Special talents and defects

by Leta Stetter Hollingworth

VII. NERVOUS INSTABILITY AND SPECIAL DEFICIENCY IN ARITHMETIC

Nervously unstable children are, as Burt has pointed out, often deficient in arithmetic, even when in general intelligence they are not deficient. This follows from the same causes of failure as were set forth under discussion of nervous instability and special difficulty in reading. To build up little by little the intricate hierarchy of arithmetical habits, each habit in its essential sequence, is a task uncongenial to the flighty, uncontrolled, or negativistic neurotic.

Individual instruction is here, again, the solution of the problem. The neurotic can learn arithmetic within the limits of his intelligence, by means of patient individual instruction, given preferably at rather brief sittings.