Deficiency

“ For any such person to suspect himself of deficiency would, in this age of pretension, be a hopeful symptom; but should he endeavour to supply it, he is like a mail-coach traveller, who is to be conveyed over macadamised roads at the rate of nine miles an hour, including stoppages, and must therefore take at his minuted meals whatever food is readiest. He must get information for immediate use, and with the smallest cost of time; and therefore it is sought in abstracts and epitomes, which afford meagre food to the intellect, though they take away the uneasy sense of inanition. ”

“ 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 ”

“ A percentage definition of tested deficiency is suggested for determining the borderline below which an individual may be presumed to be so deficient as to justify isolation, and for setting off a distance above this on the scale for which the test diagnosis of social deficiency should be regarded as uncertain. By this means it is hoped that the developmental scale may be made safer and more useful as an instrument for diagnosing feeble-mindedness. ”

“ A quantitative definition for tested deficiency has its main justification in its success in discovering social deficients and in predicting social failure. With this in mind the percentages suggested as representing the social deficients or uncertain cases in the community were chosen after a careful search through the evidence as to the success of children who had been in special classes or institutions and an extensive résumé and analysis of the best expert estimates of the frequency of social deficiency. ”

“ With the percentages fixed at the lowest 0.5% as presumably deficient and the next 1.0% doubtful, these borderlines for tested deficiency have the advantage of being more conservative than those at present advocated. On the basis of our empirical knowledge this is an important reason for urging borderlines on the scales at least as low as those suggested herein. Disregarding the extremely high borderlines which have fallen into disuse, we still find that social deficiency is often presumed for those testing above the lowest 1%. ”

“ To the mean in some cases the deficiency, in some the excess is more opposed; e.g. it is not rashness, which is an excess, but cowardice, which is a deficiency, that is more opposed to courage, and not insensibility, which is a deficiency, but self-indulgence, which is an excess, that is more opposed to temperance. ”

“ For such important purposes as the comparison of the relative frequency of deficiency in different social groups and harmonizing the investigations with different mental scales, agreement upon a particular percentage is not essential. In diagnosis, of course, it is a matter of fundamental importance in order that injustice may not be done individuals. For this 81reason the estimate should be conservative, possibly more conservative even than our tentative 0.5% at 15 years of age. ”

“ If the diagnosis of conative cases could be determined objectively, it is possible that most forms of social unfitness would be found highly correlated with intellectual deficiency. On the other hand, when the diagnosis of unfitness for school or social life depends merely upon the opinion of experts or teachers, the inaccuracy of the diagnosis may show a wide discrepancy between the so-called conative and intellectual types of deficiency. ”

“ The everyday observer has no difficulty in recognizing as a fact that deficiency in receptive capacity is evidence of imperfect cerebral development; but it is not so patent to him that the perception of right or wrong can be compromised through the same cause, or to comprehend that loss of moral sense may result from disease. ”

“ Bicêtre.—The reader would be wrong to imagine that in these visits to the hospitals we are forgetting the school cases of mental deficiency; we are at the heart of the question. Whether we are dealing with hospital cases or school cases, there are details of organisation which are the same for all, and there are similar mistakes which we must try to avoid. ”

“ In conclusion, I will freely acknowledge that all I have said regarding the great want of judgment manifested by society as a body, and the high value of any means which would tend to supply the deficiency, have been developed and declared on numerous occasions, by authority far above any I possess. The deficiency is known hypothetically, but I doubt if in reality; the individual acknowledges the state in respect of others, but is unconscious of it in regard to himself. As to the world at large, the condition is accepted as a necessary fact ”

“ Just as in the case of physical illness, we need to know not merely that the patient is sick, but also why he is sick, what organs are involved, what course the illness will run, and what physical work the patient can safely undertake, so in the case of a retarded child, we need to know the exact degree of intellectual deficiency, what mental functions are chiefly concerned in the defect, whether the deficiency is due to innate endowment, to physical illness, or to faults of education, and what lines of mental activity the child will be able to pursue with reasonable hope of success. ”

“ This percentage definition of intellectual deficiency offers such a simple method of consistently describing the borderlines for mature and immature that it is surprising so little attempt has previously been made to work it out for a system of tests. ”

“ I called to mind the theory that an innate physical deficiency is seldom without its moral counterpart, and I wondered how far this would apply to the deaf-mute at my side, who was ill-grown, wizened, and puny into the bargain. ”

“ Feeble-mindedness may, however, arise from epilepsy or from other diseases or accidents in early life as well as from an inherent incapacity for development. 11Moreover, mental deficiency, or feeble-mindedness, (I use the terms interchangeably) does not imply that the social unfitness is always caused by intellectual deficiency. Mind is a broader term than intellect, as we shall note in the next section. ”

“ The principle that all mental deficients need not show the same low degree of intellectual ability is clearly recognized in perhaps the most important legal enactment on deficiency which has been passed in recent years, the British Mental Deficiency Act of 1913. ”

“ The rapid accumulation of data with psychological tests has made it possible to take our first halting steps in the direction of greater definiteness in diagnosis by a larger use of objective methods. This increase in significance of the concept of deficiency is fruitful at once in estimating the size of the social problem and planning means for undertaking the care of these unfortunates. We can discover something of the error in the previous subjective estimates of the frequency of feeble-mindedness. ”

“ These inequalities of development may vary to any degree in different subjects. They always produce a want of equilibrium, and this want is the differentiating attribute of the defective child. But to draw a faithful picture we must add yet other traits. According to general opinion, mental deficiency is a disease, and although the idea of disease is very vague, we are inclined to fall in with this general opinion. ”

“ In such cases, the deficiency is either in the sensitive and conducting power of the nerves, or in some a loss of tone in the portion of the brain to which they immediately lead—at all events, a barrier is interposed between organic structure and the mind. ”

“ A mental deficiency bill was passed upon her centuries ago, and the laws command her husband to keep her under restraint. Her menfolks expect her to be deficient, and have carefully guarded her from opportunities of becoming otherwise. ”

“ On the average the pupils in the special classes fall about .3 S. D. months further behind regular school children with each added year of life from 5 to 14 inclusive. A third possible interpretation of the greater number showing the degree of deficiency measured by -4 S. D. with the older ages should be mentioned. It is possible that 1 S. D. has not the same significance for 5-year-olds as for 12-year-olds. The distribution of abilities at succeeding ages may be progressively more and more skewed in the direction of deficiency. ”

“ When the general instinctive origin of intellectual deficiency is considered along with the incurability of the condition, we seem to be theoretically justified in assuming that the variation will be slight from one year of life to the next. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The recent rapid perfection of objective scales to measure educational products, like ability in handwriting, etc., in equal units running to an absolute zero of ability, suggests that it might be possible ultimately to state the borderline of deficiency in terms of the same relative objective distance between the best and zero ability at each age on a scale of general ability. ”

“ The concept that 995 out of every 1000 randomly selected individuals at his age are ahead of a particular individual in the struggle for existence has very definite and significant meaning which is quite comparable from one period of life to another regardless of the form of the distribution. 279We shall return to this question of equivalent units in distributions of unlike symmetry when we compare the definitions of the borderlines of deficiency in terms of intelligence quotient, coefficient of intelligence, standard deviation and percentage. ”

“ Suppose, for instance, that, from a defect in the power of development in a mother, her offspring is ushered into the world destitute of some of the most useful members, or blind, or deaf, or of imperfect intellect, there is ever to be found in the parents and other relatives, and in the surrounding public, a sympathy with the sufferer, which tends to make up for the deficiency, so that he is in the long run not much a loser. ”

“ If we disregard the natural antipathy of many people to anything which tends to limit the charming vagueness 13of their mental outlook, we may endeavor to chart this horizon of tested deficiency with something of the definiteness of figures, which shall at the same time indicate a range of error. As soon as our aim comes to be to plot the borderline on a measuring scale of mental ability, we find that the borderline must be so stated that we can deal with either adults or children. Two sorts of limiting regions must be described, one for mature minds and one for immature minds. ”

“ Guarding against the propagation of mental deficiency thus seems to be the most direct and hopeful method of attack, while the removal of infecting temptations, and training for greater resistance, should receive hearty, albeit subordinate emphasis. ”

“ The group studies confirm our suggestion that a borderline of X or below will bring in for expert consideration nearly all adults who are feeble-minded from a lack of intellectual ability, while testing IX is a fairly clear indication of such serious deficiency as to justify isolation. ”

“ The English Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 included the following definition:—"Persons in whose case there exists from birth or from an early age mental defectiveness not amounting to imbecility, yet so pronounced that they require care, supervision, and control for their own protection or for the protection of others, or, in the case of children, that they, by reason of such defectiveness, appear to be permanently incapable of receiving proper benefit from the instruction in ordinary schools." ”

“ The continuance of healthy and vigorous action in the matured physical, mental, and moral powers, requires frequent and regular action, alternated with rest, as much as in their development. Consequently, those who cultivate one or two of these faculties, to the neglect of the others, exhibit a marked deficiency of acuteness and vigor in those not exercised. This defect reacts on the powers that are vigorous, diminishing the energy and deteriorating all the other faculties of man. ”

“ Goddard then goes on to suppose that a delinquent with the intelligence of a sixteen year old may be “defective” because he happens “to have got into an environment that requires a twenty-year-old intelligence.” The suggestion that a criminal might be excused on the ground of deficiency because he happened to fall among bad companions is a reductio ad absurdum. Clearly environment must be defined as ordinary environment, available 43environment or by some similar concept, or else the definition of deficiency loses all significance. ”

“ THE CHIEF DEFICIENCY OF ACTIVE PEOPLE.—Active people are usually deficient in the higher activity, I mean individual activity. ”

“ Is it not often the case, that those who are distinguished by any superior endowment, whether personal or mental, are too much elated by the consciousness of their pre-eminence, 149and think it sufficient to counterbalance every deficiency? ”

“ This slight discrepancy should be kept in mind. The problem of avoiding selected samples among adults is still more difficult; but we found that it was possible in one community at least to measure all the 15-year-olds in the lowest X percentage in certain districts, as we shall note later. By this age, mental processes are probably very much like those of adults, except for the amount of information and practise.
42 (2) Variation among Different Communities. Under any conception of deficiency it is clear that there are relatively more deficients in some communities than others. ”