Intelligence Testing

6 Commentsby   |  03.20.11  |  Beginning of Scientific Psychology (Part III)

The Binet-Simon scale, developed by Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon, and first released in 1905,was made up of thirty items increasing in difficulty designed to identify intellectually subnormal individuals. In 1916 came the Stanford-Binet IQ formula: IQ score=mental age / chronological age x 10. Today, the scale is still used and is in its fifth edition. During World War I, Robert Yerkes, a psychologist from Harvard University, convinced the government that army recruits should be tested, using his own modified version based off the Stanford-Binet, to classify and assign them. The goals were to identify those with mental deficiencies, to classify men in terms of their intelligence level, and to select individuals for officer training. After coming up with a test, they discovered that about 40% of those enlisted were illiterate and therefore could not take it, so they made a Beta version for those who could not read. The army testing program was supposed to be a great example of how practical psychology was, but, in reality, only .005% of those tested were recommended for discharge as mentally unfit, and, in many cases the army ignored the recommendations. While, in theory, Yerkes’ ideas were good, he was never able to get them to work. Such is the life of a psychologist. Many of them are just a little off, and most of them are largely ignored. Maybe someday someone will develop a scale that can more effectively measure intelligence, but, in my opinion, for now it is just better to watch what people can do in real life situations rather than what they can do on paper.

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6 Comments

  1. Lacy Hanson
    2:46 pm, 03.20.11

    I completely agree with this idea. Stating someone’s intelligence based on a test is not the best idea in the world. I think that there are some people out there, like myself, that have test anxiety and don’t perform as well on tests because they’re afraid of being judged. So, having them sit down to tests that take hours to complete and give you a score that tell you how intelligent you are is irrelevant sometimes. It was a good idea in theory, but in practice it isn’t all that accurate.

  2. LeeAnn Green
    1:35 pm, 03.21.11

    I agree with what you are saying about how sometimes even with a good scale, people ignore the results or do not take the recommendations. I think that even with a good scale to measure intelligence people can still make mistakes with interpreting the results or handling the situation. I also agree that sometimes people are much more capable than they look on paper. Some people just test poorly.

  3. Lawton Pybus
    3:11 pm, 03.21.11

    Well said. This reminds me of the fairly recent criticism that standardized tests are “racist,” in that they are developed in such a way that they favor more affluent students (i.e., whites) and ignore the realities of education in less affluent (i.e. minority) communities. I don’t mean to comment on the validity of the criticism, or start controversy, but at the least it makes us think about whether our methods for measuring intelligence are biased.

  4. Taeyanna Pannell
    4:27 pm, 03.21.11

    I agree that a persons intelligence cannot be based on a standardized test. There are many people who do not test well and to have them sit down and take it and they “fail” it then some peoples world depend on those results. This makes me think of the No Child Left Behind in the way that it was implemented to help but in turn it has hurt the people who really try and help the people who really do not care overall. This statement may not be completely true. Its just what I have experienced.

  5. Brady Campbell
    8:41 pm, 03.21.11

    It is a pity that it is used ALONE. It is not a poor indicator of common knowledge, spatial, etc, but does not measure many other intelligences, such as emotional, conversational, artistic, etc.
    I consider myself a futurist because whenever I think about the past(very frequently in this class) I think about how things were, and how things should be-and that leads me to think of our own time as in the past. Sometimes I wonder how many important things haven’t been done, especially in psychology.(such as integration of religion and sociology in common study, a system of care of psychologically disturbed patients, and others.
    Back to the test…
    I wish that Binet and Simon had gone further with their work. I see so much disparity between the current use of the common perception of intelligence and the truth that I hope psychology grows in this area, and soon.

  6. Alison
    11:53 pm, 03.21.11

    I definitely agree that intelligence testing is sadly lacking in both accuracy and, in fact, validity. Who’s to say what those tests are actually measuring? Someone mentioned test anxiety, which would definitely ruin the results; but even with a perfect test taker, there still remains the issue of defining what exactly intelligence is and how we can possibly measure it. Like Brady said, IQ tests do nothing for measuring other intelligences, which may be just as, if not more, important than what basically amounts to book smarts.

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