Mental differences in children referred to a psychological clinic

Abstract

This article consists of an interesting analysis of the mental differences in cases that have appeared in the Psychological Clinic of the Santa Clara County Health Center (California) with respect to nationality, social-economic status, educational level, and civil status of parents. The author's summary is an excellent abstract of the article: "Of 467 cases referred to the Psychological Clinic of the Santa Clara County Health Center, 157 or 33.7 per cent fall below I.Q. 70, 180 or 38.6 per cent are mentally retarded, 101 or 21.5 per cent average, while only 29, 6.2 per cent, attain a mental level above I.Q. 110. The foreign group is more retarded than the American group and this inferiority seems to be due to native endowment rather than to inability to handle the language. Of the foreign group the Italians constitute the largest per cent; in proportion to the number of Italians in the county they exceed their quota of the Clinic group by about 30 per cent. In social and economic status as indicated by the Taussig classification into non-competing groups and the Jaffa Budget classification, the American and the foreign groups each show a slight tendency towards positive correlation between status and intelligence. In general the lower the economic status the lower the level of intelligence. Educationally the group is retarded with respect to chronological age and advanced with respect to mental age. The retarded children of the group have been pushed beyond their mental capacity." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)