As has been stated, the first cases of inferiority in reading were reported by ophthalmologists, who, upon discovering nothing wrong with the visual apparatus of the child brought for examination, pronounced the difficulty to be word blindness or “congenital alexia.” In using these terms, they reasoned from analogy with pathological cases of selective loss of function in adults, referred to by us in Chapter III.
The first cases reported from this point of view were, so far as the present writer can determine, those of Kerr and those of Morgan, both reporting in 1896. After these, a number of individual cases were reported in France, England, Germany, and the United States. In 1915, Schröck and Clemesha respectively summarized all literature to that date, the former presenting a bibliography of thirty-two titles. The great drawback to clear interpretation of these cases is that general intelligence was not measured. Some, at least, of the children were feeble-minded, for we find cited as evidence of good general endowment, performances which we now know to be typical of children much younger than those being described.
Hinshelwood, an ophthalmologist, published in 1917 a general discussion of non-readers, from the medical standpoint. According to his treatment of the subject, non-readers constitute a group apart, defined by some congenital, pathological defect in brain structure, but for which they would have read normally. This concept is directly derived from analogy with cases of lost function in diseased persons.
“By the term congenital word blindness, we mean a congenital defect occurring in children with otherwise normal and undamaged brains characterized by a difficulty in learning to read so great that it is manifestly due to a pathological condition, and where the attempts to teach the child by the ordinary methods have completely failed.... The recognition of this condition was the direct outcome and result of the previously acquired knowledge of those symptoms of cerebral disease, which we have been studying.... No doubt it is a comparatively common thing to find some who lag considerably behind their fellows, because of their slowness and difficulty in acquiring their visual word memories, but I regard these slight defects as only physiological variations, and not to be regarded as pathological conditions. It becomes a source of confusion to apply to such cases, as has been done of late, the term congenital word blindness, which should be reserved for the really grave degrees of this defect, which manifestly are the result of a pathological condition of the visual memory center, and which have proved refractory to all the ordinary methods of school instruction.”
This is the supposition which was critically considered in Chapter III, and shown to be irreconcilable with facts known to psychology. Hinshelwood did not make mental examinations of the cases which he describes, by standard psychological methods. He did, however, work out by experience a method of teaching, whereby all the non-reading children described learned to read. This consists simply in returning to the primitive method of instruction, beginning with the letters of the alphabet as units of perception, and proceeding by teaching the spelling of words. The necessity of individual teaching is insisted upon.
Aside from the improbabilities of neurological theory, this work is a valuable contribution to the study of children who have special difficulty in reading. It calls attention to the needs of such children, and shows that they can be taught.
V. PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES OF SPECIAL DEFECT IN READING
In 1917 Bronner published several interesting cases of special backwardness in reading, studied by the methods of psychological analysis. Bronner states that deficiency in reading, in children of normal sensory capacity and intelligence, sometimes is related to special deficiencies in making visual associations or auditory associations. In the former case the visual details of the word would be elusive. In the latter case, the phonetic elements would be inadequately heeded. Since ordinary success in reading arises through both these avenues of approach, deficiency in either might result in poor reading. Bronner suggests that the avenue which is most approachable in these cases be specially utilized. All children cannot easily learn to read by the method which serves the majority. Bronner does not give results of experimental teaching in the cases analyzed.
In 1918 Schmitt reported thirteen cases from the Chicago Schools, with many details of mental and physical examination. Unfortunately, systematic standard tests of general intelligence were not given, which must be considered a defect in the study, since exact comparisons of reading deficiency and mental age, or IQ, cannot be made. We have the investigator’s assurance that “sufficient tests were given to establish normal intelligence.”
The conclusion that special deficiency in reading ability was present, was made upon the following criteria: (1) regular school attendance; (2) reasonably good health and physical condition; (3) no sign of visual defect; (4) persisting slowness in learning to read, or total inability manifested over one or more years of school life; (5) general mental ability good or average; (6) no other interfering factor, such as foreign language in the home, dislike of school, abnormal unresponsiveness to school, or other social situations. Where all these conditions were satisfactorily met, central deficiency in capacity for learning to read was assumed to characterize the child.