The developmental history of X as an organism reveals nothing atypical, except defects of speech and difficulty in reading. He was born normally, walked and talked before he was two years old, and was normal in dentition. But he did not talk plainly till he was about 6 years old. He had a speech defect, stuttered, and could not say “l”.
His medical history shows that he had whooping cough as a baby; that tonsils and adenoids were removed at the age of 5 years; that he had an abscess in the left ear at the age of 4 years, which lasted about two weeks, but did not impair hearing; that he had diphtheria at the age of 11 years, a bad case, followed by temporary paralysis of the soft palate; that he had never had any convulsion or loss of consciousness; that he had never had chorea, or other disease of the nervous system. Physically he was well developed, measurements on February 14, 1918, being as follows: Standing height, 59.8 inches; sitting height, 29.6 inches; weight (with ordinary clothing on), 86¼ pounds; cranial circumference, 21.2 inches; right grip (Smedley), 20 Kg.; left grip, 18 Kg.; lung capacity (wet spirometer), 130 cubic inches.
As for family history, X is the youngest of four siblings, all others of whom learned without difficulty to read and spell. His sister graduated from high school with a state scholarship, went through college, and is now a teacher in a high school. An older brother graduated from the elementary school at 14 years, in spite of the fact that he missed two semesters through illness. He also had a speech defect “about the same as X,” but outgrew it. Another brother had reached 8B by the time he was 13 years old. Of thirteen cousins attending school, only one had ever been “left back.”
The mother had graduated at the usual age from common school. The father had been troubled in boyhood by a speech defect, which disappeared. “He could not say certain words and letters.” On this account he did not like school. As an adult he reads the newspapers, and “can write a straight letter.”
X had never known any language other than English, so that interference of habit from other languages was ruled out. No attempt had been made to teach him reading at home, until after the reports of his disability began to be made from the school.
General intelligence was measured by the Stanford-Binet Scale, with a resulting score of 9 years 9 months mental age, and IQ 85. It was thus seen that general intelligence was quite sufficient for learning to read. From general intelligence of this degree, in a child under ordinary instruction for six years, one would usually be justified in predicting close to a fourth grade score on tests of reading.
In this case, however, scores of zero were yielded on all tests of ability to read. No word or letter on any scale could be read. There was, therefore, no question of making an analysis of the child’s difficulty through the use of such tests, since all scores were uniformly zero.
X was anxious to learn, and was becoming self-conscious because of his failure to go ahead. At this time no speech defect was noted by the examiner, and it was supposed to have been “outgrown.” He could copy writing, with some errors, and, as seemed strange, could transpose print into writing, though slowly and with errors.
Since sensory capacity was normal, general intelligence was developed well beyond the minimum at which reading can be taught, and character traits, such as promptness, reliability, and fidelity to duty, were reported to be better than average, it was decided to undertake to teach the child to read. Upon being asked whether he could travel alone from his school in Brooklyn to the office at Teachers College, both he and his mother replied without hesitation in the affirmative, “for he has ways of finding out where he is, without reading.”
Accordingly, from February to June, 1918, X came three times a week to Teachers College, and received special instruction in reading and spelling from Miss Sara Fisk, at that time a graduate student in the Department of Educational Psychology. After some experimentation with the attempt to teach by the word and sentence as units, Miss Fisk decided to begin by teaching first the alphabet, and to proceed with the letter as the unit. X thus learned to read, by spelling out the letters, and “sounding” them as he went. In this way, by the first of June, 1918, he knew and could sound and could write every letter of the alphabet, but could not write the capitals; and he had a reading vocabulary of eighty simple monosyllables. He was advised to study through the summer vacation, if he could.