Intellectual disability

“ PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS CHAPTER II. THE FUNCTIONS OF A SCALE IN DIAGNOSIS A. The Meaning of Intellectual Deficiency. Whatever form the definition of feeble-mindedness may take, in this country at least [3] the concept has become quite firmly established as describing the condition of those who require social guardianship, because, with training, they do not develop enough mentally to live an independent life in society. The feeble-minded are socially deficient because of a failure to develop mentally. ”

“ According to its article 1, "persons with disabilities" include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others. ”

“ In this state after some time the intellect appears to lose a great many IQ points: the capacity to form flexible human relationships or real intimacy is impaired and all reality testing functions are difficult to mobilize so that moderate prior psychological disability is likely to be set back considerably and permanently in his or her maturation to adulthood and will certainly be impaired in the ability and capacity to deal with the real world’s opportunities and dangers. ”

“ It would be wrong to conclude from this that a case of amputation at the wrist should be put to sewing.
It must never be forgotten that intelligence and will are factors of the first importance, so that however little intellectual capacity the disabled man may have, he is bound to profit by his passage through the school of re-education in learning to read and write if he is illiterate—this is more frequent than is usually believed—or to improve his knowledge if he has already had some instruction. It is, in fact, by brain work that many learn to replace their physical defect. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The primary motivation for the inclusion of misperceptions of disabilities in the statutory definition was that "society's accumulated myths and fears about disability and diseases are as handicapping as are the physical limitations that flow from actual impairment." ”

“ 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. ”

“ In light of this clinical definition of mental retardation, I cannot agree that the undeniable fact that mentally retarded persons have "diverse capacities and life experiences," ante, at 338, is of significance to the Eighth Amendment proportionality analysis we must conduct in this case. "Every individual who has mental retardation"-irrespective of his or her precise capacities or experiences-has "a substantial disability in cognitive ability and adaptive behavior." ”

“ As soon as the growing mind passes the lower limit for the mature it is then guaranteed access to the social seas although it may never swim far from shore nor develop further with advancing years. In seeking greater definiteness, our aim should then be to describe both the limit for the mature individuals and the limit for the immature of each age. In this paper the definition will be restricted to intellectual deficiency, i. e., tested deficiency. It will take the form of describing the positions on a scale below which fall the same lowest percentage of intellects. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To be thoroughly objective, of course, one should talk about “feebleness in tested abilities;” but we would then fail to point out the important fact about our present scales that they detect mainly intellectual deficiency, that they do not reach those forms of feeble-mindedness in which the weakness in such traits as stability, ambition, perseverance, self-control, etc., is not great enough to interfere with the brief intellectual processes necessary for passing tests. ”

“ The barriers facing the handicapped are not so much their own disabilities, but the attitudes of the non-handicapped toward their disabilities.
Those of us who are not handicapped think of what we could not do if we lost an arm or a leg, lost our sight or our voice, or were disabled in some other way. We often forget that the handicapped are thinking of what they can do.
We must learn to think like them-positively ! We must look not at what they cannot do, but at what they can do. We must look beyond the disability to the positive ability. ”

“ Physical defects excluded unmarried or pregnant women, the blind, halt, deaf, people above seventy years old and children under seven, dying people, and persons suffering from any loathsome disease. Intellectual defects prohibited the giving of evidence by those who could not read, could not count up to ten, and who did not know the names of the eight cardinal sins. ”

“ One of these reasons is that a theory, formulated to take care of the neural basis of specialized disabilities, must take care of specialized gifts, as well. Cases where a generally stupid child is innately gifted with special ability to master the mechanics of reading, for example, are no doubt as frequent as cases where a generally capable child learns them with difficulty. The theory of specialized lesions or other faults of structure might cover disabilities, but would it cover special talents as well? ”

“ So far as the determination of intellectual deficiency is concerned we should note with emphasis that placing the limit of passable intellects at XI for adults almost entirely removes the common objection to the Binet scale on account of the difficulty of the older age tests. ”

“ Scarcity of brains which work primarily in terms of connections between subtle elements, relationships, etc. (2) Lack of knowledge or incorrect knowledge, due to narrow experience or poor memory. (3) Lack of the necessary habits of attention and criticism. (4) Lack of power of the more abstract and intellectual operations to bring satisfaction, due partly to original equipment and partly to training. (5) Lack of power to do independent work, due to poor training. Schools cannot in any way make good the deficiency which is due to a lack of mental capacity. ”

“ Seeing the mischief which the system of disabilities is accomplishing, is it not time that there should be at least an end of it? Or is there any good it can possibly do to make up for the harm it has already wrought and is still working? ”

“ Those who read them will never know whether it's because you never learned how to write on a computer, or if it is because you have difficulties in controlling your movements. You alone decide if others are to know about your personal disability. ”

“ He may be dull, stupid, to all appearance hopelessly defective, but the researches of the past decade, the fruits of the mind-developing experiments that have gone apace with the discovery of the extent to which backwardness prevails, leave no doubt that in most cases the child who is a true dullard may be brought almost, if not fully, to normal intellectual activity, provided he is taken in hand at an early day. In fact, even the most pessimistically inclined investigators admit that, at an outside estimate, not more than 2 per cent. ”

“ Fine discriminations with the Binet scale are not possible with our present knowledge. So far as our information goes, if we use the percentage method of defining intellectual deficiency, we may say that adults who test X are in an uncertain group in intellectual ability, with the probability that they will require more or less social care, while those who test IX are deficient enough to need continuous care unless the evidence of the test is contradicted by other facts or is accounted for by the existence of removable handicaps. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While you may never be able to act directly on society to any great purpose, in consequence of mental or physical disabilities, you may, by instruction and guidance, prepare some other mind for useful work, which, but for your agency, might have wasted its powers in ignorance or crime. ”

“ The implementing regulations define handicapped children as "being mentally retarded, hard of hearing, deaf, speech impaired, visually handicapped, seriously emotionally disturbed, orthopedically impaired, other health impaired, deaf-blind, multi-handicapped, or as having specific learning disabilities, who because of those impairments need special education and related services." ”

“ It is not yet recognised that considerable sharpness of some intellectual qualities may co-exist with congenital deficiency of other qualities which subserve social life; or that there may be large development of sensative capacity, with stunted development of all intellectual capacity save that which serves for predatory purposes. ”

“ While science still knows little about the biochemical and structural differences in brain function that may account for the various anomalies we call learning disabilities, our educators are finding alternative methods of teaching which help the learning disabled enjoy a greater use of their mental potential despite the difficulties they may face in reading, calculating, and other forms of mentation and expression. ”

“ IV. SPECIAL ABILITIES AND DISABILITIES AS DETERMINANTS OF SCHOOL PROGRESS As before stated in these pages, no census has ever been taken of special aptitudes and defects, in the functions which we have been discussing, and which are important for progress 202through the elementary school. No one can tell whether any have been advanced on the basis of a special gift. No one can say how many children are retarded, because of a specialized disability, though we know from reports rendered, that some pupils become retarded in school status through special failure in one or two respects. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is only necessary to add that good authorities estimate that there are over 1,000,000 serious accidents in the United States every year, in order to see that disabilities resulting from accident are prolific as causes of poverty, especially in our large industrial centers. The physical and mental defects which manifest themselves in the defective classes proper, such as the feeble-minded, the insane, the epileptics, the deaf-mutes, and the blind, do not need to be dwelt upon as causes of dependence. ”

“ The term mental retardation, as commonly used today, embraces a heterogeneous population, ranging from totally dependent to nearly independent people. Although all individuals so designated share the common attributes of low intelligence and inadequacies in adaptive behavior, there are marked variations in the degree of deficit manifested and the presence or absence of associated physical handicaps, stigmata, and psychologically disordered states. ”