Downey: Mental Inheritance 



31, 



five months), are half-brother and sis- 

 ter, and so far as general intelligence 

 is concerned, low average. Their social 

 level would be described as inferior. 

 Both showed, however, when tested by 

 the Standard Revision of the Binet 

 Scale, unusual keenness in discrimina- 

 tion of ditTerences in weight. This was 

 evident not only by their passing of 

 the tests on weight discrimination, but 

 also by their method of procedure. 

 Bertha, for example, retained after her 

 first serial arrangement of five weights 

 such a clear-cut memory of the weight 

 of each block as to be able to place them 

 thereafter in sequence without inter- 

 comparison. Her ability to do this, after 

 a preliminary handling, was checked 

 many times. Squares were chalked on 

 a table and she was instructed to place 

 each block in its proper square as soon 

 as she had lifted it. Her threshold for 

 weight discrimination when determined 

 by the standard tests proved to be ex- 

 tremely low for a child of her age. Clif- 

 ford, her brother, reacted in much the 

 same way when tested with two weights, 

 according to the five-year procedure. 

 Moreover, after a little practice with 

 the blocks, he was able to arrange five 

 in sequence (a nine-year test) by the 

 same method as his sister, namely, an 

 absolute sensing of the weight. It is 

 probable that in other respects also 

 these children possess keen sense dis- 

 crimination, as when the weight test 

 was tried on a table without our usual 

 velvet cover, Bertha was quick to iden- 

 tify the blocks by their sound in strik- 

 ing the table. Later, on interviewing 

 the mother of these children, we found 

 that their maternal grandfather had, as 

 postmaster, enjoyed a reputation of 

 being able "to tell" the weight of articles 

 without using a scale. The mother re- 

 ports that she herself does not possess 

 the gift. 



Case HI. — Virginia F. At the age of 

 two and a half years (1910) Virginia 

 surprised her relatives by a passionate 

 interest in a set of blocks that could be 

 put together to form six different pic- 

 tures. At that time picture-puzzles had 

 not been exploited as a means of testing 



a child's development, and careful notes 

 of Virginia's performance were not re- 

 corded. Her interest, however, was 

 very evident, and her skill in manipula- 

 tion seemed extraordinary ; she early 

 devised a scheme for rapidly shifting 

 from one picture to another by making 

 such a number of turns per block as was 

 necessary to place it in the new picture. 



JUVENILE CAPACITIES 



At the age of three years six months, 

 Virginia was put through the 1908 

 Binet test, making a mental age between 

 four and a half and five years by that 

 scale. My interest was centered largely 

 in the general outcome and I failed to 

 notice significant features of the result. 

 At nine years six months, Virginia was 

 given the Stanford Revision of the 

 Binet Scale and made a mental age of 

 ten years six months. The fact that 

 in spite of her high intelligence quotient 

 she was only "at age" in her school 

 work led to a careful scrutiny of her 

 record. It was evident that her failures 

 to score under the age of eleven were all 

 in verbal tests. She was hesitant in 

 defining words — an actual retardation 

 in readiness of expression and not in 

 comprehension, as she succeeded in the 

 fable test for twelve years and the dis- 

 sected sentence and similarity test for 

 the same years. Turning back to her 

 record at three and a half years, I find 

 that at that time also, inspite of a very 

 superior performance in other respects, 

 she gave only the infantile form of defi- 

 nition, and that only under pressure. 

 But at that time she knew her right 

 from her left hand, a six-year test, and 

 at nine and a half she manipulates the 

 well-known Healy-Fernald Construc- 

 tion Puzzle A in 20, 18, and 12 seconds 

 for three trials, respectively, although 

 the performance of the average ten- 

 year-old is scheduled at three times in 

 five minutes (Fig. 7). In order to test 

 further her capacity in dealing with 

 form-boards, I put Virginia through 

 the Pintner-Patterson scale of perform- 

 ance tests. Her record on the boards, 

 where ease in spatial orientation is a 

 factor of importance, was extremely 



