Binet-Simon scale

“ The Binet scale, it must be understood, is an instrument of precision, not to be handled except by one who has been thoroughly trained in its use. It looks so simple that any student is apt to say, "Why, I could give those tests!" ”

“ Contrary to what one would have expected, uneducated adults of “average adult” intelligence surpassed our high-school students of the same mental level.
Binet located this test in year XII of the 1908 series, but shifted it to year XV in 1911. The American versions of the Binet scale have usually retained it in year XII, though Goddard admits that the sentences are somewhat too difficult for that year. Kuhlmann puts the test in year XII, but reduces the sentences to twenty-four syllables and permits one re-reading. We give only two trials and our sentences are considerably more difficult. ”

“ This makes the use of the Binet scale impossible and we should be forced back upon 320such tests as the form-board, the ergograph, etc., for which we should have to agree upon an absolute zero of ability. Moreover, mental tests do not lend themselves to measurement in terms merely of rapidity in doing the same task or in terms of other equal physical units since the quality of the work also has to be evaluated and this is usually done in units assumed arbitrarily to measure equivalent degrees of perfection. ”

“ Binet fully appreciated the fact that intelligence is not homogeneous, that it has many aspects, and that no one kind of test will display it adequately. He therefore assembled for his intelligence scale tests of many different types, some of them designed to display differences of memory, others differences in power to reason, ability to compare, power of comprehension, time orientation, facility in the use of number concepts, power to combine ideas into a meaningful whole, the maturity of apperception, wealth of ideas, knowledge of common objects, etc. ”

“ General directions for the use of the Stanford Revision have been fully set forth in chapter VIII of The Measurement of Intelligence. As this guide is only a handbook of procedure for the tests themselves, I shall not here undertake either to summarize that chapter or to add to it. I trust it may safely be assumed that no responsible person will attempt to apply the tests who is not familiar with the book which explains them and presents the general considerations which should govern their use. ”

“ The ideal that Binet set before himself was the formation of a scale which should measure intelligence in something the same way as the foot-rule measures height. The first difficulty was the unit. If we regard intelligence as the power to cope with a situation, we see that this power in a general way increases with the experience of the child, or, we may say, with his age. A child of nine should have more intelligence than one of eight, a child of eight than a child of seven, and so on. ”

“ We are now in possession of a fairly precise and very simple method of determining innate mental capacity in the Binet-Simon series of mental tests. These tests ought at once to be applied to several thousand each of negro and colored school children. The results should yield a fairly accurate idea as to the relative capacity for education and the limits for each. This is of very practical importance. If it can be shown that the negro brain has definite, relatively low limits of flexibility and development, money should not be spent in attempting the impossible. ”

“ The test is a good one. Age and training, apart from intelligence, affect it only moderately. There are few adult imbeciles of 6-year intelligence who are able to pass it, while but few subjects who have reached the 8-year level fail on it. [55]
This test was located in year VII of the 1908 scale, but was shifted to year VI in Binet’s 1911 revision. The change was without justification, for Binet expressly states, both in 1908 and 1911, that only half of the 6-year-olds succeed with it. ”

“ So far as the Binet 1908 scale is concerned, when we supplement Goddard's results with 1500 school children by the data for the lower limits of a random group of 653 15-year-olds which we tested, the limits on the scale for passable intellects defined by the percentage method will be found, I believe, not only more conservative, but more reliable than those in current use. ”

“ But, contrary to the Binet rating, the man was not feeble-minded. It eventually developed that a sexual complex was at the root of his trouble."
Again, with the express purpose of determining the reliability or unreliability of the Binet-Simon tests as sufficient indicators of the mental status, Doctor Wallin applied these tests to several successful [14] farmers and business men. ”

“ This analogy supposes that the rate of maturity would continually decrease and that those who were feebler mentally would be arrested in their developmental earlier. Bobertag, Kuhlmann (137, 138) and Otis give evidence from the results of Binet testing that the rate of development decreases with age. The percentages of older children passing certain positions on the Binet scale or certain tests taken from it were found to change less at year intervals for the older ages. ”

“ A relative increase in the distance of older deficients from the average as compared with younger deficients may be interpreted as meaning either the earlier cessation of growth of the deficients or a change in the relative rates of growth of individuals of different mental capacity. When fully considered the present evidence from the Binet tests fails, I believe, to demonstrate the earlier arrest of 295the deficients, although it is undoubtedly true that the Binet scale may not be fine enough to measure the improvement of idiots. ”

“ Bobertag summarizes Chotzen's data obtained by the examination of the children in the Breslau Hilfsschulen with the Binet scale. He believes that the position on an objective scale attained by the average of these retarded children is progressively lower with advancing age relative to the average position attained by normal children, assuming that the quotient for normal children remained constant at each age. ”

“ Each author varies it according to his fancy; some widen the correspondence between the physical and the moral, others prefer to narrow it. At one time a vague relation is supposed which is only true on a large scale, and is a union rather than an equivalence. At another, it is an exact counterpart, a complete duplicate in which the smallest physical event corresponds to a mental one. ”

“ Perhaps some day each branch of the human family will have a Binet scale of its own. Then, by a wholesale interchange of tests, as we do now with professors, it will be possible to determine wherein a given people are proficient and wherein deficient ”

“ Binet tells us that he often encountered the criticism that intelligence tests are superfluous, and that in going to so much trouble to devise his measuring scale he was forcing an open door. Those who made this criticism believed that the observant teacher or parent is able to make an offhand estimate of a child’s intelligence which is accurate enough. “It is a stupid teacher,” said one, “who needs a psychologist to tell her which pupils are not intelligent.” Every one who uses intelligence tests meets this attitude from time to time. ”

“ It is incontrovertible that in dealing with the division of material substances, the binary scale comes into mental and practical play as easy and convenient. Not all the specious pleas of those who advocate the so-called reform can turn us from it. Its advantages over the decimal system in all the operations of every day life are apparent. ”

“ He next adds 7 several times to reach 89, but he becomes confused, and finishes by finding the number 13, which is almost correct. This child is therefore at stage 4; he does not clear it, but he attempts it. Look at the scale. [61] We give him full points for Problems 1, 2, and 3, plus 2 points for Problem 4, or a total of 8, which puts him at the level of children of eight and a half years, which amounts to a retardation of four years.
Spelling.—The test of spelling is a piece of dictation given individually or collectively. The scale contains the first phrases of the dictation. ”

“ These graphs represent the normal form of distribution usually expected when any fundamental ability is measured in a random group. If the number of cases at each unit of measurement are plotted by a point placed relatively as far above the scale, used as a base line, as the number of cases found at that unit of the scale, it will be discovered that these points arrange themselves in the form of a symmetrical curve high at the middle and flaring out 257along the base-line scale. ”

“ At each life age a greater scatter or range in ability is noticeable than is the case with the Binet tests. Whether this phenomenon argues for reliability or not is left for discussion in the later monograph.
(3) Correspondence of Median Mental Ages
At each life age do the median mental ages obtained by the block-design tests correspond with the median mental ages obtained by the Binet tests? This question is an important one, and the extent of correspondence or deviation should measure very largely the reliability of the newly devised tests. ”

“ We may suppose, then, that there is a normal intelligence for each age just as there is a normal height for each age, although in the first case, as in the second, many children fall below and many rise above the standard. It is clearly by no means so easy to establish a norm for intelligence as for height, nevertheless, the method should be the same; that is, we should begin by finding out what the intelligence of children of different ages actually is, and from these results we should derive averages which might be used as norms. ”

“ The symmetry of the distribution leaves something to be desired. The values below the average preponderate a little in number, those above preponderate a little in amount of deviation: only two of the largest eight deviations are below the mean value. The influence of attention referred to above, the fluctuations of which in the separate series show greater deviations toward the upper limit than toward the lower, has not, therefore, been quite compensated by the combination of several series. ”

“ A binary scale could, as it is developed in primitive languages, hardly extend to 20, or even to 10, without becoming exceedingly cumbersome. A binary scale inevitably suggests a wretchedly low degree of mental development, which stands in the way of the formation of any number scale worthy to be dignified by the name of system. Take, for example, one of the dialects found among the western tribes of the Torres Straits, where, in general, but two numerals are found to exist. ”

“ Professor Smyth thinks the measures of Mr. Inglis as on the whole probably too small, and he takes two of them, 9114 and 9102— (but, strangely, not the largest, 9120) —as data, and strikes a new number out of these two, and out of the three previous measures of the French Academicians, Vyse, and Mahmoud Bey; from these five quantities making a calculation of "means," and electing 9142 as the proper measure of the [Pg 241] basis line of the pyramid— (which exact measure certainly none of its many measurers ever yet found it to be) ”

“ At the present time any intelligent observer can judge something of the mental capacity of an individual by seeing his performance, under proper conditions, on a group of tests which correspond to the normal ability of the child. The well-known Binet tests, imperfect though they probably are in some respects, form an epoch-making advance in the study of feeblemindedness. ”

“ It has not yet been sufficiently noticed that psychology does not allow itself to be confined, like physics or sociology, within the logical table of human knowledge, for it has, by a unique privilege, a right of supervision over the other sciences. We shall see that the psychological discussion of mechanics has a wider range than that of the mathematicians.
Since our cognition cannot go beyond sensation, shall we first recall what meaning can be given to an explanation of the inmost nature of matter? ”

“ All three comprehension questions of this year were used by Binet, Goddard, Huey, and others in year X; two of them in the “easy series” and one in the “hard series.” The Stanford data show that they belong at the 8-year level on the standard of scoring above set forth. The three differ little among themselves in difficulty, but all of them are decidedly easier than the other five used by Binet. ”

“ The chemist, for example, would show us that specific weight has hardly any value in diagnosis, that the crystalline form of a salt is often not its own, that its colour especially is almost negligible because an immense number of crystals are white or colourless, that precipitation by a given substance does not ordinarily suffice to characterise a body, and so on. The botanist, on his part, would show us that, in determining plants, absolute dimension is less important than proportion, colour less important than form, certain structures of organs less important than others. ”

“ Finally, in arriving at an estimate of a subject’s grade of intelligence and his susceptibility to training, it would be a mistake to ignore the data obtainable from other sources. No competent psychologist, however ardent a supporter of the Binet method he might be, would recommend such a policy. Those who accept the method as all-sufficient are as much in error as those who consider it as no more important than any one of a dozen other approaches. ”