EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF MENTAL DEFECTIVES
By J. E. Wallace Wallin, Ph. D. Warwick and York, Inc., Baltimore. 155 pp. Price $1.25; by mail of The Survey $1.32.
This is one of the educational psychology monographs edited by Guy Montrose Whipple. The book consists of the results of a series of tests made upon the epileptics at Skillman Village, N. J., by the Binet-Simon scale and by some other tests which are designed to supplement the Binet.
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.