Читать книгу The Measurement of Intelligence - Lewis M. Terman - Страница 20

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Another source of error in the teacher’s judgment comes from the difficulty in distinguishing genuine dullness from the mental condition which results sometimes from unfavorable social environment or lack of training.

V. P. Boy, age 7. Had attended school one year and had profited very little from the instruction. He had learned to read very little, spoke chiefly in monosyllables, and seemed “queer.” The teacher suspected his intelligence and asked for a mental examination. The Binet test showed that except for vocabulary, which was unusually low, there was practically no mental retardation. Inquiry disclosed the fact that the boy’s parents were uneducated deaf-mutes, and that the boy had associated little with other children. Four years later this boy was doing fairly well in school, though a year retarded because of his unfavorable home environment.

X. Y. Boy, age 10. Son of a successful business man, he was barely able to read in the second reader. The Binet test revealed an intelligence level which was absolutely normal. The boy was removed to a special class where he could receive individual attention, and two years later was found doing good work in a regular class of the fifth grade. His bad beginning seemed to have been due to an unfavorable attitude toward school work, due in turn to lack of discipline in the home, and to the fact that because of the father’s frequent change of business headquarters the boy had never attended one school longer than three months.

Another source of error in judging intelligence from common observation is the tendency to overestimate the intelligence of the sprightly, talkative, sanguine child, and to underestimate the intelligence of the child who is less emotional, reacts slowly, and talks little. One occasionally finds a feeble-minded adult, perhaps of only 9- or 10-year intelligence, whose verbal fluency, mental liveliness, and self-confidence would mislead the offhand judgment of even the psychologist. One individual of this type, a border-line case at best, was accustomed to harangue street audiences and had served as “major” in “Kelly’s Army,” a horde of several hundred unemployed men who a few years ago organized and started to march from San Francisco to Washington.