The Child and his Behavior. A. R. Luria

Retardation and Giftedness. Retarded and Gifted Children

The opinions we have expressed on these pages compel us to reconsider our attitude to an important issue in contemporary psychology, that of retardation and giftedness. As a matter of fact, in the psychological literature such a reconsideration began long ago, and today’s views of the retarded have little in common with established conventional opinion on the subject.

The commonly held view of the retarded is very simple: it is that retarded is synonymous with stupid. A retarded child (imbecile, or idiot) is one whose psychic inventory is very poor, who lacks a proper memory, and whose perceptiveness and reasoning are inadequate. A retarded person is held to be one who is born psychically poor. Yet precise investigation has failed to uphold this opinion. Is it true that the retarded child is in all respects inferior to a normal child of the same age?

Let us consider the figures. One German author has made a thorough study of the vision of children with differing degrees of retardation. The results were surprising, in that they showed that idiots were found to have the best vision. ^[43] Here is a brief summary of the data:

Here we see that the percentage of normal vision in idiots is 3% times greater than in normal children, while the visual acuity of idiots is on average twice as great. Moreover, the percentage, of normal vision of average acuity tends to decline with the transition from idiots to lesser degrees of retardation, and to normal children. This means that in respect of vision we find a process that is contrary to what we would expect: the more severe the retardation, the better the main physiological functions.

The same could roughly be said about the other organs of perception, in particular hearing. On the basis of extensive research authors have concluded that the retarded child’s acuity of hearing is also not below the norm. This leads to an interesting and rather unexpected conclusion: in mentally retarded children we had expected to find lower levels of all the psycho-physiological functions, yet we find that their natural basis, the functioning of the sensory organs, is not impaired at all, and in some respects even surpasses the norm. Our expectations will also prove unfounded in further studies of the psyche of the retarded child.

We have grown accustomed to believing that all the “intellectual” functions of all retarded children are of necessity impaired. Yet retarded persons, such as imbeciles, often impress us with astonishing powers of memory. We know of instances in which a retarded child has proved able to mechanically memorize quite long passages of text, while showing no sign at all of understanding them.

This did not, however, happen all the time. Whenever it was not sufficient for the imbecile to imprint on his natural memory the proposed material, which was comprehensible and of interest to him, whenever he was required to make an active effort to master the proposed material, his memory turned out to be very poor, in fact almost non-existent. In the words of G. Ya. Troshin, a great authority on the retarded child, “Active memory marks the boundary between retardation and the norm. The “natural” memory is excellent, and the “artificial” memory is practically zero. In the retarded child, all that is embellished with feeling, or is related to the child’s personality and interests everything familiar and close to him, requiring no effort, including all his natural necessities, may be deemed to be normal. His memory fails to function with anything unfamiliar, incomprehensible or unpleasant, or anything that requires an effort."^[44] This duality in the operation of the retarded child’s memory could hardly be better expressed. We can understand this only from one standpoint: we assume that the natural memorization of the retarded child (like his vision, hearing and several other natural functions) remains unimpaired. The only difference is that the normal child makes rational use of his natural functions and with the passage of time increasingly elaborates appropriate cultural devices for the use of his memory. Things are different, however, in the case of the retarded child. He may possess exactly the same natural endowment as the normal child, but does not know how to make rational use of it, it remains idle, like a dead weight. He has what he needs, but can do nothing with it; therein lies the basic defect of his psyche. Retardation is therefore a defect not only of the natural processes, but of the ability to use them culturally. And those same educational and cultural measures must accordingly be used to remedy it.

Authors from previous decades, who understood this perfectly well, frequently made the same point, noting that the defects of the mentally retarded child consist primarily of the absence of the ability to use their natural gifts. In the words of E. Seguin: “None of the intellectual capabilities may be considered wholly lacking in the idiot, but he is incapable of freely applying his abilities to moral and abstract phenomena. Physically he can, mentally he does not know how to, and psychically he does not want to. If he wanted to, he would be able to and would know how to; the whole problem, however, stems from the fact that he does not want to."^[45] Behind these profoundly true, though somewhat naive comments, we can see a fundamental truth: retardation is a phenomenon not only of natural defects, but perhaps also to a greater extent one of cultural insufficiency, of the inability to “want” and to “know how”. Let us try to demonstrate this through the experimental study of the memory of normal and retarded children.

Earlier in this chapter (7) we quoted an example showing that the retarded child, unlike well-developed children, is unable to make adequate use of the tools of the external environment, or to use objects functionally for an organized purpose, preferring instead to focus their natural efforts. This also occurs in the memory of retarded children.

We have studied the natural memory of children of different ages, from preschool to school age, and at different levels of development (from gifted to the various stages of mental retardation). All of our research left us with the impression that the natural memory (the mechanical imprinting of a proposed series of words) varies only slightly with age and general levels of giftedness. Average memorization of material (words) varies from 4.5 to 5.5, and is virtually the same for both gifted and retarded children.

In this case, how does one account for the difference in the memory of the retarded and the normal student? We found that this difference was attributable precisely to an unequal ability to make cultural use of natural memory.

As shown by the experiment we have described above, whereas normal and gifted children were able to apply a number of artificial devices that greatly enhanced their memory, retarded children, left to themselves, were often

barely able to do so. We gave a Child a number of lotto picture cards and told him to use them for memorization, selecting a particular card to match each word (the experiment is described in Figure 8, above).

Our results revealed an interesting picture of the difference between the psyches of the retarded and the gifted child.

Let us take as an example three children aged 10-11 years. All of them were gifted: their intellectual ages, on Binet’s scale, were well above the norm. Three memory experiments were conducted with each child. First they were asked to simply memorize several words that were read out to them (natural memory); then came two other experiments in which they were given cards intended to help them remember the words by association. These latter two experiments had one thing in common: in the first of them the child was given pictures among which he could find some that were closely related to the words in question; the last one was slightly more difficult, in that the connection between the pictures and the words proposed to the test subject was less well-defined, and the child had to invent an artificial connection between them.

Here are the results of our study of those three gifted children.^[46]

What is the meaning of the data obtained from all these children?

We can see that all of them have an average natural memory (4-5-6 words out of 10); however, when we give them pictures as an aid, thus studying their active ability to apply their memory by using the appropriate devices, it becomes evident that the number of words remembered almost doubles, to 9-10 words. If the number of words proposed had been greater, the improvement in the results would have been even more substantial. Using artificial devices the child strongly improves the natural functioning of his memory; the average improvement here is estimated to be in the range of 170-200%. What follows is a sample of a typical record of that series:

Series III Word Picture Reproduction

Grinya L.: snow sleigh + wood mushroom + dinner basket + house washbasin + learning pencil + rain sponge + young saw + meeting chair + clothes hat + flowers cherry + father boots + wing beetle + field onion + fire bell + bird dove + truth watering can – horse horse shoe + roof tub + worker lathe operator +

This record shows that the child’s choice of picture is not random as each time he chooses images that are in some way connected to the word in question, and sometimes even artificially establishes such a connected himself.

Let us now take a more detailed look at the way these children connect words with particular pictures, and how they account for their choice.

Aleks. T.: For “clothes” he chose a picture of a purse. (On reproducing it he explained: “Because you put a purse in your pocket”.) For “field” he chose a card with a strawberry. (“It grows in the field”). For “meeting” he chose a card with a bell. (“When there’s a lot of noise at a meeting, they ring a bell”). For ‘.’truth” he chose a picture of a letter. (“In a letter you can write anything and nobody will open it, as there’s a wax seal”).

Kostya D.: For “clothes” he chose a picture of a brush. (“You can clean the dust off your clothes with it”). For “horse” he chose a card with boots. (“No hooves, so I took boots”). For “dinner” he chose a card with a knife. (“You can cut bread with this knife”). And so on.

We can see that the child successfully uses pictures as an auxiliary device. Wishing to memorize a given word he more often than not chooses a picture containing an object that occurs in the same set as the proposed word (dinner knife, clothes brush, meeting bell); moreover he sometimes constructs a highly complex and artificial connection, in no way reproducing previous experience, but deliberately combining individual factors (truth letter, because “nobody will open it and you can write the truth”, horse boots, and so on).

A gifted child can actively use his previous experience, applying it in a number of devices in order to enhance his natural psychological processes.

Let us now consider four other children, from that same children’s institution, this time children with quite noticeable retardation: Katya K, a child with pronounced oligophrenia and three idiot children. Let us accompany them through a similar study and consider the results.^[47]

We can see that in these children the process occurs differently. Admittedly, natural memory proves to be more or less the same in both groups of children, being unaffected by the intellectual gifts of some, and the retardation of others. The situation is quite different, however, if we look at the figures for their cultural memory. Whereas in the first case we found that the shift to cultural forms of memorization was always accompanied by a sharp increase in memory, the opposite is true of retarded children. Pictures given to them as aids not only do not help them, but are even a hindrance to their memory. Instead of coefficients of cultural memory in the 180-200% range, we have a mere 40-70-80%: such a child using cards memorizes less than without them. The proposed cultural devices are too much for the retarded child to handle, and merely distract him from the immediate application of memory. The profound difference between retarded and gifted children lies less in the difference of natural processes than in a different ability to apply them, and to use certain cultural devices.

Let us now consider how the retarded child reacts to the cards offered to him as an aid to mernorization. Here are some extracts from actual records of several test subjects:

Vanya Ch., moron. Word Picture Reproduction: snow pencil dinner boots + learning grater + hammer butterfly clothes sleigh + father basket field wild strawberry + “it grows in the field” game hoop bird knife horse horseshoe + “there’s a horseshoe on the horse”

Katya K., oligophrenic. Word Picture Reproduction: snow sleigh + “you go riding on it” dinner boots + learning wild strawberry hammer pincers + clothes basket + “clothes with flowers” father butterfly field onion + game horseshoe bird clock horse knife.

We can see that the children often take cards at random, without linking them to the proposed word; for that reason we naturally do not find any improvement in memorization. In the data here presented we do not find structures of the sort used by the children mentioned earlier. A retarded child usually cannot understand how a card can be used for memorization of a word. He might say, “Snow, snow, but there’s no snow on this card.” Since he is unable to actively link the word to the picture he looks for a straightforward representation of it; then, failing to find one, he more often than not picks the card mechanically, independently of the task of connecting it to the word in question. When asked why he picked a particular picture, he usually replies: “Because 1 like it.” He views it as an end in itself, without assessing its functional role or using it as a means. It is therefore understandable that in most cases he returns to his natural memory and memorizes what he had mechanically imprinted on his memory during the reading. Instead of helping him, pictures have a distracting effect, and the result is worse than it had been originally.

We have adduced examples of studies of the natural and cultural memory and seen where precisely the differences between retarded and gifted children are to be found. It appears evident that in other areas too, the principal differences lie not only in innate natural processes, but also in failings of the cultural devices, and the inability to create or to use them. In all of these instances purely biological defects are at the same time a factor that may limit or inhibit the child’s cultural adaptation.

The difference between a retarded and a normal child is often to be found not in the natural peculiarities of either one, but in the different use they make of their natural gifts, which clearly depend on the different cultural formation of the child. In imbeciles and morons this process is hindered by objective defects of the brain, whereas in the case of the backward school child the culprit is the inadequate influence of the cultural environment. While in the case of the former we often fail to detect any great influence of education, which frequently encounters significant constitutional difficulties, on the other hand we feel a healthy optimism with regard to backward children in a normal school: by instilling in the child certain cultural behavioral devices we can successfully combat backwardness in children not as a biological fact but as a phenomenon of cultural underdevelopment.

What we interpret as a high level of innate giftedness in a particular sphere is often not the result of any innate properties, but the product of the rational use of cultural devices and of a greater ability to make maximum use of one’s own natural gifts.

The natural gifts themselves may not be any different from the average gifts of ordinary people. A. Binet’s study of outstanding counters illustrate this phenomenon. Binet conducted psychological tests on people known as outstandingly adept at manipulating figures, capable of performing mathematical operations with astounding speed and of memorizing vast series of numbers. It would be natural to assume that all such people are endowed with exceptional arithmetical gifts and remarkable memories. Yet Binet’s psychological experiment by no means confirmed this view. He found that several of these people were naturally endowed with the most ordinary memory, well within the average. Binet used the term “simulation of an outstanding memory” to describe those traits that seem so impressive, and showed that it generally consists of a series of devices that the people in question had thoroughly mastered, and by means of which they managed to achieve spectacular results with an ordinary natural memory.

The use of rational cultural devices permits enormous advances in the operation of a given function, and creates the illusion of great natural gifts. All these facts naturally compel us to somewhat revise our attitude to innate and acquired forms of giftedness, and to pose the question of “cultural giftedness” as one of the most important problems of contemporary psychology.

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