Elizabeth, reported by Hirt. Elizabeth was reported from the public schools of Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1922, by Hirt (13). She was born January 16, 1914, and was tested June 14, 1921, aged 7 years 5 months. Her Mental Age was found to be 14 years, 0 months, yielding an IQ of 189 (S-B).
Elizabeth's mother was a member of a large family of children brought from Germany to America by their parents. The father (Elizabeth's maternal grandfather) died soon after their arrival in America, and the mother (Elizabeth's maternal grandmother) worked hard to keep her family together and to give them all an elementary school education. Elizabeth's father is of Pennsylvania German descent. He has a high school education, and attended a business college. His occupation in 1922 was that of a postal mail clerk.
This child weighed 10 pounds at birth, 22 pounds at 6 months, 28 1/2 pounds at 12 months, and at the age of 7 years 5 months she weighed 61 pounds and was 51 inches tall. Superior size was thus consistently maintained from birth to the time of first report, in 1921. Two teeth erupted before she was 5 months old. She was not quite a year old when she began to repeat words. He first sentence was, "Open the door, Daddy," uttered at the age of 17 months. The parents remembered this sentence as a sudden transition from one-word communications into sentence structure.
The only illness Elizabeth had ever had until she was 7 years 4 months old was mumps, which came on at that age.
Hirt's report continues as follows:
Among Elizabeth's first toys was a set of cubical blocks with letters and numbers on four sides. One of the baby's favorite amusements was to hold up a block and point to one side after the other for her entertainer to tell what was on the side of the block indicated. Gradually the game changed, and the baby held up the block and pointed to the picture called for by the entertainer. At the age of 15 months she made no mistakes in finding the animals called for, and very soon afterwards she could find the letters in the same way.
One of her first books was The Story of the Naughty Piggies. The child seemed never to tire of hearing the story read, and by the time she was two and a half years old, when she sat in the lap of the reader, she could turn the page at just the right place in the story. About that time the two leaves in the center of the book loosened and dropped out. The German grandma made a mistake in sewing them in, putting the second first. Elizabeth quickly discovered the mistake and was very unhappy about it. She followed her grandmother about, asking her to fix it. The grandmother could not understand what the child meant, and finally appealed to the child's mother, who discovered what was wrong. Elizabeth was not yet three years old, and they could not believe that the child detected the difference between these two pages of the book. But after the grandmother ripped out the stitches and replaced the leaves in their proper sequence, the little girl showed unmistakable satisfaction and content.
At three and a half years of age, Elizabeth was spelling everything she saw printed and asking what the letters spelled, and she could recognize many words. At four years, she read the advertisements in the streetcars, as well as everything in all the books she possessed. During all this time there was no attempt on the part of the parents to make their daughter precocious. They were pleased with her readiness to learn, but they did not look upon her as an unusual child.
In September, 1920, Elizabeth was enrolled in the first grade, in the public schools of Erie, Pennsylvania. She was then 6 years, 8 months old. On her second day in school her teacher discovered that should could read anything that was placed before her. The principal put her in the second grade until she had time to investigate her case. She spent forty-two days in the second grade, during which time the principal observed her closely, and decided to place her in the fourth grade.
Elizabeth had no trouble in completing that grade in the remainder of the school year, the principal giving her some special help in spelling and arithmetic. . . . Elizabeth is not a skillful writer, as far as penmanship goes, but she seldom makes a mistake in either spelling or punctuation, and the content of her letters and compositions is superior, even for the advanced grade in which she is now working. . . . Intellectually speaking, this child takes everything to which she is exposed, and she is not satisfied unless she understands the subject fully. Unfamiliar words or terms bring from her the question, "Just what does that mean?" She has a cheery disposition, and laughs often and heartily. She is contented in any environment, because her imagination makes it as she wishes it. . . . When she is reading or studying, she becomes so engrossed that it is hard to attract her attention to anything outside her book. . . . She is slow in her written work, and she is slow and rather awkward in some of her motor coördinations.