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Show TESTS MEASURE MENTAL DEVELOPMENT OF QUINTS (Copyright 117. Service, Int.) I "' 1 "". t j. I in '' " if i f! : - ;i r 3A i i Nm m(mI AjmJ Wt h.rWl y Tk fin, tint yon irt-tW up y i t wU iMtn, like kr m4 twlp, iifjr(y. Hh tiv Thw ti CXrU, cMf4ith(ii Hi foot -tj tAjii ft.? it An TW first step In UriHf to wait V (mifif trawl. Hart's Aaiwtti actiAf War arawl ttraka at Ida at af II mantkt. Eeiter'e Nete: Title it the eeveetk f etht ertklei tellief fee the lint time whet Kteeee he leemed ebewt the Oleeee aetetuplelt. The erficlet ere beted ee leieefiiie assert reed before Cenedien end Americes tci-eetiett tci-eetiett et s tseciel meetief is To rente. By BRl'CE CATTON (Copyright, 1987, for The Telegrsm) TORONTO, Ont., Nov. n esse you have ever wondered. Miss Yvonne Dionne Ie the brighteet of the five famous quintuplets, according ac-cording to tests made by psychologists. psycholo-gists. An elaborate study of the quintuplets' quin-tuplets' mental development has been msde by scientists from the University of Toronto. One of the series of studies aimed at finding out all the pertinent farts about ths quints, Its conclusions are summarised sum-marised In a paper written by Dr. W. E. Blata. dlrsctor of St. George's school for child study, in Toronto, and his assistant. Miss Dorothy Mil-lichamp. Mil-lichamp. Dr. Blats and Misa Mllllchamp have studied the quintuplets over a period of two years, applying the teats devised by Dr. Arnold Gesell, famous Yale university psychologist, slong with other tests. Their report, to repeat la that although the sisters are almost Identical, Iden-tical, physically, they are very far from being identical mentally. When you set out to measure the mental stature and progress of a bsby whose chief concern in life is gsttina Its bis toe into Its mouth. "wive me eeeMthine to hana ea to sd e retHe to whack It with) end I eaa da eieely" Anaette sttndina ehaect eleae et 14 ateatht. rlod of two yesrs the psychologists performed euch tests, tabulating thetr findings and reducing the answers an-swers to a aeriea of graphs. Next came the matter of adaptive behavior, which the quints accepted accept-ed as something special in the wsy of a lark. For it waa here that Miss Millichsmp unstrapped her suitcase of toys. Just Like Games " Wits-Mllllchamp-would uhstrsp it, that is. If ths quints didn't get hold of It first. For ths five maids from Callander quickly learned that taking these tests waa just like playing games with delightful toys, and aa soon as she showed up with hsr suitcase they would cluster around her. Impatient to get the thing away from her ai)d open it up. A quint would, for example, be given a green board containing. In mortised recesses, a red triangle, a red square and a red circle. She would be invited to take these out: then the board would bo turned the other end to. and aha would ba aaked to put them back in the proper recesses. Would she have the wit to aee that the triangle which had come from a recess at the right end now belonged at the left end? Or to vary the game Miss Wil-lichamp Wil-lichamp would hand her little playmate play-mate four cubes, one after another. Would the young lady hang on to them until shs hsd all four, or would aha get mixed up and drop the onee she hsd in order to take the new one aa it waa offered to her? Or (to take one more example) Miss Millichsmp would build a simple sim-ple bridge out of blocks; then the quint would be given a similar aet of blocka and urged to build one like it How Handy la She? These tests showed wide variations varia-tions In the girls' behavior. Some of them could do one thing, some could do another. Sometimes one of the quints would put on a sudden sud-den spurt and master problems that had previously stumped her; a little lit-tle later ahe might lar and see one of her sisters go ahead. There seemed, to be no uniformity at all Here we qe a few tteee eU avoided, av-oided, with Dr. Defoe tfctsdiaq by in eate ef atttheae- This pioneer welter it EmUie, et 17 laentht as to what the quints could or could not do In this field. Lastly, the psychologists tested the girls In what psychology calls personal-social behavior which might be boiled- down by aaying that auch tests seek to discover whether a girl is handy about the house and a help to mother. Thus: At 15 months, a child should bo able to use a spoon while est- ingvTha quints ail xould, At-ll months, she ehould be able to turn the pagea of a picture book. At 21 months, she ought to be at least trying to turn the knob when shs wants to open a door. At 24. she should be sble to tell people about her little experiences. At the age of . the should ba able to open a door and put on her shoes though not necessarily at the aame time. They've Catching l At the atart. Yvonne beat them all in thia field. A little later on, Cecils and Annette caught up with her, then paased her. The handicaps that the quintuplets quintup-lets faced in their development from infancy to babyhood are emphasised em-phasised in the psper. For example: They were born approximately two months ahead of time. Before any attempt to compare com-pare their progress with that of other children could be made, two months would have to be subtracted subtract-ed from their chronological age. In other words, the quints aren't real- , ly as old as the calendar aaya they I are. For another example: The mere fact that they are quintuplets haa made things hard for them. Single Sin-gle children develop faster than twina do, since children of identical identi-cal ages do not stimulate each other mentally aa much as do children of varying agea. The quinta have never associated regularly with any children but each other and so if twina have a harder row to hos than aingle children have. It' is obvious ob-vious that the going is even harder for quintuplets. NEXT: The physical development develop-ment of the Dionne quintuplets ahowa them to ba well above nor- I mat for chHdrea of their ago. 1 Urn ' - i . ! I ' (Copyright. 1U7. NBA gerice. Inc.! I Totting the quintuplets: At the top. Miss Dorothy Millichsmp Milli-chsmp it watching Cocile build a tower of blockt one of the steps in the Gesell test of motor development. Below, Cecile is shown struggling with two of the Merrill-Palmer tests. you can't adopt the sasse tactics you would use with a school age child. Even when the child reaches the sge of 2 or a, the job of finding out how much of a mind It has snd what It la doing with it. is a bit difficult. Examinationa of the ordinary kind are out A Fin New Game Dr. Blats and Miss Millichsmp. who stsrted to work on the quints shortly before thoss sngsglng young ladles had passed their first birthdays, birth-days, took along aa equipment a few reams of paper, a aet of unused un-used shsets of charting paper, and a whole suitcaae full of toys. The quints decided that thia was going go-ing to be a fine new game, and entered into the spirit of the thing with test-First test-First of all. the psychologists wanted to test ths quints motor development de-velopment their control over their muscles. By gstting the answers to a lot of questions that sound unimportant un-important to the layman, they would learn whether the girls' equipment of nerves and muscles were func tioning in the proper teamwork. So, from time to time, they sought to find out things like these: Could a 15-month-old quintuplet walk backward, if properly coaxed? Could a quint at the age of 2 pile six blocks up In a reasonably straight tower? (The quinta could, did and hated to quit.) At 30 months, could a quint stand on ons foot? At regular intervals over a pe- |