52 PSYCHOLOGICAL METHODS OF TESTING INTELLIGENCE 



of the children of the better situated school to be 

 three quarters of a year. 11 



A question as interesting as it is difficult to answer 

 arises when we seek the causes of these differences 

 in performance. It would obviously be very prema- 

 ture to assume as already positively demonstrated 

 that the intelligence, considered as innate mental 

 ability, was of lower grade in children of the lower 

 and poorer classes. Of course, it is not impossible 

 that this may have been operative as a causal factor. 

 One might, perhaps, assume that the very rise into 

 the higher and better-off classes would itself predi- 

 cate a certain intellectual selection, and that thus 

 the children of these classes would have come into the 

 world equipped with a superior intellectual endow- 

 ment. 



But, on the other hand, it must be remembered 

 that no series of tests, however skillfully selected it 

 may be, does reach the innate intellectual endow- 

 ment, stripped of all complications, but rather this 

 endowment in conjunction with all the influences to 



"Since Stern assembled this material there has appeared an 

 American study that does not confirm the general principle of en- 

 vironmental influence (J. Weintrob and R. Weintrob. The Influ- 

 ence of Environment on Mental Ability as Shown by Binet-Simon 

 Tests. Jour, of Educ. Psych., 3: 1912, 577-583). The subjects 

 were 210 children, 70 from the Horace Mann School of Teachers 

 College, Columbia University, representing children from wealthy, 

 or at -least very well-to-do families, 70 from the Speyer School, 

 representing families of the "comfortable middle class" (wage- 

 earners and small-business men), and 70 from the Hebrew Shelter- 

 ing Orphan Asylum of New York, who were children springing 

 from a very unfavorable environment. While the relatively small 

 number of cases and the difference of nationality may render the 

 outcome less conclusive, the results from the three institutions 

 "showed very small and inconsistent differences." The original 

 article should be consulted for further analysis of the data. 

 Translator. 



