one year of the retardation is explained by the person's absence from school since he was six years of age, he should always be turned over to an expert for examination. This retardation of two years in school attainment below the standard of seven in the first grade may indicate feeble-mindedness if the child has been attending school constantly, although the chances are perhaps 6 to 1 that it does not. ”

“ As soon as anybody can discover a means of defining the borderline, which is equally accurate and significant, and which, in addition to counting the proportion of better individuals to be met in the competition of life, will also evaluate the distance they are above the borderline, we all shall be eager to accept this better criterion of deficiency. ”

“ So long as the care of the feeble-minded is a state problem the percentage of passable intellects would apparently be determined for the available environment in that state. The problem of social care cannot mean that the state should care for college men because they cannot survive among college men or in the station of life into which they may have been born. So long as there are environments within the community where they can survive it is a problem of shifting them in their social habitat, not a problem for social care. The same is true for the low grades of intellect. ”

“ Many of these deficient girls probably at first drift into the life of prostitution. They are passive rather than active agents. This distinction in the nature of the offense accounts for some of the difference between the sexes in this form of delinquency. Furthermore our public attitude in matters of social hygiene has made the isolation of the female sex more common. Part of this may be due to the greater difficulty of proof in the case of men and boys, but in part it undoubtedly means that men have not been held to as high a moral standard as women in this regard. ”