Educational Clinic Tests and Corrects Reading Speeds and Comprehension

When a child delights in pulling girls' hair and pinching his neighbors, he may just be exhibiting some undeveloped "heman" tendencies and nothing more. But then again, such actions may need careful psychological treatment, which is the case with many youngsters who are brought to the attention of the Psycho-Educational Clinic at Harvard.

Walter F. Dearborn, professor of Education and director of the clinic, specializes mainly in problems of reading. Practical work in that field is being demonstrated at College in the Freshman Romedial Reading courses that are being given to more than 60 members of the Class of '46.

Professors Practice, Too

But the Freshmen are not alone in receiving reading aids. Recently, as a result of an article published in the February 27 issue of the "Harvard Alumni Bulletin" which described his classes, Dearborn received requests from two professors at the Law School to join his group, admitting that they had to do a great deal of reading and were interested in improving their speed and comprehension.

Attacking the problem scientifically, the clinic uses the following method of increasing reading ability: a paragraph of material is shown on the screen. Then it is repeated in short flashes of word-groupings, until the paragraph has been seen, not in its entirety, but as a collection of word-groupings.

Reading Hits Home

The clinic maintains that normal people read in word-groupings and not by looking at individual letters. To prove this, they have a machine that flicks short phrases into sight for the subject to read. For example, a sentence like "Take the box" can easily be comprehended without being read letter for letter. But a smaller number of letters, "Xsn Psyfg," flashed before the subject in the same split-second would not register on his mind since it arouses no associational image.

But to prove better that it's the grouping rather than the actual letters that is seen by the normal reader, the Clinic sometimes asks what author the phrase "Washout at Irving" would represent, and most people attribute it to the originator of Ichabod Crane. Likewise, "Palcum towder," and Cixxcixati," would all probably be indistinguished from the real words, if flashed on the screen quickly.

More specifically related to the work at the Clinic is the work done in "eye-movement" photographs. These photographs record the movement of the eye as it runs across a printed page and it has been such films that have supported the argument for what is technically called "interflxation movements."

They're Not 47

If a student were wandering over past Palfrey House, home of the Psycho-Educational Clinic, any week-day morning from 9:30 to 12:00, he might see a number of definitely un-draftable people running around near the building, who are living studies of the clinic.

Just such studies are two twins, aged eight, who somehow never were able to read a word. Normally they should have been in the third grade, but they were referred to the clinic for study and possible instruction in reading.

The clinic took them in, gave them intelligence tests, scholastic achievements tests, visual examinations, eye movement photographs, audio-metric tests and recorded their oral readings upon entering to compare them with the ones that would be made when-they were improved.

Then, under the guidance of special tutors, kept by the Psycho-Educational Clinic, the twins started off on their A, B, C's and after patient months of instruction, both are now doing quite well, thank you.

Dearborn stressed the fact that the Clinic does not take obvious cases but prefers its subjects to be "tough problems." Although not in essence a service organization, the Clinic does not demand large fees for the instruction and guidance it furnished cases that come into its charge