106 



ijis(:ovi:hy 



Reviews of Books 



I'lif M i:isiininiiil of InU-lligcncc. By Prof. Lewis 

 M. TiiRMAN'. (Harrap & Co., 8s. 6d.) 



The Inti-Uigcncc of School Children. By Prof. Lewis 

 M. Term.^n. (Harrap & Co., 8s. M.) 



Measure Your Mind. By F. P. Stockbridge and 

 Uk. M. R. Trabue. (Harrap & Co., los. 6d.) 



These three books are not only what our elders and 

 betters call highly instructive, but they are also exceed- 

 ingly good fun. If they are read and studied in the 

 order I have placed them, they should serve, I think, to 

 introduce readers to a very fascinating subject — that of 

 mental tests. The titles sound dry enough. Intelligence, 

 school-children, measuring the mind, these call to our 

 minds the pedagogue. But remember we are not in 

 school. And these books, as pedagogues out of school 

 may be, are interesting, entertaining, and at times 

 highly amusing. 



It was a gentleman of the name of Binct, a French- 

 man, who was the first to put this business of mental 

 testing on a scientific basis. He succeeded, as Professor 

 Terman has said of him, in bringing down a good deal 

 of psychology from the clouds and making it useful to 

 men. But fifty years ago Francis Dalton had predicted 

 that sometime it might be possible to obtain a general 

 knowledge of the intellectual capacity of a man by 

 sinking shafts, so to speak, at certain points. This is 

 what mental tests do. Galton's prediction is now in 

 process of being realised. 



Binet spent fifteen years in working out his system 

 of mental tests. It was published in 1908, and is known 

 as the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale. This scale 

 consisted of fifty-four tests ranging in difficulty from 

 tests that may be passed by the average child of three 

 years to tests which would be considered difficult 

 enough by the average grown-up. This work of Binet's 

 was great pioneer work. His scale has since been 

 considerably modified by Professor Terman and his 

 pupils at Leland Stanford Junior University in Cali- 

 fornia. They have increased the number of tests to 

 ninety, and have extended the scale sufficiently to 

 measure the intelligence of "superior adults." These 

 tests are called the Stanford Revision. They give, 

 I think, a better diagnosis of our mental capacity than 

 the original Binet-Simon scale. They include tests of 

 memorj', comprehension of language, size of vocabulary, 

 orientation in time and space, co-ordination between 

 hand and eye, knowledge about familiar things, judg- 

 ment, ability to find likenesses and differences between 

 common objects, arithmetical reasoning, resourceful- 

 ness and ingenuity in difficult practical situations, 

 ability to detect absurdities, apperception, the speed 

 and richness of association of ideas, the capacity to 

 generalise from particulars, the ability to deduce a rule 

 from connected facts and so forth . 



Here is one of the Stanford problems : 

 .1 mother sent Iter boy to the river and told him to bring 

 back exactly seven pints of water. She gave him a three- 

 pint vessel and a five-pint vessel. Show me how the boy 

 can measure out exactly seven pints 0/ water, using nothing 

 but these two vessels and not guessing at the amount. 

 You should begin by filling the five-pint vessel first. 

 Remember, you have a three-pint vessel and a five-pint 

 vessel, and you must bring back exactly seven pints. 



This problem is given orally, but may be repeated 

 if necessary. The person questioned is not allowed 

 pencil and paper. The time allowed is five minutes. 



Below is another problem : 



Repeat Backwards 4-1-6-2-5-9-3 ; 3-8-2-6-4-7-3 ; and 

 9-4-5-2-8-3-7. 



A test which should be passed by the " average 

 adult " consists in repeating twenty-eight syllables. 

 The sentences for this test are : 



(a) Walter likes very much to go on visits to his grand- 

 mother, because she always tells him many funny stories. 



[b] Yesterday I saw a pretty little dog in the street. It 

 had curly brown hair, short legs, and a long tail. 



The sentence must be repeated without a single 

 change of any sort. The test is passed if one sentence 

 is repeated correctly. 



These, however, are merely samples, and away from 

 the context and the rules and regulations governing 

 them they lose much of their importance. The whole 

 thing (the Stanford Revision) is explained lucidly and 

 at length in The Measurement of Intelligence. The 

 necessary technical terms are carefully explained, the 

 reliability of the methods emploj'ed is discussed, and 

 the instructions for giving the tests to children are set 

 forth in detail. 



A reader looking through the tests might wonder if 

 psychologists or teachers are justified in attributing the 

 significance they do to tests many of which are familiar 

 as parlour games or as puzzles in the children's page of 

 the popular weekly. Here, as in every scientific 

 investigation, we must be guided by what the experts 

 say. Their opinion is that the significance of mental 

 tests lies in the fact that each test and the scale as a 

 whole have been carefully standardised on the basis of 

 age. The series of tests has been tried upon many 

 hundreds of normal children. A boy who can pass a 

 test which experience has shown can be passed by the 

 average child of eight years is said to have a " mental 

 age " of eight. If he can pass not only the eight-year- 

 old test but also those set for children of nine and ten 

 years, he is said to have a mental age of ten years. If 

 he passes the six-year-old test but fails at the seven- 

 year test, however, he has a mental age of six. 



The importance of mental age for the teacher lies, 

 then, in the fact that it may be used as a basis for 

 grading the pupils. Should a boy of eleven with a 

 mental age of fourteen leave the class he is in and be 

 put in the higher class in which the average age is 



