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MEMOIRS NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



Table 185.- — Examination a — Distribution of scores. 



[Vol. XV, 



Section 2. — Norms for examination a by age, mental age, and school grade. 



Table 186 gives the distribution of total score on examination a for 2,543 children enrolled 

 in the grades below the high school. This group includes all the pupils enrolled in grades 3 to 

 8 (besides two classes in grade 2) in certain schools of Oakland, Palo Alto, Redwood City, May- 

 field, San Jose, and Menlo Park, Calif. Chiefly form A was used, which may have given an 

 advantage to this group since form A has been found to be slightly easier than the other forms. 

 It will be noted that children of the age 13 to 13.9 years (average 13.5) make practically the 

 same median score as was found for literate white men in the first four camps. (See p. 491.) 

 In this table the distribution for the ages above 14 represent unfavorable selection. 



Table 187 shows the score distributions by school grade for cases from California and Min- 

 nesota. It will be noted that the medium score of the seventh grade corresponds approximately 

 to the median for literate white men of the first four camps. 



Table 187 gives the age medians for boys and girls separately for each test of examination a. 

 These medians are based on 1,162 California children, from grade 3 to the first year of high 

 school, inclusive. For this purpose were used only schools which were thought to represent 

 average social conditions. The group is further selected in the fact that only pupils were in- 

 cluded both of whose parents were born in the United States. This, as well as the fact that 

 form A was used, helps to account for the high medians, which are doubtless considerably too 

 high to serve as representative age norms. 



Table 189 gives the median score on each test of examination a made by school children of 

 different mental ages and the median total score by mental age. They had been tested by the 

 Stanford-Binet scale several months to two years before they were given examination a, and 

 their mental ages at the time examination a was given were computed by the use of the in- 

 telligence quotient. Again the norms appear higher than the median score of literate soldiers 

 would lead us to expect. Especially is this true above the mental age of 13 years. For 

 the years 9, 10, 11, and 12 the mental age norms correspond closely to the norms for the corres- 

 ponding chronological ages for the unselected group of 2,543 children. Above 12 years the 

 mental age medians are higher, agreeing closely with the chronological age medians of the more 

 selected group of 1,162 children. 



The reader is left to interpret for himself the fact that school children of 13 to 14 years, or 

 school children enrolled in the seventh grade, or school children who test at 13 by the Stanford- 

 Binet, make about as high a score in examination a as does the average white recruit. The 

 fact that form A, which is easier than the other forms, was used in most of the tests of school 

 children, is only a partial explanation. The alpha-beta-Stanford-Binet tests of the group of 

 653 English-speaking recruits (see ch.7) support the findings given above as far as mental age 

 is concerned. 



Table 190 gives medians of beta tests by school grade for 597 white children of Petersburg, 

 Va., and, for comparison, medians on the 653 English-speaking men, described in chapter 7. 

 Table 191 shows the relationship of school grade to total weighted beta score for the group of 

 school children shown in Table 190. 



