Experimental studies of mental defectives : a critique of the Binet-Simon tests and a contribution to the psychology of epilepsy.

  • Wallin, J. E. Wallace (John Edward Wallace), 1876-1969.
Date:
1912
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Experimental studies of mental defectives : a critique of the Binet-Simon tests and a contribution to the psychology of epilepsy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Gerstein Science Information Centre at the University of Toronto, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Gerstein Science Information Centre, University of Toronto.

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    EDITOR'S PREFACE. In this, the seventh of the series of Educational Psy- chology Monographs, Dr^ Wallin has presented the results of a systematic critical study of the Binet- Simon scale when applied to a colony of over three hundred epileptics. These results will appeal to schoolmen and to physicians and alienists for two reasons. In the first place, they have added to our knowledge of the men- tal status of the epileptic. Epilepsy has long re- mained a little-understood disease. We are told that some men who have attained eminence have been epileptic, e. g., Julius Caesar, Mohammed, and prob- ably St. Paul, to cite conspicuous instances; yet the great majority of those afflicted with the malady fail to reach normal mental maturity, and fall, as Dr. Wallin shows, into the upper group of the feeble- minded, now known as morons. These children re- semble more the typical laggard of the public schools than the typical feeble-minded child, and they re- quire special educational treatment. For this reason the more we can discover as to the psychology of the epileptic, the more successful will be our educational measures. In the second place, these results have added to our knowledge of the Binet-Simon tests. The fact that these tests are being widely adopted by school authorities as a convenient and assumedly scientific