18 PSYCHOLOGICAL METHODS OF TESTING INTELLIGENCE 



telligence. Evidently a chief objection to this 

 method is that the activities mentioned are depen- 

 dent to a large degree upon external conditions of 

 the instruction, so that the intelligence of individ- 

 uals that are working, or that have worked, under 

 different school conditions cannot be subjected to 

 comparative tests by means of these activities. 



(d) A fourth main class of tests is still farther 

 removed from the precision of the laboratory ex- 

 periment, but is thereby more nearly allied to real 

 life. These tests aim to secure records of such evi- 

 dences of intelligence as are accepted in ordinary 

 life as special evidence of it. These direct tests of 

 intellect have been specially developed by the psy- 

 chiatrists: they comprise such things as defining, 

 comparing, differentiating, the understanding of 

 proverbs, grasping the point of a joke, seeing ab- 

 surdities in verbal or pictorial presentations. 



These tests have the advantage that in them in- 

 telligence is undoubtedly much more directly opera- 

 tive than in the others : but on this account it is im- 

 possible in most of them to scale the results : they 

 are "alternative tests, " that admit of but the rough 

 differentiation into right or wrong (+ or ). The 

 single test of this sort, therefore, does not make it 

 possible to secure any very precise characterization 

 of the person tested, or to rank him in a scale. 



2. The Inadequacy of the Single Test 



A critique of all these confusingly many attempts 

 might be undertaken by examining them, test by test, 

 to see which ones deserve to be recommended as in- 

 dicators of intelligence. But we feel that far more 



