Average Chronological Age Research Articles

The Permanence of Improvement of Fifth-Grade School Children in Certain Mental Functions

While the improvability of school children is a decidedly funda mental question in education, permanence of improvement is equally important. Comparatively little experimental data have been gathered with reference to the retention of improvement of children under schoolroom conditions. Only through the frank reports of studies carried on by teachers who have the experimental attitude will there be made available a sufficiently large mass of specific material gathered under actual working conditions. With such an objective basis it is possible for educators to reformulate the laws of learning based hitherto upon data gathered under too limited conditions. This paper is a report of some measures of permanence in improvement made in connection with a larger learning experiment. The subjects in this study were forty-nine children in a typical fifth grade in an American section of the city of New Haven, Con necticut. The average chronological age of the group was ten years. Forty-five complete practice records in seven tests were obtained over a period of eleven consecutive school days. The daily program of work with the total practice time of each test as administered in the order listed follows : Total Time Test per Test (Minutes) Substitution (Symbol Digit). 44 Addition (Thorndike Sheets). 55 Reading (Chapman-Cook Speed Test). 16 Cancellation (Woodworth-Wells).33 Multiplication (Arranged for this study). 55 Same-Opposite (Arranged for this study).13 Multiplication by substitution (Sheets used by Thorndike and others, rearranged).44 Total practice time.260

Mental Tests and Practical Judgments

This paper is a portion of a considerably longer report of investigations of what Ziehen calls The Psychopathic Constitution.2 My aim in this study is many-fold: 1. To correlate the opinions of leading scientific men, here and abroad, as to the methods of diagnosis and treatment of juvenile and adult delinquency. 2. To study a certain number of cases with all the means at hand, in order to point out comparatively the strong and weak points in our method of dealing at present with this class of cases. 3. To make a comparison of the results of tests for attention, association, memory, direction, learning and ethical discrimination upon delinquents, with the results of the same tests upon normal school children of the same school grade as the average school grade of the delinquents at the time they left school. 4. To make a comparison of the results of the above tests upon delinquents with the results of the same tests upon normal individuals in employment who are of the same average chronological age and station in life, and who were of the same average school grade at the time they left school. 5. To compare the results of the above tests upon white delinquents with the results of the same tests upon colored delinquents in the same institution.