An objective measure of emotional instability

Abstract

A comparison of the performances of ten psychopathic boys with those of ten normals (boys of both groups being selected from among 100 delinquents) on a high relief finger maze showed "that the use of the finger maze is advantageous in the study of differences in stability between individuals because it practically shuts out of the situation the factors of IQ, visual sensations, auditory sensations, and a great amount of reasoning due to the almost entirely trial and error methods necessary at the start, leaving irregularities of performance due to false moves, etc., at the mercy of emotional reactions during the learning process." Normal, stable individuals differ from unstable individuals in the extent to which they allow obstructions, new experiences, etc., to influence their learning processes. According to the author, "there is practically no correlation between the learning of the finger maze and the intellectual capacity of the learner," while he also states that "adults and older children learn the maze more rapidly, in fewer number of trials and with less errors than do younger children." The average IQ's of the two groups differ by but approximately 7 points, although the normal group includes only two cases (IQ 56 and 68) below an IQ of 100, while the psychopathic group contains only one case (IQ 123) above 104 in IQ. No tabulations of mental ages are given. Bibliography of 25 titles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)