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If, then, a suitable means can be developed for measuring social adequacy in terms of a genetic age schedule which permits the quantitative determination of significant degrees of deviation or change, this would be a distinct aid to clinical psychology and psychiatry, and would provide a basic method for investigating a wide range of problems which at the present time are inaccessible J to study because of the lack of a satisfactory basic criterion.

No man can change the common lot to rare. -Thomas Hardy Analysis of total scores. For the normal subjects life age was employed as the criterion of development without reference to other variables on the assumption that social maturation is a consequence of the complex of influences related to age in varying degrees. Level of intelligence, apparently the most important single variable, may be considered such an influence. With mentally deficient subjects the disparity of development in relation to normative life age expectation becomes a criterion of their condition, and the degree of developmental retardation becomes a measure of the grade of mental deficiency.Many studies have supported the hypothesis that mental deficiency represents a constitutional tendency toward infantility, or a generalized hypoplasia, especially of the central nervous system, with social and mental incompetence as the major behavioral manifestations. The correlation of developmental characteristics varies unequally for different aspects of development, with more dependence upon age for some traits and less for others. Among these, intellectual development as measured by the Binet-Simon scale or its equivalents has heretofore afforded the most practicable single index of mental deficiency and its degrees, as well as many of its constitutional preconditions and expressive manifestations (Doll, 1946a).The dependence of social maturation upon intellectual maturation is implicit in the measurement of social competence. And since both are dependent upon life age we now examine these relationships. For this purpose we have employed the total population of mentally deficient subjects in residence atThe Training School at Vineland, N. J.

A a genetic scale for the measurement of social maturation. We now submit a first revision of the Vineland Social Maturity Scale based on a standardization of the scale for normal subjects and a validation of the scale with mentally deficient subjects.During the past year, standardization data have been obtained for ten normal subjects of eath sex a t each year from birth to thirty years of age, or a total of 620 subjects. While this is not a sufficient number of cases for final standardization, it may be noted that the calibration of such a scale is not determined by the number of subjects a t any one age alone, but rather by the succession of ages over a range of years. The stability of such a standardization is therefore determined in large measure by the internal consistency of the scale as a whole. The stability of our standardization is increased by selecting these normal subjects by social status as indicated by paternal occupation, thus providing a representative sampling of known values and controlled distribution.In formulating this scale, we were undecided whether to use the principle of point-scale construction or that of year-scale construction. Consideration of this problem reveals that point scales and year scales are based on fundamentally the same considerations, the year scale being merely a more convenient method of formulation for purposes of scoring. In both point scales and year scales it is desirable that the items which compose such scales be calibrated in such a manner that the successive items are arranged in a progressive order of difficulty of known values. Comparatively few scales have satisfactorily met this requirement. The principal difficulty in calibrating such scales is that of providing complete standardization curves for each scale item. Such item-standardization curves should ideally be smooth, steep, and parallel. That these criteria have not been successfully met in the past is readily evident from simple statistical analysis of any of the scales which are now available and for which sufficient data have been published to permit such analysis.We had previously employed a number of devices to obviate these difficulties. In our present work we have employed Thomson's device,? based on the Hardy summation method, which overcomes these difficulties with statistical satisfaction. This method not only provides an average standardization value for each Presented at the 1936 Meeting.* I am indebted to Mrs. Katherine Preston Bradway for all examinations of normal subjects and for collaboration in the treatment of data. The entire staff of the Vineland Laboratory has assisted in this study as a whole.

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