Brightness and dullness in children / by Herbert Woodrow.

  • Woodrow, Herbert (Herbert Hollingworth), 1883-
Date:
[1919], ©1919
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Brightness and dullness in children / by Herbert Woodrow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    45/334 (page 41)
    BRIGHTNESS AND DULLNESS Distinction Between Mental Age and Brightness.— The word intelligence has two quite distinct meanings, which need to be carefully distinguished. In one sense, intelligence is something which increases in amount with age. It is that which is measured by mental age. In this sense of the term, a child of ten years of age has much more intelligence than a child of three years of age, even if the ten-year-old child is dull and the three-year-old 1s bright. In the other sense of the term, intelligence is something that remains more or less constant throughout life. This is the sense in which one employs the term when he speaks of a child as highly intelligent without specifying his age. What one really means, in this case, is that the child has more intelligence than other children of his ownage. In the first sense of the term, intelligence is an absolute amount, like height described in inches; in the second, a relation, like height described as tallness or shortness. Throughout the present discussion the term intelli- gence, if unqualified, is used only in the first sense, in the sense of mental age. This makes it necessary to decide upon a different name for intelligence in the second sense. The proposal has been made to use the term brightness, meaning by brightness any degree thereof from extreme idiocy to genius of the highest order. I have adopted this proposal, and shall use the word brightness in this broad sense. It is less awkward than the term relative intelli- 4I