The Mental Testing Movement
• Precursors:
– Galton
– Bessel and the personal equation
• James McKeen Cattell (1860-1944)
– Took his PhD in Leipzig, under Wundt
• Dissertation: Dissertation on objective measures of reaction time
– Returned to US
• First job at Bryn Mawr, then U of Pennsylvania, then Columbia
• First American professor of psychology
• Fired from Columbia for pacifism during WWI (1917), sued and won $40K
settlement that he used to found the Psychological Corporation.
• Also founded Psychological review, edited Science, founded the AAUP, and
began American Men of Sciences (now American Men and Women of Science.
– Studied RT as f(sense mode, attention, forewarning), fatigue,
reward and punishment)
• Built mental measurement battery based mainly on RT measures.
• Later research: no relation with school performance
• Alfred Binet (1857-1911)
– Early bad experience with hypnotism/magnetism as cures for
mental afflictions
• Led to resignation from the Salpetriere (1890)
– Observational studies of intellectual growth of his daughters
(published in 1903) led to some early attempts to test for
intellectual differences among people.
• Tests not highly correlated with each other; presumably didn’t
measure intelligence.
– With Theodore Simon (1873-1961)
• Appointed by French govt. to develop method of distinguishing mentally deficient
children from those with normal intelligence.
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Began with criterion groups and chose measures that differentiated them. Binet-Simon test
(1905)
– The Binet-Simon test
• New ideas:
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Items graded in difficulty
Difficulty related to age of child
» Intelligence increases through childhood
Child compared to others of same age
Idea that intelligence is made up of many skills (unlike Galton who believed in a single,
“theoretically basic”, measure of intelligence)
» Intelligence isn’t based on sensory acuity or special training
Idea that intelligence is not innately restricted
Believed that remedial training would improve intelligence
Concept of mental age
» In 1911, William Stern invents concept of IQ (MA/CA x 100)
» This definition no longer used, since raw scores don’t continue to rise with chronological
age after 15-18 yrs of age. (If you are an average 19 yr old with IQ of 100, what will your
IQ be when you are 55, assuming ability stays the same? 19/55 * 100 = 35!!!
– Lasting contributions to intelligence testing
• Used tests for which all subjects could be expected to have the required experience
• Used tests of abstract reasoning, e.g.,
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Unwrap and eat a sweet
Remember shopping lists
Order weights (3, 6, 9, 12, 15 grams) & lines (3 cm, 4 cm.. Etc)
Make rough copies pf line-drawn square, diamond, cylinder
Construct sentences containing given words (e.g., “Paris”, “fortune”, “river”)
Example from the Binet test: figure copying
» Task: child shown one simple figure and asked to draw it from memory (detailed
accuracy and neatness unimportant)
» Results: Square can be copied by average 5 yr old; diamond by 8; cylinder by 10. Acc.
To Jensen, this test correlates with other childhood abilities.
» Note: problem here is not merely perceptual or manual – it is analytic. The 8 yr old who
can’t copy the diamond, for example, will have been able to copy the square. Note, too:
Training on one figure doesn’t transfer to the other, harder, figures
David Wechsler (1896-1981)
– Started testing similar to Binet but for adults (1930’s)
– Established the Deviation IQ as the measure
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Intelligence Testing in the US
– H.H. Goddard (1866-1957)
• Translated Binet-Simon test into English
• Kallikak family study
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Normal and “feebleminded” descendents from one man and his wife & mistress
Promoted genetic view of intelligence; little weight given to environmental factors
Resulted in sterilization laws in several states (upheld by Supreme Court) and deportation of
immigrants with low intelligence test scores
• Applied terms idiot, imbecile, and moron to intelligence levels (1910, 1916)
– Lewis M. Terman (1877-1956)
• Took degree from G. Stanley Hall at Clark University; did most of his work at Stanford
• Revised Binet-Simon scales to give an “average” IQ of 100 at each age level
• Stanford-Binet became standard instrument for measuring intelligence in children and was
good predictor of school performance
• Believed intelligence was
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mostly determined by heredity
Unitary
Relatively stable
» Opposite of Binet in these judgments
• Recommended that schools develop different tracks for students of different abilities
– Longitudinal study of genius
• Identified 1470 gifted children (avg. IQ = 151) through statewide testing in
CA. (“Termites”)
• Tested them frequently on obtained life history information from 1921 until
the 1950’s
• Found that gifted children tend to become well adjusted, successful adults with
wide interests
• Leta Hollingworth
– PhD from Columbia
– Became prof. of education at Columbia Teachers College
– Applied studies in intelligence
• Early studies: no gender differences; no impairment during menstruation
• Later studies: many cases of “mental deficiency were really cases of social or
emotional impairment
• Studies of gifted children led to methods of enriching education for bright
students
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Robert M. Yerkes (1876-1956)
– PhD and faculty member at Harvard
– Devised intelligence scale for group administration (1917)
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Army Alpha (for English-speaking subjects); Army Beta (for non-English & illiterates)
First mass administrations of intelligence tests (1.75 million men)
Permitted group comparisons
Score was a point total, not IQ.
Raised concern about “national intelligence”
Data used to promote racial segregation & theories of racial superiority
However, Army didn’t find the data especially useful
– Better contribution:
• Established comparative psychology in the U.S. (Yerkes Regional Primate Lab in Atlanta
named for him)
• President of APA (1917)
• As APA president, Yerkes chaired Army testing committee, which
included Terman and his doctoral student, Arthur Otis (Otis test served
as basis for construction of the group tests)
• Questions have been raised about significance of psychologists’
contributions to WWI. But…. Huge boost to mental testing
movement.
• After the war:
– Terman claimed tests improved military efficiency and predicted they
would be universally used in schools
• Got Rockefeller Foundation funding to adapt tests for school use
• Developed “National Intelligence Tests” for grades 3-8 for use in 1920
• Testing widely adopted in schools in 1920’s- 30’s. Creation of hierarchical
tracking system, programming for gifted
– Hereditarian interpretation of intelligence challenged in early 20’s when results of
WWI testing were released.
• Critics raised questions about
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Whether tests measure innate intelligence
Cultural bias
Lack of opportunity
• By 1930’s testers most closely associated with reports of racial/ethnic differences recanted
their views.
• With respect to racial/ethnic differences, the heredity argument was put to rest until
revived in 1970’s by Arthur Jensen—hereditarian interpretation of racial differences
– Nature-nurture debate over tested intelligence was not put aside with respect to
American schoolchildren.
• Terman continued to advocate for hereditarian interpretation of IQ differences among
schoolchildren
• Environmentalist challenge most prominently offered by group from Univ. of Iowa, led by
George Stoddard.
– Mass IQ testing in schools continued well into 1960’s.
• Goal was to make long-term predictions regarding intellectual potential
• Galton-Terman heredity interpretation maintained dominance over Binet-Iowa
environmentalist view.
– In 1960’s, in context of civil rights movement and War on Poverty, the
Iowa tradition of studying effects of environmental enrichment again
became prominent
– In conservative climate of Nixon presidency (no, this isn’t Nixon-bashing)
• Environmentalist position challenged.
• Interesting aside: Nixon had been one of Terman’s subjects in the longitudinal
study
– Issue remains hot today; reflects social/political forces