A. THE MEANING OF INTELLECTUAL DEFICIENCY.
Whatever form the definition of feeble-mindedness may take, in this
country at least[3] the concept has become quite firmly established as
describing the condition of those who require social guardianship,
because, with training, they do not develop enough mentally to live an
independent life in society. The feeble-minded are socially deficient
because of a failure to develop mentally. They are proper wards of the
state because of this mental deficiency. Goddard says, they are
“incapable of functioning properly in our highly organized society”
(_112_, p. 6). The most generally quoted verbal description of the upper
line of social unfitness is that of the British Royal Commission on
Feeble-Mindedness: “Persons who may be capable of earning a living under
favorable circumstances, but are incapable from mental defect existing
from birth or from an early age (a) of competing on equal terms with
their normal fellows; or (b) of managing themselves and their affairs
with ordinary prudence.” It is clear that the intention is to
distinguish mental deficiency from senile dementia, from hysteria and
from insanity, in which there is a temporary or permanent loss of mental
ability rather than a failure to develop. Feeble-mindedness may,
however, arise from epilepsy or from other diseases or accidents in
early life as well as from an inherent incapacity for development.
Moreover, _mental_ deficiency, or feeble-mindedness, (I use the terms
interchangeably) does not imply that the social unfitness is always
caused by intellectual deficiency. Mind is a broader term than
intellect, as we shall note in the next section.
This definition of the feeble-minded is the main idea expressed by
Witmer (_221_), Tredgold (_204_), Pearson (_164_), and Murdock (_164_).
The historical development of the concept is traced by Rogers (_172_)
and Norsworthy (_159_). It is criticized by Kuhlmann (_140_) as
impractical and indefinite. The indefiniteness is indicated by such
terms as “under favorable circumstances,” “on equal terms,” and “with
ordinary prudence.” This objectionable uncertainty as to social fitness
can be considerably relieved for those types of feeble-mindedness which
involve the inability to pass mental tests, since this result can later
be correlated with subsequent social failure and predictions made during
childhood on the basis of the tests. Attempts to make the concept of
feeble-mindedness more definite have, therefore, naturally taken some
quantitative form in relation to objective tests. Binet and the French
commission in 1907 (_77_) called attention to the method in use in
Belgium for predicting unfitness objectively on the basis of the amount
of retardation in school at different ages. With the appearance in 1908
of the Binet-Simon revised scale for measuring mental development,
quantitative descriptions began to be concerned with the borderlines of
mental deficiency on scales of tests.
While the quantitative descriptions of tested deficiency do not include
all forms of feeble-mindedness, as I shall show in the next section,
they have made the diagnosis of the majority of cases much more
definite. Nobody would think of returning to the days when the principal
objective criteria were signs of Cretinism, Mongolianism, hydrocephalus,
microcephalus, epilepsy, meningitis, etc., which LaPage (_141_) has
shown are not found among more than 9% of 784 children in the Manchester
special schools. The impossibility of agreeing upon subjective estimates
of mental capacity without the use of objective criteria is well shown
by Binet's methodical comparison of the admission certificates filled
out within a few days of each other by the alienists for the
institutions of Sainte-Anne, Bicêtre, the Salpêtreire and Vaucluse.
These physicians gave their judgments as to whether a case was an idiot,
imbecile or higher grade. Binet says: “We have compared several hundreds
of these certificates, and we think we may say without exaggeration that
they looked as if they had been drawn by chance out of a sack” (_77_, p.
76).
The rapid accumulation of data with psychological tests has made it
possible to take our first halting steps in the direction of greater
definiteness in diagnosis by a larger use of objective methods. This
increase in significance of the concept of deficiency is fruitful at
once in estimating the size of the social problem and planning means for
undertaking the care of these unfortunates. We can discover something of
the error in the previous subjective estimates of the frequency of
feeble-mindedness. We can bring together and compare the work of
different investigators, not only in our country, but throughout the
world. We can discover, for example, how important the problem of
deficiency is among different groups of delinquents, knowing that the
differences are not to be explained by differences in expert opinion.
Furthermore, we can now determine, with considerable accuracy, whether
the diagnosis made by a reliable examiner is independent of his personal
opinion.
If we disregard the natural antipathy of many people to anything which
tends to limit the charming vagueness of their mental outlook, we may
endeavor to chart this horizon of tested deficiency with something of
the definiteness of figures, which shall at the same time indicate a
range of error. As soon as our aim comes to be to plot the borderline on
a measuring scale of mental ability, we find that the borderline must be
so stated that we can deal with either adults or children. Two sorts of
limiting regions must be described, one for mature minds and one for
immature minds. The latter will be in the nature of a prediction as to
what sort of ability the children will show when they grow up. We must
keep in mind, therefore, that we should attempt our quantitative
definition for both growing and adult minds. As soon as the growing mind
passes the lower limit for the mature it is then guaranteed access to
the social seas although it may never swim far from shore nor develop
further with advancing years. In seeking greater definiteness, our aim
should then be to describe both the limit for the mature individuals and
the limit for the immature of each age. In this paper the definition
will be restricted to _intellectual deficiency_, _i. e._, tested
deficiency. It will take the form of describing _the positions on a
scale below which fall the same lowest percentage of intellects_. This
percentage definition of intellectual deficiency offers such a simple
method of consistently describing the borderlines for mature and
immature that it is surprising so little attempt has previously been
made to work it out for a system of tests. Although the principle on
which the definition is based depends upon the distribution curve of
ability, it is concerned only with the lower limit of the distribution.
Since the exact form of this distribution is uncertain I have preferred
to call it a percentage definition of intellectual deficiency rather
than to state the limits in terms of the variability of ability.
Moreover the lowest X per cent. in mental development requires no
further explanation to be understood by the layman.
B. FORMS OF MENTAL DEFICIENCY NOT YET DISCOVERABLE BY TESTS.
The first broad conclusion that impresses those who try to use mental
scales for diagnosing feeble-mindedness is that the lower types, the
idiots and imbeciles, can be detected with great accuracy by an hour's
testing. The difficulties pile up as soon as the individual rises above
the imbecile group. The practical experience of those in institutions
for the feeble-minded here becomes of fundamental importance. They are
able to supply the history of exceptions that should make us cautious
about our general rules. Certain people whom they have known for years
to be unable to adjust themselves socially because their minds have not
reached the level of social fitness will yet be able to pass
considerably beyond the lower test limit for mature minds. The mental
scales can only detect those feeble-minded who cannot succeed with our
present tests. This is the basal principle in using any system of tests.
Stated in another way, this first caution for anybody seeking the
assistance of a mental scale is that tests may detect a feeble-minded
person, but when a person passes them it does not guarantee social
fitness. The negative conclusion, “this person is not feeble-minded,”
can not be drawn from tests alone. Mental tests at present are positive
and not negative scales. This fact will probably always make the
expert's judgment essential before the discharge of a suspected case of
mental deficiency. When a subject falls below a conservative limit for
tested ability a trained psychologist who is familiar with the sources
of error in giving tests, even without experience with the
feeble-minded, should be able to say that this person at present shows
as deficient development as the feeble-minded. To conclude however that
any subject has a passable mind requires in addition practical
experience with feeble-minded people who pass the tests. It is very much
easier to state that the tests do not detect all forms of
feeble-mindedness than it is to give any adequate description of the
sort of feeble-mindedness which they do not as yet detect.
This distinction between the feeble-minded who do well with test scales
and those who do not, is well known in the institutions for the
feeble-minded. Binet sought to distinguish some of the feeble-minded who
escaped the tests by calling them “unstable,” or “ill-balanced,”
individuals as Drummond (_77_) translates the term. To use the
historical distinctions of psychology, their minds seem to be
undeveloped more on their volitional and emotional sides than on their
intellectual side. Weidensall (_59_) has described another type as
“inert.” She found that quite a number of the reformatory women might
slide through the tests but fail socially from the fact that “their
lives and minds are so constituted that they feel no need to learn the
things any child ought to know, though they can and do learn when we
teach them.” Again, it seems to be a disturbance of will through the
feeling, rather than an intellectual deficiency. Many of the so-called
“moral imbeciles” are probably able to pass intellectual tests lasting
but a few minutes. Like the unstable or inert they are not failures
because of a lack of intellectual understanding of right and wrong, but
because of excess or deficiency of their instinctive tendencies
especially in the emotional sphere. Such weakness of will may arise
either from abnormality of specific instinctive impulses or inability to
organize these impulses so that one impulse may be utilized to
supplement or inhibit another. We may call all this group of cases
socially deficient because of a weakness in the volitional, or conative,
aspect of mind.
The discrimination of mental activities which are predominately
emotional and conative from those in which intellect is mainly
emphasized is also well recognized by those who have been making broad
studies of tests in other fields than that of feeble-mindedness. Hart
and Spearman (_123_), for example, call attention to the fact that tests
passed under the stimulus of test conditions represent what the subject
does when keyed up to it rather than what he would do under social
conditions. We cannot be sure that speed ability as tested will
represent speed _preferences_. The subject may be able to work rapidly
for a few minutes, but in life consistently prefer to work deliberately.
Regarding the eighteen tests which they studied with normal and abnormal
adults they say: “These tests have been arranged so as to be confined to
purely intellectual factors. But in ordinary life, this simplicity is of
rare occurrence. For the most part, what we think and believe is
dominated by what we feel and want.” Kelley (_130_) finds by the
regression equation that the factor of effort amounts to two-thirds of
the weight of that of the intellectual factor in predicting scholarship
from teachers' estimates. Webb (_217_) thinks that he finds by tests a
general conative factor comparable to Spearman's general intellective
factor.
With the change in point of view that has come from the adoption of the
biological conception of the mind the discrimination of the different
forms of feeble-mindedness must be recognized as a distinction in the
emphasis on intellectual, emotional and conative processes, not a
distinction between actually separable forms of mental activity. On
account of the organic nature of the mind it is well established that
various mental processes are mutually dependent. Any disturbance of the
emotional processes will tend to affect the thinking and vice versa.
Even if we believe that emotions are complex facts, involving vague
sensations as well as feelings, and that terms like emotion, memory,
reasoning and will are names for classes of mental facts rather than for
mental powers, it still remains important to distinguish between
feeling, intellect and will, as well as to recognize the interdependence
of the mental processes. Common sense seems to agree with psychological
descriptions in regarding mind as a broader term than intellect, and
feeble-mindedness as a broader term than intellectual feebleness.
Since tests at present tend to reach the intellectual processes more
surely than the emotional, we describe those who fail in them as
intellectually deficient. The term “intellect” seems to be better than
“intelligence” because the latter seems to include information as well
as capacity, while the aim of measuring scales has been to eliminate the
influence of increasing information with age. To be thoroughly
objective, of course, one should talk about “feebleness in tested
abilities;” but we would then fail to point out the important fact about
our present scales that they detect mainly intellectual deficiency, that
they do not reach those forms of feeble-mindedness in which the weakness
in such traits as stability, ambition, perseverance, self-control, etc.,
is not great enough to interfere with the brief intellectual processes
necessary for passing tests. Intellectual deficiency will be used
hereafter to refer to those social deficients whose feebleness is
disclosed by our present test scales.
In the opinion of Kuhlmann these cases of disturbed emotions and will
which shade off into different forms of insanity should not be classed
as feeble-minded at all, although he recognizes that they are commonly
placed in this group. He regards them as an intermediate class between
the feeble-minded and the insane. He says: “They readily fail in the
social test for feeble-mindedness and because of the absence of definite
symptoms of insanity are often classed as feeble-minded. In the opinion
of the present writer they should not be so classed, because they
require a different kind of care and treatment, and have a different
kind of capacity for usefulness” (_140_). So long as this group of what
we shall term “conative cases” is discriminated from the intellectually
deficient it matters less whether they be regarded as a sub-group of the
feeble-minded or as a co-ordinate class. In grouping them with the
feeble-minded we have followed the customary classification. An estimate
of the size of this group will be considered later in Chapter III.
C. DOUBTFUL INTELLECTS ACCOMPANIED BY DELINQUENCY PRESUMED DEFICIENT.
Conative forms of feeble-mindedness are perhaps the most serious types
in the field of delinquency. They are the troublesome portion of the
borderland group of deficient delinquents about which there is so much
concern. It is important to remember that it is just among these cases
that the test judgment is least certain. In this dilemma one principle
seems to be sound enough psychologically to be likely to meet with
acceptance. I should state this principle as follows: _A borderline case
which has also shown serious and repeated delinquency should be classed
as feeble-minded, the combination of doubtful intellect and repeated
delinquency making him socially unfit._ This will relieve the practical
situation temporarily until tests are perfected which will detect those
whose feebleness is specialized in those phases of volition centering
around the instinctive passions, control, balance, interest and
endurance. The principle recognizes that mental weakness is sometimes
emphasized in the volitional processes of the mind.
The principle is apparently in conflict with the rule advocated by Dr.
Wallin. Referring to the mental levels reached by individuals, he says:
“We cannot consider X-, XI-, or XII-year-old criminals as feeble-minded
because they happen to be criminals and refuse to consider X-, XI-, and
XII-year-old housewives, farmers, laborers and merchants as
feeble-minded simply because they are law abiding and successful”
(_214_, p. 707). At another place he insists “that the rule must work
both ways” (_215_, p. 74). Logically it would seem at first that it was
a poor rule which did not work both ways. Further consideration will
show, I believe, that there has been a confusion of feeble-mindedness
with tested deficiency. If all the feeble-minded tested deficient
intellectually then the tested level should determine whether or not
they were feeble-minded. This, however, is not a correct psychological
description of the facts. I prefer, therefore, to allow for those in a
defined narrow range of weak intellects to be classed as deficient
provided their weakness also manifests itself pronouncedly in the
conative sphere.
The principle that all mental deficients need not show the same low
degree of intellectual ability is clearly recognized in perhaps the most
important legal enactment on deficiency which has been passed in recent
years, the British Mental Deficiency Act of 1913. It states regarding
“moral imbeciles” that they are persons “who from an early age display
some permanent mental defect coupled with strong vicious or criminal
propensities on which punishment has had little or no deterrent effect.”
It specifically distinguishes them from the group of feeble-minded which
require guardianship because of inability to care for themselves.
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Footnote 3:
In Great Britain the term is restricted to those above the imbecile
group.