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140
Annual Report of the London County Council, 1911.
exercises or play. The listlessness of the girls dancing in comparison with that in an ordinary school
was very evident.
No child failed to imitate simple movements or to carry out a single command, but 13 failed
to carry out a triple command, such as "Go and sit down in the middle desk, then take a ball from the
box and put it on the table." It has been found that at such a test nearly all normal 4-year old
children fail, about half the 5-year olds succeed, as do practically all 6-year olds. Of those that failed,
2 were aged 7, 3 aged 8, 2 aged 9, 4 aged 10, and 1 aged 12.
No child failed to match a coloured ball from the first Froebel gift with the others remaining in
the box. The six balls in this gift are coloured respectively red, green, blue, yellow, orange and purple.
The orange was often called dark yellow, and the purple, Oxford blue, dark blue, or dark red ; these
were accepted as correct. Twelve children failed to recognise the whole six by name, although in many
cases tested both by asking them the names, or if that failed asking them to indicate a particular
coloured ball. The ages of the children varied from 8 to 15. The number of colours recognised was 1
only in 1 case, 2 in 4, 3 in 2, 4 in 4, and 5 in 1 case.
Three children failed to pick out the largest wooden brick of a series, although it was quite four
times the size of the next nearest in dimensions. This recurred even when the children were also asked
the question by their class teacher.
A series of similar pill boxes containing shot, and weighing respectively 3, 6, 9, 12 and 15
grams, were employed. The test was tried by two methods, in the one the child was given the 3 and
the 15 gram box and asked which was the heavier, in the other he was asked to arrange them in order
of weight. The former test was not tried with the older children, but if they had made any absurd

Only 5 of the 30 in the second group who made three or more errors were below 11 years of age.
On the other hand, 17 children appeared to have no idea or power of comparing weights at all, but
guessed at random. Several of these preferred to hold both the weights being compared in the same
hand at the same time, even after being shown how to compare another pair.
The size weight illusion consisted in presenting to the child two boxes of identical weight but
differing in size. To most normal individuals the smaller appears to be the heavier on handling. In
the boxes used the larger had to be made three times the weight of the smaller before many would
admit that it was actually heavier. The actual weight of each box was just over an ounce. Of the
children in the special schools, 105 said the smaller box was the heavier, 2 that they were equal in weight, and 48 that the larger was the heavier.

The relation to manual training, if any, is shown by the numbers over the age of 12. In the
elder boys' school 35 selected the smaller box. 11 the larger, and 1 said they were of equal weight; in
the other schools, 38 selected the smaller box, 19 the larger, 1 said they were equal. The diminution
of the choice of the larger box with increasing age was, however, more marked in the elder boys' school.
Immediate memory was tested by the performance of successive commands previously mentioned,
a test only tried once or twice with each as it is affected by the influence of practice.
A more interesting test was the report made by the child on a passage he had just read ; this
is influenced by the degree of difficulty experienced in the mechanical process of reading.
Memory was also tested incidentally in the dictation since each child was told the sentence twice,
and after the first few experiences was also asked to repeat it aloud, and was, if necessary, corrected
before sitting down to write. The longest sentence used was "The dog saw the cat on the wall," but
a third of the children were only able to recall five syllables or less under the strain of writing them
down.