Pathology of Lying [68]
changed their attitude on account of his unscrupulous and constant lying.
Physically we found a very well nourished boy, rather short for his age. Weight 121 lbs.; height 5 ft. 1 in. Musculature decidedly flabby; this was especially noticeable in his handshake. Attitude heavy and slouchy for a boy. Expression quite pleasant; features regular; complexion decidedly good. A North European type. Eyes differ slightly in the color of the irides. Noticeable enlargement of breasts. Well shaped head of quite normal measurements; circumference 54.5, length 18, breadth 15 cm. No sensory defect, nor was anything else of particular interest found upon examination.
The mental study, particularly the testing for special abilities, has been of very great interest. Fortunately for the scientific understandings of the problems involved we have been able to see Adolf many times at intervals and to check up previous findings. Our first statement will be of the results obtained at the earliest study of the case.
When we first saw Adolf, although he talked so intelligently, we asked him to give us some evidence of his educational ability, and to our tremendous surprise he failed to be able to multiply simple numbers or even to do addition correctly. There was no evidence of emotional upset, but we waited for further testing until we had seen the father, that we might be sure of the school history. As mentioned above, we found that the boy had entirely misled us.
We then entered upon a systematic study of the boy's abilities and found some strange contrasts. Perceptions of form and color were normal. Given a very simple test which required some apperceptive ability, he did fairly well. Given simple ``Construction Tests'' which required the planful handling of concrete material, Adolf proceeded unintelligently. He showed no foresight, was rather slow, but by following out a trial and error procedure and with some repetition of irrational placing of the pieces he finally succeeded. Moderate ability to profit by trial and error was shown, but for his age the performance on this type of test was poor. On our ``Puzzle-Box,'' which calls for the analysis of a concrete situation, a test that is done by boys of his age nearly always in four minutes or less, Adolf failed in ten minutes. He began in his typically aggressive fashion, but kept trying to solve the difficulty by the repetition of obviously futile movements. On a ``Learning Test,'' where numerals are associated in meaningless relation with symbols, Adolf did the work promptly and with much self-confidence, but made a thoroughly irrational error, inasmuch as he associated the same numeral with two different symbols--and did not see his error. His ability to mentally represent and analyze a simple situation visually presented in our ``Cross Line Tests'' was very poor. In this he failed to analyze out the simple parts of a figure which he could well draw from memory. This seemed significant, for the test is practically always done correctly by normal individuals, at least on the second trial, by the time they are 10 or 12 years of age. A simple test for visual memory of form also brought poor results.
As an extreme contrast to the above results, the tests that had to do with language were remarkably well done. A visual verbal memory passage was given with unusual accuracy, also an auditory verbal passage was rendered almost perfectly. Considering that the former has 20 items and the latter 12 details, this performance was exceptionally good. Also, the so-called Antonym Test, where one is asked to give as quickly as possible the opposite to a word, the result, considering his foreign education, was decidedly good. Three out of twenty opposites were not given, apparently on account of the lack of knowledge. The average time was 2.3 seconds. If two of the other time-reactions were left out, which were probably slow from lack of knowledge, the average time would be 1.6 seconds for 15 opposites. This shows evidence of some good mental control on the language
Physically we found a very well nourished boy, rather short for his age. Weight 121 lbs.; height 5 ft. 1 in. Musculature decidedly flabby; this was especially noticeable in his handshake. Attitude heavy and slouchy for a boy. Expression quite pleasant; features regular; complexion decidedly good. A North European type. Eyes differ slightly in the color of the irides. Noticeable enlargement of breasts. Well shaped head of quite normal measurements; circumference 54.5, length 18, breadth 15 cm. No sensory defect, nor was anything else of particular interest found upon examination.
The mental study, particularly the testing for special abilities, has been of very great interest. Fortunately for the scientific understandings of the problems involved we have been able to see Adolf many times at intervals and to check up previous findings. Our first statement will be of the results obtained at the earliest study of the case.
When we first saw Adolf, although he talked so intelligently, we asked him to give us some evidence of his educational ability, and to our tremendous surprise he failed to be able to multiply simple numbers or even to do addition correctly. There was no evidence of emotional upset, but we waited for further testing until we had seen the father, that we might be sure of the school history. As mentioned above, we found that the boy had entirely misled us.
We then entered upon a systematic study of the boy's abilities and found some strange contrasts. Perceptions of form and color were normal. Given a very simple test which required some apperceptive ability, he did fairly well. Given simple ``Construction Tests'' which required the planful handling of concrete material, Adolf proceeded unintelligently. He showed no foresight, was rather slow, but by following out a trial and error procedure and with some repetition of irrational placing of the pieces he finally succeeded. Moderate ability to profit by trial and error was shown, but for his age the performance on this type of test was poor. On our ``Puzzle-Box,'' which calls for the analysis of a concrete situation, a test that is done by boys of his age nearly always in four minutes or less, Adolf failed in ten minutes. He began in his typically aggressive fashion, but kept trying to solve the difficulty by the repetition of obviously futile movements. On a ``Learning Test,'' where numerals are associated in meaningless relation with symbols, Adolf did the work promptly and with much self-confidence, but made a thoroughly irrational error, inasmuch as he associated the same numeral with two different symbols--and did not see his error. His ability to mentally represent and analyze a simple situation visually presented in our ``Cross Line Tests'' was very poor. In this he failed to analyze out the simple parts of a figure which he could well draw from memory. This seemed significant, for the test is practically always done correctly by normal individuals, at least on the second trial, by the time they are 10 or 12 years of age. A simple test for visual memory of form also brought poor results.
As an extreme contrast to the above results, the tests that had to do with language were remarkably well done. A visual verbal memory passage was given with unusual accuracy, also an auditory verbal passage was rendered almost perfectly. Considering that the former has 20 items and the latter 12 details, this performance was exceptionally good. Also, the so-called Antonym Test, where one is asked to give as quickly as possible the opposite to a word, the result, considering his foreign education, was decidedly good. Three out of twenty opposites were not given, apparently on account of the lack of knowledge. The average time was 2.3 seconds. If two of the other time-reactions were left out, which were probably slow from lack of knowledge, the average time would be 1.6 seconds for 15 opposites. This shows evidence of some good mental control on the language