infrequent in the Binet scale. A test closely allied to this type is the directions test (executing three commissions), discussed above. (h) Other tests, occurring but once and not as easy to classify under the preceding analysis, are: Detecting parts in a mutilated picture (on the whole a range of information test). Interpreting the meaning of a picture (possibly to be classified as a reasoning test). Writing two words, according to a code previously studied (a test for learning and memory). Detecting absurdities in a statement (involving knowledge, comprehension, and at times a sense of the significance of words). 2. The dependence of the tests on the child's experience and particularly his schooling is to be noted. This has previously been pointed out. It is quite clear that the validity of these tests is based on the assumption that children tested have all had a common experience, and hence that the differences are not due to differences in training, but to differences in innate mentality. This important point will be referred to and developed later, since it is essential in the whole theory of intelligence testing. 3. It is an important fact to be noted particularly in a later diseussion of the nature of native intelligence that the Stanford-Binet includes in its scale so many tests that are really the measure of acquired ability, rather than an indication of abilities now in operation. They measure the results of mentality in acquisition of knowledge and skill, much more than they measure mentality in its immediate operation, so to speak. That is, a vocabulary test shows the product of previous learning, not learning in progress. The same is true of a counting test, and the many tests that appeal primarily to perceptions already formed. On the other hand, for example, the memory-span tests, ingenuity tests, and the like involve an active and alert mind, and build on experiences already acquired. Nevertheless, all of these tests rest on a definite basis of acquired experiences, and only to a limited degree test experinces in the making. This very important fact is characteristic not only of tests of the Binet type, but of all intelligence tests so far devised. 16. The Binet Tests ... [GREGORY, Chester Arthur, Fundamentals of Educational Measurement, pp. 67-72. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1923.] The Minister of Education in France in 1904 decided to separate the subnormal from the normal children in the public schools of that nation. For this difficult task he called upon Al fred Binet to devise a series of tests which might be used for that purpose. Binet had had a wide experience with the education of children. He had been president of the Société Libre pour l'Etude de l'Enfant for a number of years. At the suggestion of many teachers he had organized a committee for the care of abnormal children which initiated various investigations relative to backward children. He had worked with children for many years studying their peculiarities and proclivities. Binet consented to undertake the difficult task and, calling to his assistance the physician, Thomas Simon, devised a series of 30 tests, the chief purpose of which was to detect subnormality. After trying these tests on 203 school children in Paris, both Binet and Simon came to the conclusion that it was possible to devise a series of tests that would not only detect subnormality but also serve as a definite measure of mental unfoldment. With this thought in mind, they devised a scale consisting of 54 tests which they published in 1908. This scale was revised and republished in 1911. Before taking up the problems confronting Binet and Simon in making an intelligence scale, a tabular synopsis of the 1911 Revision as adapted to American conditions will be presented for purposes of reference. A general description of the scale will then follow with an interpretation of a number of the descriptive terms used. TABULAR SYNOPSIS OF THE BINET-SIMON SCALE, 1911 EDITION Age 3: 1. Points to nose, eyes, and mouth 2. Repeats two digits 3. Enumerates objects in a picture 4. Gives family name 5. Repeats a sentence of six syllables Age 4: 1. Gives his sex 2. Names key, knife, and penny 3. Repeats three digits 4. Compares two lines Age 5: 1. Compares two weights 2. Copies a square 3. Repeats a sentence of ten syllables 4. Counts four pennies 5. Unites the halves of a divided rectangle Age 6: 1. Distinguishes between morning and afternoon 3. Copies a diamond 4. Counts thirteen pennies 5. Distinguishes pictures of ugly and pretty faces Age 7: 1. Shows right hand and left ear 2. Describes a picture 3. Executes three commissions, given simultaneously 4. Counts the value of six sous, three of which are double 5. Names four cardinal colors Age 8: 1. Compares two objects from memory 2. Counts from 20 to 0 3. Notes omissions from pictures 4. Gives day and date 5. Repeats five digits Age 9: 1. Gives change from twenty sous 2. Defines familiar words in terms superior to use 4. Names the months of the year, in order Age 10: 1. Arranges five blocks in order of weight 3. Criticizes absurd statements 4. Answers difficult "comprehension questions" 5. Uses three given words in not more than two sentences Age 12: 1. Resists suggestion 2. Composes one sentence containing three given words 3. Names sixty words in three minutes 4. Defines certain abstract words 5. Discovers the sense of a disarranged sentence Age 15: 1. Repeats seven digits 2. Finds three rhymes for a given word 3. Repeats a sentence of twenty-six syllables 4. Interprets pictures 5. Interprets given facts. Adult: 1. Solves the paper-cutting test 2. Rearranges a triangle in imagination 3. Gives differences between pairs of abstract terms 4. Gives three differences between a president and a king The Binet-Simon scale is an instrument for measuring mental maturity. By maturity we mean the development of native capacity as a whole by growth, training, and environment. Mental growth is a gradual increase of capacity for learning which comes as a result of the development of the nervous system apart from all training. By native capacity or endowment we mean the special capacity for functioning with which nature has provided the individual. Inborn capacity manifests itself only through learning. An individual born with a great capacity to become intelligent, but denied the opportunity to learn, would possess no intelligence. Intelligence must be acquired. The tests in the Binet scale are arranged in progressive steps of increasing difficulty, each higher step involving the more tardily appearing functions, such as reasoning complex comparisons, the associative functions, and the like, which depend directly on the maturation of the native capacities. The authors of the scale worked on the assumption that the intellectual ability of children of a given age tended to approach a relatively well-marked norm. The tests in each age-group were selected on this basis. The mental scale is merely the grouping together of individual tests in order to give a more general picture of the mental make-up of the individual. Binet originated the idea of grouping tests for estimating intelligence. For a long time he had been interested in the question of tests for various specific abilities. His work gradually led him to a study of individual cases, and, in summing up the psychological characteristics of individuals, as revealed by the mental tests, he came upon the idea of using a number of tests as a measure of the individual's capacity. In addition to this, his theoretical speculations as to what the tests were testing, led him to the conclusion that "attention" and "adaptation" were at the bottom the chief factors that distinguished the intelligent from the unintelligent. The practical situation presented to Binet of separating the normal from the subnormal children of France called forth the first actual group of tests for differentiating intelligent and unintelligent children. He was called upon to dis criminate between the normal and backward child, and the question was not whether this or that child was better in such a specific thing as memory or imagination, but whether the child was, in general, weaker in his intellectual endowment than the average child of his age. He therefore discarded the individual tests for specific ability and took a group of tests which seemed to cover in general the chief psychological characteristics that go to make up intelligence. It was Binet, therefore, who really blazed the trail through the jungle of mental measurements and left us a path which leads to the general abilities of a child's mental life. As the norm or standard of intelligence, he took what the average child at each age could do. These two points, the use of the group tests and the average performance at each age as a standard of measurement, form the basic principles upon which all of our measuring scales of intelligence now rest. 17. Mental Levels [GODDARD, H. H., Human Efficiency and Levels of Intelligence, pp. 1-8. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1920.] The chief determiner of human conduct is a unitary mental process which we call intelligence. This process is conditioned by a nervous mechanism that is inborn. Throughout childhood the human being rises to an ever higher level of intelligence. . . . Intellectual development is largely independent of what we call learning or knowledge; and not all develop to the highest level or even near to it. The theory of mental levels holds that every human being comes into the world with a potentiality for mental development that will carry him just so far and that barring those accidents that may stop a person from reaching the development which would have been normal to him, nothing can, to any great extent, affect the mental level to which he will finally attain. Intelligence is an inherited force, while knowledge is wholly acquired. . . . One cannot acquire a high degree of knowledge without having some intelligence, and the highly intelligent person certainly acquires knowledge because it is of great use; but, a person may have knowledge out of proportion to his intelligence and vice versa. |