The Mental Development and Psychological Characteristics of Oirot Children

I Tests of schoolchildren were among the tasks of the expedition to the Oirot Autonomous Region. It was proposed that the purpose of this investigation should be mainly methodological and less concerned with the results. We needed to determine, to the extent possible, the suitability or unsuitability of various types of assignments for subjects who were at a low level of economic and cultural development and to find possible ways to change them. As for the results of the tests, expressed in the form of "intellectual" ages, etc., we had previously been critical of such data: we thought that the tremendous difference in economic and cultural conditions made for too great differences between the psychology of a European child and that of an ethnic child, so that mechanical adoption of tests developed for European children for use with children living in Oirot conditions could not give satisfactory and comparable results. The results of the present study demonstrated, in general, that these assumptions were c...