68 PSYCHOLOGICAL METHODS OF TESTING INTELLIGENCE 



passing these tests successfully is only 28, 55 and 

 55, respectively. Where the same test runs through 

 several years, the sex difference is nearly always 

 greater in the younger than in the older children. 

 This corresponds, again, with the psychological law 

 that mental differences stand out more clearly in 

 difficult than in easy tasks. 



Bloch and Preiss themselves point out that the 

 number of persons upon which these results are 

 based is too small to warrant final conclusions, but 

 it is surely worthy of note that the inferiority of the 

 girls extends to so many different kinds of tests. 



Bobertag (40, II, pp. 503-4) compared the same 

 number of boys and girls of each age that ranked 

 average in their school work. In each age the mental 

 age of the boys turned out to be slightly above that 

 of the girls ; the difference amounted to 1/7 year in 

 the 8, 9 and 12-year old pupils, and to 1/5 year in the 

 10 and 11-year old pupils. 



Mile. Descoeudres (46) compared a very small 

 number of pupils one intelligent and one unintelli- 

 gent boy and a like pair of girls from each of six 

 chronological ages. Taking all the right answers 

 together, the boys had 52, the girls 48 per cent. 

 There is here, then, also, a superiority of the boys, 

 though the amount of the difference is not, of course, 

 significant. 



(/) Repeated tests of the same children. Atten- 

 tion must be called to one other important experi- 

 ment included in the article of Bobertag 's already 

 mentioned (40, II) an experiment that differs fun- 

 damentally from all that have been conducted here- 

 tofore. Bobertag retested in the year after a large 



