The records of a psychotic group of 38 persons, who had come to the attention of the Chicago Child Study Bureau as school children and who were later committed to state mental hospitals, were compared with the records of 53 control subjects from the general population examined by the Bureau. The pre-psychotic sampling was broken into 3 subgroups: (1) schizophrenic; (2) constitutional (brain pathology, paresis, etc.); and (3) miscellaneous psychoneurotic. The pre-psychotic cases as a group did not differ in intelligence from the control group. But a breakdown showed the constitutional group having the lowest IQ''s, the schizophrenics the highest. Nor was there any difference in the mean grade level at which the children of either group were referred to the Bureau for study. The common reason for referral of all the children was backwardness in school. The chief difference seemed to be in the way the children reacted to the testing situation. While most of the cases in both the control and pre-psychotic groups exhibited good rapport, the later schizophrenics were chiefly characterized by apathy toward the test situation and the later constitutional group by excitability. The records of all of the pre-psychotic group were then grouped into three categories on the basis of their test reaction as children, i.e., excitable, good rapport and apathetic. It was found that the apathetic group had a higher IQ (84.7); was committed to hospitalization at age 17.7 yrs.; was never committed for reasons of social aggression. The excitable group had the lowest IQ (61.3); was committed at age 21.8 yrs.; and, in 7 cases out of 8, were committed for unusual social aggression. In the cases of good rapport the IQ was 81.7, commitment age, 19, and one case was listed under social aggression. The excitable group made the best hospital adjustment and had a good prognosis rating on the Elgin Prognosis Scale. The apathetic group did not adjust readily and had the lowest prognosis rating. Both the apathetic and good rapport groups were committed on the basis of seclusiveness and delusions. On the whole, it is difficult, with the usual clinical methods, to distinguish the general group of children destined to be institutionalized for mental disease from the general group of children referred to a child study bureau for school problems. But the organic brain defective and the schizophrenic can be spotted on the basis of excitability and apathy in the test situation. These personality characteristics seem to be stable and evidence continuous development from childhood.