Evening star., 1938-04-19
STARS, MEN AND ATOMS
Notebook of Science Progress in Field,
Laboratory and Study.
BY THOMAS r, HENRY.

A feeble-minded l0-year-old Latvian
girl has either the most acute hearing
ever reported for q human being-or
something else.
German psychologists who have ex-
amlned her prefer to believe the former,
but with reservations. A full report Of
the weird case by DR.. Hans Bender
member Of commission from the Uni
versity of Bonn. which went to Latvia
to study the child. has just been pub
lished in Duke University's Journal of
Parapsychology.
The child is too stupid to learn to
read the simplest words or do the
simplest sums. But her school teacher
found by accident that when a book was
laid before her and he stood over her
shoulder she could read the most difficult
texts, even when they were in foreign
language. The words on the printed
page came out of her mouth as they
would come from the loud speaker of
a phonograph. In the same way she
could do problems in arithmetic very
difficult for the peasant school teacher
in the wild country near the Russian
Latvian border. The poor man was a
little frightened by the phenomenon
and reported the case to the University
Of Riga, Latvia's chief institution of
learning.
The investigation was taken up by
one OF the university's psychologists,
Prof " Neureiter He found that the
little girl could do even better when her
mother stood beside her. This mother
was a peasant woman who had con-
siderable difficulty in reading herself.
When any text which was at all difficult
was laid before her she could stumble
through it, obviously without knowing
what it was all about. In the same way
she could read the words Of q foreign
language.
When a book was opened before the
child with the mother standing beside
her silent, the near idiot could read the
page exactly as the mother would have
read it out loud. She would repeat all
the errors and mispronounciations to
have been expected from her parent.
For example, the test was made with
a passage in French containing several
numbers which were printed in Arabic
numerals. The child would read the
French words until she came to the
numbers, for which she would give the
Latvian names. The Riga professor
1ulllScll dCCOulPlASkA SCAy AVGAC "AVAA
the child, even after a long association.
One queer thing did happen. however,
which gave him an uncanny feeling. A
Latvian lay open before the little girl
and he stood over her shoulder, silently
reading the text. There was no response
from her until he came to word which
irritated him. It was German word.
It had an exact equivalent In Latvian.
Prof. v. Neureiter is q patriot. The in
clusion of an unnecessary foreign word
in a school textbook made him mad.
And no sooner had he started thinking
about it than the child spoke the Ger
man word.
The Riga professor could detect no
system of cues between the mother this
little human phonograph. He was not
entirely satisfied, however, for the
ignorant peasant woman undoubtedly
was proud of the strange accomplish
ment of her offspring and the attention
she was receiving and every now and
then, when the little girl hesitated, would
utter words of scolding or encourage
ment.
The professor concluded, with reserva-
tions, that he had here a genuine case
Of thought transference from one mind
to another without any sensory inter-
mediary. His report came to the at,
tention Of the University Of Bonn preA
3essorh who bad bean locking tor tul1