no. 2.] PSYCHOLOGICAL EXAMINING IN THE UNITED STATES ARMY. 485 



illiterate, and the foreign speaking adequate? We have summarized the efforts of the staffs 

 to answer these. The literacy test supplied proved inadequate. All four staffs finally adopted cri- 

 teria such as ability to write one's name or to read a simple sentence, or the lowest possible positive 

 score on the literacy test, as the point of segregation. The degree of literacy obtained by these 

 methods probably differed quite widely. They nevertheless had one point in common; they 

 enabled examiners to segregate groups rapidly. Three staffs answered the second question 

 by making no special report on the literacy of recruits. The Camp Devens staff invented and 

 standardized a new method for giving literacy grades to all recruits. The methods supplied for 

 testing the group of "illiterates" did not prove satisfactory. The group skill test was not 

 testing abilities similar to those tested by examination a; the individual examination methods 

 were only partly suited for testing foreign speaking and actual illiterates. The necessity for a 

 group examination that would test the "illiterate" group and give results more nearly com- 

 parable to the results of examination a was clearly demonstrated. 



In the second place the detection of the feeble-minded and those unfit for military service 

 because of inadequate intelligence proved to be possible. The four different staffs demonstrated 

 that they could be valuable assistants to medical and line officers in handling these cases. The 

 need for additional methods for individual examining came out definitely in connection with 

 efforts to test "illiterate" and non-English speaking with such standard methods as the point 

 scale and Stanford-Binet. 



Finally the method of examining men in groups for intellectual status was fully and satis- 

 factorily demonstrated. 



The immediately practical results of the work of the psychological examiners during the 

 fall examining were primarily demonstrations of the variety of ways in which their services 

 could be made useful, rather than of the amounts of such practical service. They demon- 

 strated the usefulness of the tests in selecting high-grade men, in picking out the mentally 

 deficient and men of low military value, in detecting wide variations in the mental strength 

 of companies, regiments, and divisions, in forming imits of uniform, superior, or inferior in- 

 tellectual ability, and in the analysis of cases presenting various peculiarities of behavior, 

 such as summary and general court-martial cases or cases unable to learn drill or other mili- 

 tary duties. 



