The Waterbury Democrat., 1937-11-04
BY BRUCE CATION


 BY BRUCE CATION NEA Service Stan Correspondent Copyright, 1887, NEA Service, Inc)
 Toronto, Ont., Nov. Al The Dionne quintuplets may look as much alike as five peas out of the same pod, but their personalities are al- ready as different as five per- sonalities can be.
 They have the same heredity and they have been growing up in the same environment - but the result, is five utterly distinct little girls who are already setting the patterns for widely divergent character traits.
 If you wanted to characterize the girls briefly, you would do 1t about like this:
 Yvonne Is the motherly type, the most mature socially of the five.
 Annette Is the social climber.
 Emile is the happy-go-luclsy member of the crowd, willing to give and take on Q 60-60 basis. She is also the most self-sufficient.
 Cecile Is the unknown quantity. She is shy, cries more often than the others, and is the hardest of the five to get along with.
 Marie Is the baby of the family. l Plain Common Sense
 These are not mere casual ob. servations, but the settled con- clusions of science. They are expressed in Q paper on the quints' social development written by Dr. W. E. Blatz, D. A. Mnli- champ and M. Charles, after these psychologists had spent two years observing the quints. During those two years the psychologists scrutinized the quints methods cally to see just what their social relations with each other were.
 The way such an investigation is carried on looks like hocus- pocus, ct first glance, but when you strip 1t of its solemn verbiage 1t turns out to be plain common | sense.
 For instance, suppose that ' | study Is being made of you and me. I offer you Q clgaret; the psychologist notes that I have made an "initiated-to" contact. If you turn away and pay no atten- ton, it's no dice; but If you take 1t, you are credited with Q tres sponse-to" contact, and if you say, '"Thank you, old timer" l am credited with e "froin" contact See?
 Watched Them Solemnly
 That was the way the psychol- ogists worked with the Quints. Sometimes they would isolate two sisters in Q play pen and make c | note of every contact between the two: sometimes they turned all five loose together and sat there, solemnly, pencil in hand to write down what happened. Here is Q sample from their record:
 Annette runs and pushes Gee cile, who appartnely ignores this overture" (Scored aS a contact between the two, initiated by Annette.)
 "Then Annette pushes Yvonne, who pushes back in retaliation" (Recorded aS c contact between Annette and Yvonne, initiated by Annette and responded to by Yvonne.)
 "Then Annette pulls off Yvonne's hair ribbon, causing Yvonne to cry, whereupon Annette hands back the ribbon which causes Yvonne to stop crying and look ct it." (An- rlette is credited with one "initi. ated.to" contact and one response to" contact: Yvonne gets credit for two "response-to" contacts.)
 From all of this the psychologist makes up e box score, thus: An. nette: four "to-contacts" (three initiated, one response): three from" contacts (all responses).
 Cecile: one from contact (ironn
 Yvonne: three to" contacts Gre. sponses - to Annette); three from" contacts (from Arlnette).
 Which leaves Annette, for the moment, leading the league.
 The Way It Adds Up
 All of this may look just . 1t. tie odd, to the layrnan; but when such 1nethodical records are kept over c period of two years, and are duly tabulated and inter. preted, you do get an accurate picture of personality growth and development such as could be ob. tained in no other way. | The psychologists showed, for instance, that Emile has about an equal number of "to" and from" contacts: that is, she receives the overtures of her sisters just about as often aS sine makes overtures to them.
 Annette and Marie, on the other hand, have considerably more to" contacts than from" contacts which N to say that they make overtures to their sisters oftener than their sisters make overtureS to them. ...
 Cecile and Yvont1e, however. have more from" contacts than to" contacts; that is, their sisters come to see them oftener than they go to see their sisters.
 All of which means just about what you would suppose 1t means. Emile goes along on c 60-60 basis, Annette and Marie are socially
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