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Show First Five Years of Life Really Determine Mental Condition of the Adult By PROF. ARNOLD GESELL, Director Yale Psycho-Clinic. The first five years of a child's life have more weight in determining determin-ing the mental condition of the adult than any equal length of time from the age of five to twenty-four. By making extensive studies of a number of children from the age of one month -to five years, and discovering what most children are able to do at a given age, it will be possible to lay down rules as to what a normal nor-mal child's reaction is. When we have established these rules, we will be able, by testing children chil-dren in the light of them, to discover whether or not a child is normal, subnormal or above normal. It is our hope to gather a great deal of knowledge of child life and to apply it in remedying the children who need special training during the very early years of their lives. It is then that they are more plastic. We do not believe' that all the mental weaknesses of later life are predestined. We "believe that they are, to some extent at least, plastic; that it is'largely a matter of proper regulation and habit formation in Ihe pre-school period. |