30 A METHOD OF MEASURING THE DEVELOPMENT 



brevity ; a table, it is a thing; a horse^ it is an animal, it is a 

 domestic animal; a mamma, she is a person; she is a woman. 

 In other cases children try to describe the object; a fork is a 

 little fork with four points; a table, it is a board zvith four 

 feet; a horse, that has four legs; a horse that runs, that bites, 

 etc. Or still another series given by a child of nine years : 

 A fork has four prongs, — a table has four legs, — a chair has 

 four legs, — a horse has four feet, — a mamma has two hands 

 and two feet. Older children think of the character of the 

 object and of what it is composed: A fork is made of copper; a 

 fork is a white metal; a table, it is wooden; a chair, it is some 

 pieces of wood and some straw; it is of waxed wood; a horse, 

 it is meat, etc. Another point of view is the ' grammatical : 

 Table is of the feminine gender, chair also; horse is of the 

 mascidine gender. We think it useless to give examples of 

 more intelligent responses, because this test occurs in our 

 scale at the ages of six and nine. The intellectual develop- 

 ment of these two ages can be distinguished by the kind of 

 definition give by the child. The value of the definitions is 

 judged by the character of the majority of the definitions. 

 Five are required of each child. We note the character of 

 responses common to three of them. 



Half of the children of four years of age define in terms 

 of use only ; the proportion is a little greater for the five-year- 

 old group; and practically all of the six-year-old children use 

 this form. We have found that not until the ninth year are 

 the majority of definitions given in terms superior to use, 



III. Copies a lozenge. — Hospital experience suggested 

 this test. We were surprised to find imbeciles who could 

 copy a square and yet failed in the attempt to copy a lozenge. 

 These figures are not very different in form, but the direction 

 of the lines of the lozenge is much more difficult to reproduce. 

 We found the same true of the children in the regular schools ; 

 at five years of age a child can copy a square; not until six 

 can he copy a lozenge; and even at seven one-fifth of the 

 children fail. At six years one-half fail. In the appendix we 



