Excerpt from Porteus Tests the Vineland Revision

It has already been recognized that we cannot fix any absolute bounds of normality by Binet age. Because the highest Binet ages of individuals in feeble-minded institutions were found to range up to 12 years, that level was at first taken as the lower limits of normality. But we now find that there is a very large proportion of people not feeble - minded who are below that level - probably about 40 per cent. Of the men tested in the army examinations being below a mental age of 12 years. On the other hand, because there are individuals as low as 10 years Binet age who do not require control for their own protection or for the good of others, it is just as unwise to run to the other extreme and to say that 10 years must be regarded as the upper limits of moronity. The truth is that a mental range between these limits marks a zone which is populated by both feeble minded and normals. We may call 11 years mental age the central point of distribution in this zone, which extends from 9 to 13 years Binet age. This does not mean that all those within the borderland are borderline cases. The normals within this zone are normals and not borderline cases.

As regards the question of diagnosis, we must admit that in the determination of social fitness there is more than the intelligence as indicated by Binet examinations to be considered. In the pamphlet quoted above there is this pregnant sentence, A man's value to the service should not be judged by his intelligence alone. There are many positive and negative virtues not examined by the mental tests, which may have a great bearing on individual efficiency in the military service. Exactly the same thing is true of tested intelligence in rela tion to social value. There are other factors besides mental test age which afi'ect the question of social efficiency. At the same time it is probably true to state that intelligence is the most important single factor in social as in military fitness. The other factors which must be considered are as much temperamental as mental. However, we may disagree about the psychological definitions of feeble-mindedness, we must remember that society is interested in the mental defective almost solely as a potential or actual social inefficient. Ultimately, then, it is the social criterion which must stand. Since Binet's' day it has been recognized that mental tests as commonly used do not differentiate a large class of those who, under the social definition, should be regarded as feeble - minded. Such cases find their way in large numbers to institutions and require segregation equally as much as the ordinary defectives.

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