Primarily, Werner and Strauss compared the learning abilities of children at WCTS who were presumed (due to their medical histories) to have “brain damage,” against other students in the general population of the WCTS who were still “feebleminded,” but presumed not to have brain damage. They classified these two types of feebleminded children as “endogenous” and “exogenous”…terms that defined whether a child’s learning disability was the result of physical deformity or damage to the brain, or of external factors such as having been neglected during their formative years. They found that the two groups responded differently to the same learning stimuli. Furthermore, it was learned that children of the endogenous type tended to benefit more from an institutional environment, experiencing a slight rise in IQ over time, whereas institutionalized exogenous children actually experienced a loss of intellectual ability over time. ⁶⁶

          Werner and Strauss’s specific educational conclusions became very influential in providing a “general orientation” to subsequent educational theory for the learning-impaired.

          The elements of this general orientation were that (1) individual differences in learning should be understood by examining the different ways that children approach learning tasks (the processes that aid or interfere with learning); (2) educational procedures should be tailored to patterns of processing strengths and weaknesses in the individual child; and (3) children with deficient learning processes might be helped to learn normally if those processes are strengthened, or if teaching methods which did not stress weak areas could be developed. As the learning disabilities movement began to gather strength after its inception in 1963, these three concepts were repeatedly used to provide a rationale for its development as an entity separate from other fields of education. They provided the core of what was unique about educational programming for learning disabled children. ⁶⁷

          Though Werner and Strauss’s work certainly came under its share of criticism for the methods they used in selecting and defining their test groups, “their ideas strongly influenced a number of colleagues who carried their work forward.” ⁶⁸  The most important of those McGregor Laboratory colleagues to continue Strauss and Werner’s work were Dr. Samuel Kirk, Dr. Laura Lehtinen, and Dr. Newell Kephart. Other psychologists of note who were involved at WCTS at some point in their careers included Sidney Bijou, Maurice Fauracre, Charlotte Philleo, Betty Martinson, Boyd McCandless, and Bluma Weiner. ⁶⁹

          As stated earlier, the WCTS’s real contribution to science wasn’t so much what it accomplished, but what it started—Strauss and Werner helped initiate a sea change in the way society looked at and understood childhood learning problems and incorrigibility. What had once been a series of symptoms of nebulous cause that were never considered as being related was now identified as a single condition of probably common origin. They had “medicalized” the concept of learning difficulty, and paved the way for the naming of a clinical condition that could be addressed with scientific treatment programs and social reforms. ⁷⁰  In May of 1940, Strauss and Werner went before the assembly of the American Psychiatric Association at its meeting to announce their discovery of a new medical syndrome outlining the concept of a “mentally crippled child.” Unfortunately experts did not readily accept the direct comparison of an observable physical handicap where the body is impaired in its ability to function fully, with an unseen physiological condition that impairs the brain’s ability to learn. Perhaps the most outspoken critic of Strauss and Werner’s syndrome was Dr. Leo Kanner, who himself was on the verge of defining his own condition related to feeblemindedness, that of childhood autism. Kanner questioned the efficacy of Strauss and Werner’s criteria for distinguishing endogenous and exogenous types, though he did admit that the test results they acquired from their subjects did seem to support their conclusion on the existence of two distinct types of mental deficiency. ⁷¹   The two WCTS researchers had nonetheless laid the basis for what they would later develop into the “Strauss Syndrome,” eventually earning them widespread recognition—though not so much amongst scientists as with educators and parents. ⁷²

          When the McGregor Laboratory researchers attacked the notion that feebleminded children were “un-teachable,” they did it from several different angles. WCTS Scientific Director Thorleif Hegge himself held the extremely unorthodox belief that anyone with an IQ over 60 could be taught to read, and that many more with lower IQs still had some reading potential. He was among the extremely few scientists in the world at that time pursuing methods for teaching reading to the mentally deficient. From the very beginning he set out with what Danforth described as “unflinching optimism” ⁷³  to develop a means for instructing low-IQ children in reading based on his clinical studies at WCTS. When Hegge eventually joined Strauss, Werner, and Lehtinen (a physician, a psychologist, and an educator, respectively), this radically expanded the quest to unlock the hidden supposed potential of Wayne County’s feebleminded youth in all areas of learning. It had always been Hegge’s theory, however, that overcoming difficulty in reading was the key. He believed that many of these children failed to learn because they were given reading instruction “too early in their delayed development.” ⁷⁴  Though Dr. Hegge was the originator and the administrative leadership behind WCTS's train of research in this area, his own work achieved little recognition. Superintendent Haskell hired Hegge specifically to utilize his skills as a research administrator toward achieving the goal of building the WCTS into a national center for mental retardation research. ⁷⁵