Feeble-minded Love

Most psychologists firmly believe that companionship with intelligent parents and playmates is the most important factor in a child's mental development. The Emperor of Japan shares this view (see p. 31). But last week at the Chicago meeting of the American Association for Mental Deficiency, Psychologist Harold Manville Skeels of the State University of Iowa, questioned this old belief.

Dr. Skeels told how he took 13 mentally retarded pre-school infants away from a bleak Iowa orphanage packed with healthy, intelligent moppets, and placed them in a home for feeble-minded girls. The inmates lavished upon the deficient babies a wealth of feeble-minded love. They made them toys, watched them play, gave them plenty of room to run around. Within two years, to the psychologist's amazement, the intelligence quotients of twelve of the orphans rose sharply, in some cases as much as 40 points, and they appeared superior in intelligence to their playmates in the asylum. Later, seven of them were adopted. During the same period, twelve of the normal children who remained in the crowded asylum, and received no affection, slowly drifted into feeblemindedness.

Psychologist Skeel's conclusion: more than anything else, for mental growth children need "adult affection and stimulation," no matter from whom it comes.

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