IntelligenceIntelligenceINTRODUCTION: In 1917, as the United States mobilized its vast resources for the war against Germany, Professor Lewis Terman of Stanford University traveled east to meet with a group of prominent psychologists. Terman was an expert on intelligence testing, for he had pioneered the application of a French Intelligence test (developed by Alfred Binet) in the U.S. Terman, a devoted member of the Stanford University faculty, called his test the Stanford- Binet, and it was widely used in clinical settings.
But why was Terman meeting with other psychologists? Their goal: to develop some kind of psychological test that the U.S. Army could give to the thousands of new recruits coming into the army. The test would help them decide who had the intellectual potential to be an officer, who did not. Terman carried in his briefcase the rough materials his student Arthur Otis had designed for a questionnaire measure of intelligence. In several weeks the group of psychologists had designed the Army Alpha Examination, based on the Otis scales. The test was given to 1,700,000 men, and it seemed to work. Some were sent off to the trenches, and others were selected to lead them there. And psychologists, delighted with their success, began to spread their testing into civilian settings: particularly in educational settings.
The Alpha-Eyes survey, first used in the 1930s, was based on the Otis Scale. And when the scale was introduced, in 1963, it was used as the test for whether anyone was a competent and trustworthy leader, and how important it was to a person who understood his or her place in society.
For the last 18 years, the Army has used the measure to evaluate teachers, teachers of history, women’s education, young men’s and women’s sports teams, athletic clubs, professional sports teams, and military bases. But now it has adopted a broader, more sophisticated rating system, and the military has developed data sets that can better evaluate all sorts of factors, such as gender, education, ethnicity, occupation, and sex.
Terman’s son, Robert, is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Georgia State University, and he did research on the Army Beta-Eyes test, a new kind of research tool known now for being the subject of a new documentary series, “The Big Picture,” that aired Monday.
Terman was already using the survey as an interview tool for evaluating military leaders when he used it to ask, among other things, who is more likely to meet requirements that would make the president or lieutenant colonel feel right about their ability to do things. He began with such questions as, “How many times did you or your husband say, ‘I didn’t expect to have a second chance,’ and then followed up with, ‘(As President) I will provide you with a great gift.’ It went on to do the same for a couple of other questions. But it didn’t have the same interest in that aspect of it.” The questions he would have asked for were: “Would you like to see your family get a medal for their courage or not?”
Terman said he had developed the Alpha-Eyes measure over the course of two years as part of a $1.70 million project to improve people’s perceptions of future challenges. “A lot of people aren’t aware of the Alpha-Eyes test at all, because they’re trained as psychologists,” he said about the military’s process. “So I used to think that there were a lot of advantages to using a measurement like the Alpha-Eyes, so that’s what I came up with.”
And they did.
Robert Terman says he did not need the Alpha-Eyes to tell his children what they needed to do to be successful at what he calls “the highest and best, because what they don’t notice is that there’s much more of what the president might have expected. People would have heard and recognized more about it.”
Robert Terman said it was not just military leaders who learned the measure. Others who had been studying it took the alpha-Eyes away from their study.
“People were more willing to change school curricula because it took less time,” he said. “They were less afraid to take on more difficult things, which can be helpful when people who’ve moved on and are trying to improve their skills don’t have the time or resources available to them when somebody gets out of a job.”
It’s a problem
School systems and colleges snatched up the tests for use in pupil classification, guidance, and admissionsWithin 30 months of the first publication of the group test some four million children had been tested, and the IQ test was on its way to acceptanceI. Intelligence TestingA. Historical Development1) Alfred Binet Charged by the Minister of Public Instruction in Paris to develop a method of detecting “defective” children who could then be given special instructions
Although he toyed with the idea of developing a physiological measure, he ended up with a test he called “aptitude for academic achievement”this test was designed to be relevant in academic settingsSimple procedures used identified behaviors for each age (important – this test was age specific – also known as the “age-standard method”). This made it possible to establish range of normality (“norms”), then checked to see if the child/person possessed these abilities
a) 3 years: show eyes, nose, mouth, name objects in a picture, repeat figures, repeat a sentence of 6 syllables, give last nameb) 5 years: compare 2 boxes of different weights, copy a square, repeat a sentence of 10 syllables, put together 2 pieces of a gamec) 7 years: indicate omissions in drawings, copy a written sentence, copy a triangle and a diamond, etc.d) 9 years: give the date complete, name days of the week, give definitions, memorythis measure proved highly successful in predicting school success2) In 1916, an American psychologist (TERMAN) revised and translated the testa) problem: unfair to say an 8 year old is more intelligent than a 6 year old simply because he or she gets more questions rightb) need to adjust for chronological agec) He used the formula IQ = MA/CA X 100 (to get rid of decimals) – HOWEVER, this formula was actually developed by William Stern in 1912 in order to avoid the inconvenience of decimals.
For example – A 10 year old with a mental age of 8 has a ratio of 8/10 = .8 and a 6 year old with a mental age of 4 has a ratio of 4/6 = .67. This indicates that the 6 year old is relatively farther behind his or her age peers.
STERN then got rid of the decimal point so .8 becomes 80, and .67 becomes 67. d. if 100, just right. This would mean that a person has the same mental age and chronological age.
B. Types of Tests1) Individual Testsa) Stanford-Binet: This made it possible to test adults & children1. established the procedures to use in administering the test – takes 1 hour or more so it was not good for collecting data from groups very quickly. This was not good if you wanted to test military troops – So, Otis instead created an oral intelligence test (goes back to introduction).
2. established the norms for the test (e.g., how many an “X” year old got correct) But, there is still a problem here. This test still utilized the intelligence quotient developed by Stern – but mental age slows dramatically after childhood. So, someone