Mental test

“ One who has not had a thorough training in the methods of mental testing cannot appreciate how numerous are the opportunities for the unconscious transformation of a test. Many of these are pointed out in the description of the individual tests, but it would be folly to undertake to warn the experimenter against every possible error of this kind. ”

“ Our old test question, ‘Why should we judge a person by what he does rather than by what he says?’ applies to the test itself.”
Because of the fact that there is a percentage of persons who, either through unfamiliarity with the English language or lack of skill in expressing themselves through word and number symbols, do not respond to tests based on the use of words, any comprehensive scheme of mental tests must contain a proportion of tests the response to which may be made without the use of written, printed, or spoken words. ”

“ With his desire to supplement the test person betrays a tendency to give the experimenter more than he wants, he even exerts the greatest efforts to seek further mental occurrences in order finally to discover something quite satisfactory. If we translate this elementary observation into the psychology of everyday life, it signifies that the test person has a tendency constantly to give to others more feeling than is required and expected. ”

“ But this does not exclude the possibility that some other mental traits may become causes of accidents. The man may be too daring and may like to run risks, or he may still need discipline, or he may not be sufficiently acquainted with the local conditions. Any such secondary factors may cause some slight accidents with the man who shows rather fair results in the experimental test of his foresight. Finally, we must not forget that some men enter into such tests under a certain nervous tension and therefore may not show so well at the very first test as their mental equipment should allow. ”

“ In order, however, to get at a really useful record of the mental capacity of an individual, we must apply a variety of tests and out of the sum total of the results of these tests we are able much more accurately to gauge the degree of possession of the qualities for which we are seeking than could possibly be done by any single test, no matter how skilfully constructed. Here again science confronts the popular human demand for a panacea. ”

“ As psychological tests are more and more widely applied and there is consequently accumulated an increasing volume of data which can be collected, classified, and compared, standards become either more firmly established as a result of experience or subject to modification in the light of the wider range of knowledge. In science nothing is final. What psychology offers to-day is a method of mental tests, the soundness of which in principle is unchallenged, though the application in detail of these principles is subject to constant improvement and refinement. ”

“ A series of group tests with directions and norms follow. The members of the class can use these tests in studying the individual differences in other people. The teacher will find other tests in the author’s Examination of School Children, and in Whipple’s Manual of Mental and Physical Tests.
MENTAL TESTS General Directions
The results of the mental tests in the school will be worse than useless unless the tests are given with the greatest care and scientific precision. Every test should be most carefully explained to the children so that they will know exactly what they are to do. ”

“ Broadly, all mental tests subdivide at first into tests devised for use with persons of normal mental capacity and development and tests for intelligences that are not fully developed. This is, perhaps, the chief permanent and fixed classification of intelligence tests that can be made, for in a group of tests for the sub-normal mind would be included the entire series of tests adapted for the examination of the mental powers of children of all ages, from earliest infancy to maturity. ”

“ In selecting a new test which will involve the same mental attitude and call for the exercise of the same psychological functions as are needed in the work itself, we are handicapped by the unreliability of the introspection of the examinee and also by our inadequate ability to recognize, identify and classify psychological functions even when we are confident that these are present. ”

“ Since the purpose of mental tests is primarily to determine intelligence rather than the possession of physical qualities, it is conceivable that, in many situations, properly devised questions may give a fairer view of the subject’s mental capacity than would observation of the same individual in action in a real situation. ”

“ The mental scales can only detect those feeble-minded who cannot succeed with our present tests. This is the basal principle in using any system of tests.
Stated in another way, this first caution for anybody seeking the assistance of a mental scale is that tests may detect a feeble-minded person, but when a person passes them it does not guarantee social fitness. The negative conclusion, “this person is not feeble-minded,” can not be drawn from tests alone. Mental tests at present are positive and not negative scales. ”

“ But while it is relatively a simple matter to devise tests that satisfactorily indicate the subject’s possession of the more obvious mental powers indicated by such tests as those last listed above, there is another class of mental tests, designed primarily to indicate or determine the possession of the more abstract qualities, the manifestation of which through the individual’s simple and ordinary actions is less obvious to the untrained observer. ”

“ In the hands of an amateur it may perform an analogous service to that of a vision chart in discovering children who require expert examination of their eyes. The danger lies in the novice not knowing his limitations. Few who have had experience with tests can doubt, however, the much greater danger of inadequate diagnosis of mental development on the part of physicians who give opinions about mental deficiency without having had experience with test scales. ”

“ Mental tests are of definite value in enabling the observer to arrive at a conclusion regarding the general mental development of the subject, or to investigate some particular psychological function. A too exclusive dependence upon the result of the application of these tests, especially by a layman, would invariably lead to error. A comprehensive survey is necessary, taking into consideration such factors as family history, environment, physical condition, behaviour, temperament, &c. ”

“ Expert opinion given on the history of the case is clearly less reliable than such opinion checked by even a crude objective test standard. In Part Two of this study the theoretical background for the percentage definition is compared with that of other quantitative definitions on the basis of the conceptions of mental measurement and mental development.
3. In attempting to suggest methods for diagnosis and control, which our summary of the scientific data makes necessary, we shall be led beyond the evidence presented 242in this study. ”

“ Besides the application of scientific mental tests as already indicated, in business and industry and in education, by the employer or the teacher, there is another and important use to which standardized tests, based upon determined capacities of groups and individuals of known ability, may be put. This is the use of such tests by the individual upon himself for the purpose of determining his own mental capacity in a particular direction or of a particular kind as compared with the mental capacity of others. ”

“ The reason it is difficult so to classify tests of mental ability is that the mind refuses to be cut up into different parts, each one responsible for a specific characteristic. No test can be solved by the use of one and only one group of intellectual faculties. The results obtained in any mental examination are the complex effects of an immense number of different characteristics. No attempt has therefore been made in the classification of the Mentimeters to say that one measures imagination, another measures attention, and another some other quality. ”

“ The examination of the mental characteristics of the intelligence which controls the different manifestations is our only purpose, and we have shown that the same laws prevail in all. It is believed that enough has been said to enable the conscientious investigator, who wishes to test the correctness of our hypothesis, to apply its fundamental propositions to all psychic phenomena. ”

“ The reader may rest assured that until the mental age of a child is something like four years in arrear of its physical age it is not possible to dogmatically assert, on the basis of the most scientific test yet proposed as a measure of intelligence, that it is feeble-minded. ”

“ THE APPLICATIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS The intelligent reader has by this time begun to see for himself some of the possibilities opened up by the use of scientific mental tests, and to perceive their applicability in a wide diversity of fields. ”

“ From that time the advance in ability is made by attaining greater skill in specific activities through training and by increasing knowledge, rather than through a native change in the form of thinking. If mental tests mainly reach capacity for thinking, as they aim to do, rather than amount of knowledge or skill in specific work, then we are conservative in using a randomly selected group at 15 years of age for approximating the borderline on the scale for the mature. ”

“ The result of any scientific test simply indicates the wealth of nerve connections that are ready to be made when the stimulus necessary to their establishment is applied. It must be understood that no one having a sound claim to the possession of scientific knowledge can contend that there are tests in existence that actually measure with complete precision the inherited as distinguished from the acquired mental characteristics. ”

“ Gault (106, p. 322) expresses the opinion that “dissatisfaction with mental tests as a means of diagnosis” is traceable to the fact “that what the lay mind recognizes as palpable errors are often made by half-trained 'investigators,' 'research directors' and even by men and women whose only qualification is that they have been trained for six weeks in a psychological clinic.” Dr. Wallin demands that the tests should be used for diagnosis only by the psychologist with clinical experience. ”

“ All properly constructed mental tests are, therefore, in effect, attempts to reproduce or project upon a laboratory scale situations 50such as the subject is or may be called upon to meet in actual life. ”

“ While it is, therefore, the object of scientific mental tests to exclude as far as possible the acquired abilities resulting from education and environment and the knowledge that has been stored up through observation and training, it is found in practice that for all ordinary purposes it is sufficient to measure a complex of native and acquired abilities. ”

“ It is, of course, in the case of the untried beginner in business or industrial life, the boy or girl fresh from school who has as yet had no opportunity to discover or to demonstrate his or her ability or capacity, that the application of scientific mental tests is most essential. ”

“ PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS IN EDUCATION Just as intelligence tests in the Army have developed a new appreciation of the significance of analyses of intelligence as a means of selecting the right man for the right place in the military machine, so have scientifically devised mental tests emphasized the possibilities of more rapid and satisfactory progress in our educational activities. ”

“ Every effort has been made to conform to the soundest scientific principles, both in the preparation of the Mentimeter tests, around which the volume is largely written, and in the introductory and explanatory chapters, in which the principles of applied psychology, as they bear upon mental tests, are stated in popular language. ”

“ The tests are an invaluable aid, when they are themselves chosen with the scientific care outlined above, although it would be a short-sighted policy for any firm to trust entirely to the results of intelligence tests in the employment of its personnel. Appearance, voice, education, manners, physical size, and many other qualities are sometimes quite as important as the degree of intelligence, and the intelligence tests do not measure other elements of personality than the mental qualities. ”

“ It is in the determination of these universal standards and the preparation of tests, the results of which indicate the individual’s relative approximation to these standards, that the scientific training of the psychologist comes principally into play. Rough standards for testing the more obvious mental capacities might be set up by any intelligent person who would take the pains to collect the essential data. ”

“ The importance of more accurate psychological tests in studying mental disturbance is well illustrated by comparing the results that may be obtained with the Binet tests with the desultory, unstandardized tests such as one finds in Dr. ”

“ To measure, by comparison with the group average or with very carefully determined standards, some of the infinite number of 21qualities and abilities, the possession of which by the individual renders him more or less susceptible to education and training or more or less capable of successfully performing certain actions requiring conscious direction from the mind.
It requires no special argument to point out how a general application of tests that disclose actual mental capacities might profoundly affect our judgment of men of all classes and walks of life. ”