THE HOUSE OF APPLIED KNOWLEDGE 2126 PRAIRIE AVENUE, CHICAGO Fable, parable, and proverb abound in THERE is at present a great popular as well as scientific interest in the subject of intelligence testing, and a considerable amount of money is being spent each year in the public schools and colleges to determine in advance of their training, by means of tests, the abilities of students who enter these institutions. The information thus obtained is regarded as useful not only in the educational guidance and training of the children and youths toward their individual careers, but also in their classification into different sections where they can be taught with groups of children of approximately their own degrees of intelligence. The old question of repeating grades has received light from a new angle, and there are at present many wellinformed individuals who contend that it is useless to ask a dull child to repeat a grade and a kind of work which have already been found to be above his limited comprehension. They hold that each child should be tested very early in his school career and should be given work of a character that will interest him and will come within the range of his abilities, so that he may make constant advance from year to year and be spared the humiliation and discouragement involved in the repetition of grades, and at the same time they are willing to give him the benefit of every bit of evidence that he can show in his work at any time for ability to do the normal child's work. They point out that there is no evidence of any very marked benefits derived from the repetition of a grade because of original failure. Aside from the numerous uses now made of tests in the schools, important steps are being taken, by their use, toward better adjustment in the various fields of social and industrial activities, and the more progressive courts and penal institutions are adopting tests of intelligence to throw light on many problems relating to responsibility for crime. The testing by psychologists of one and three-quarters million soldiers in the recent war brought forcibly to the attention of the American public the fact that psychology may be of service in the solution of problems in the practical world. There has even been danger of late that except for the case of psychoanalysis! - intelligence testing would be regarded by the popular mind as the whole substance of psychology. Even on the science of psychology itself the effects of the testing movement, particularly that more successful one headed by Alfred Binet and occupying most of his attention from early in the nineties, have been considerable. There has been a noticeable shift of emphasis away from the more simple reaction and sensory discrimination activities, and the attention of psychologists has for some years now been a good deal occupied with such problems as the interrelations of different measurable traits, and the nature of "general intelligence" and methods of its quantitative measurement. Many of the old-line experiments in psychology are growing obsolete and we are becoming more and more interested in what one can do under different conditions and in different fields of activity, rather than, as formerly, in what one finds on introspecting one's "consciousness" under given experimental conditions. Indeed, the old distinction between a "psychological experiment” and a “test” has been challenged, and it has been urged that tests are not only devices used for practical purposes in rating individuals and their several capacities, but also useful instruments of scientific research. (See reference 208.) Questions as to the nature of intelligence, including its relations to the traditional intellectual functions and to emotions and instincts, are of great importance, and they need to be investigated thoroughly. It is obvious that individual differences in various mental traits, as distinct from intelligence in general, are so great as to leave serious doubts regarding the wisdom of adopting any single measure of one's mental capacity except for the most practical and immediate purposes; and yet it is far from clear which traits are most predictive of one's general success in the ordinary activities of life. Is there a general intelligence factor which may be measured with different degrees of completeness in the several kinds of performances, or is intelligence but a balancing of many overlapping individual processes and traits? How far can we profitably and safely go in the selection of persons for different careers according to their several traits, in view of the great plasticity of any normal human being? These are problems that still await solution, even though considerable progress has now been made, particularly as to scientific methods of studying them; and they relate to scientific research in psychology just as directly as they do to the more immediately practical problems in education. Intelligence is vastly more complex than is usually supposed, and the problems as to its nature and the practical methods of its quantitative determination in different individuals touch vitally most of the older economic, religious, educational, penal, and even philosophical problems which have occupied great minds since the dawn of history. Many of the older problems as they were once stated are being solved by neglect; they are taking on new aspects compatible with scientific treatment. It has therefore seemed to me a matter of such importance, to the advancement both of the science of psychology and of the work of practical education, to have a rather direct, simple statement of the development of conceptions and tests of intelligence, that I have determined to undertake a presentation of this bit of interesting and useful history. The following chapters are the concrete results of this undertaking. |