Charles G. D. Roberts - "Aarniometsan sydan"

W.C.C. Weetman - "The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 1919"

Various - "Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893"

Charlotte M. Yonge - "Two Penniless Princesses"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Measurement of Intelligence

L >> Lewis Madison Terman >> The Measurement of Intelligence




2. In judging intelligence teachers are too easily deceived by a
sprightly attitude, a sympathetic expression, a glance of the eye, or a
chance "bump" on the head.

3. Although a few teachers seem to realize the many possibilities of
error, the majority show rather undue confidence in the accuracy of
their judgment.

BINET'S EXPERIMENT ON HOW TEACHERS TEST INTELLIGENCE.[9] Finally, Binet
had three teachers come to his laboratory to judge the intelligence of
children whom they had never seen before. Each spent an afternoon in the
laboratory and examined five pupils. In each case the teacher was left
free to arrive at a conclusion in her own way. Binet, who remained in
the room and took notes, recounts with playful humor how the teachers
were unavoidably compelled to resort to the much-abused test method,
although their attempts at using it were sometimes, from the
psychologist's point of view, amusingly clumsy.

[9] See p. 182 _ff._ of reference 2 at end of this book.

One teacher, for example, questioned the children about some canals and
sluices which were in the vicinity, asking what their purpose was and
how they worked. Another showed the children some pretty pictures,
which she had brought with her for the purpose, and asked questions
about them. Showing the picture of a garret, she asked how a garret
differs from an ordinary room. One teacher asked whether in building a
factory it was best to have the walls thick or thin. As King Edward had
just died, another teacher questioned the children about the details of
this event, in order to find out whether they were in the habit of
reading the newspapers, or understood the things they heard others read.
Other questions related to the names of the streets in the neighborhood,
the road one should take to reach a certain point in the vicinity, etc.
Binet notes that many of the questions were special, and were only
applicable with the children of this particular school.

The method of proposing the questions and judging the responses was also
at fault. The teachers did not adhere consistently to any definite
formula in giving a particular test to the different children. Instead,
the questions were materially altered from time to time. One teacher
scored the identical response differently for two children, giving one
child more credit than the other because she had already judged his
intelligence to be superior. In several cases the examination was
needlessly delayed in order to instruct the child in what he did not
know.

The examination ended, quite properly for a teacher's examination, with
questions about history, literature, the metric system, etc., and with
the recitation of a fable.

A comparison of the results showed hardly any agreement among the
estimates of the three teachers. When questioned about the standard that
had been taken in arriving at their conclusions, one teacher said she
had taken the answers of the first pupil as a point of departure, and
that she had judged the other pupils by this one. Another judged all the
children by a child of her acquaintance whom she knew to be intelligent.
This was, of course, an unsafe method, because no one could say how the
child taken as an ideal would have responded to the tests used with the
five children.

In summarizing the result of his little experiment, Binet points out
that the teachers employed, as if by instinct, the very method which he
himself recommends. In using it, however, they made numerous errors.
Their questions were often needlessly long. Several were "dilemma
questions," that is, answerable by _yes_ or _no_. In such cases chance
alone will cause fifty per cent of the answers to be correct. Some of
the questions were merely tests of school knowledge. Others were
entirely special, usable only with the children of this particular
school on this particular day. Not all of the questions were put in the
same terms, and a given response did not always receive the same score.
When the children responded incorrectly or incompletely, they were often
given help, but not always to the same extent. In other words, says
Binet, it was evident that "the teachers employed very awkwardly a very
excellent method."

The above remark is as pertinent as it is expressive. As the statement
implies, the test method is but a refinement and standardization of the
common-sense approach. Binet remarks that most people who inquire into
his method of measuring intelligence do so expecting to find something
very surprising and mysterious; and on seeing how much it resembles the
methods which common sense employs in ordinary life, they heave a sigh
of disappointment and say, "Is that all?" Binet reminds us that the
difference between the scientific and unscientific way of doing a thing
is not necessarily a difference in the _nature_ of the method; it is
often merely a difference in _exactness_. Science does the thing better,
because it does it more accurately.

It was of course not the purpose of Binet to cast a slur upon the good
sense and judgment of teachers. The teachers who took part in the little
experiment described above were Binet's personal friends. The errors he
points out in his entertaining and good-humored account of the
experiment are inherent in the situation. They are the kind of errors
which any person, however discriminating and observant, is likely to
make in estimating the intelligence of a subject without the use of
standardized tests.

It is the writer's experience that the teacher's estimate of a child's
intelligence is much more reliable than that of the average parent; more
accurate even than that of the physician who has not had psychological
training.

Indeed, it is an exceptional school physician who is able to give any
very valuable assistance to teachers in the classification of mentally
exceptional children for special pedagogical treatment.

This is only to be expected, for the physician has ordinarily had much
less instruction in psychology than the teacher, and of course
infinitely less experience in judging the mental performances of
children. Even if graduated from a first-rank medical school, the
instruction he has received in the important subject of mental
deficiency has probably been less adequate than that given to the
students of a standard normal school. As a rule, the doctor has no
equipment or special fitness which gives him any advantage over the
teacher in acquiring facility in the use of intelligence tests.

As for parents, it would of course be unreasonable to expect from them a
very accurate judgment regarding the mental peculiarities of their
children. The difficulty is not simply that which comes from lack of
special training. The presence of parental affection renders impartial
judgment impossible. Still more serious are the effects of habituation
to the child's mental traits. As a result of such habituation the most
intelligent parent tends to develop an unfortunate blindness to all
sorts of abnormalities which exist in his own children.

The only way of escape from the fallacies we have mentioned lies in the
use of some kind of refined psychological procedure. Binet testing is
destined to become universally known and practiced in schools, prisons,
reformatories, charity stations, orphan asylums, and even ordinary
homes, for the same reason that Babcock testing has become universal in
dairying. Each is indispensable to its purpose.




CHAPTER III

DESCRIPTION OF THE BINET-SIMON METHOD


ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE SCALE. The Binet scale is made up of an extended
series of tests in the nature of "stunts," or problems, success in which
demands the exercise of intelligence. As left by Binet, the scale
consists of 54 tests, so graded in difficulty that the easiest lie well
within the range of normal 3-year-old children, while the hardest tax
the intelligence of the average adult. The problems are designed
primarily to test native intelligence, not school knowledge or home
training. They try to answer the question "How intelligent is this
child?" How much the child has learned is of significance only in so far
as it throws light on his ability to learn more.

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.

HOW THE SCALE WAS DERIVED. The tests were arranged in order of
difficulty, as found by trying them upon some 200 normal children of
different ages from 3 to 15 years. It was found, for illustration, that
a certain test was passed by only a very small proportion of the younger
children, say the 5-year-olds, and that the number passing this test
increased rapidly in the succeeding years until by the age of 7 or
8 years, let us say, practically all the children were successful.
If, in our supposed case, the test was passed by about two thirds to
three fourths of the normal children aged 7 years, it was considered by
Binet a test of 7-year intelligence. In like manner, a test passed by
65 to 75 per cent of the normal 9-year-olds was considered a test of
9-year intelligence, and so on. By trying out many different tests in
this way it was possible to secure five tests to represent each age from
3 to 10 years (excepting age 4, which has only four tests), five for
age 12, five for 15, and five for adults, making 54 tests in all.

LIST OF TESTS. The following is the list of tests as arranged by Binet
in 1911, shortly before his untimely death:--

_Age 3:_
1. Points to nose, eyes, and mouth.
2. Repeats two digits.
3. Enumerates objects in a picture.
4. Gives family name.
5. Repeats a sentence of six syllables.

_Age 4:_
1. Gives his sex.
2. Names key, knife, and penny.
3. Repeats three digits.
4. Compares two lines.

_Age 5:_
1. Compares two weights.
2. Copies a square.
3. Repeats a sentence of ten syllables.
4. Counts four pennies.
5. Unites the halves of a divided rectangle.

_Age 6:_
1. Distinguishes between morning and afternoon.
2. Defines familiar words in terms of use.
3. Copies a diamond.
4. Counts thirteen pennies.
5. Distinguishes pictures of ugly and pretty faces.

_Age 7:_
1. Shows right hand and left ear.
2. Describes a picture.
3. Executes three commissions, given simultaneously.
4. Counts the value of six sous, three of which are double.
5. Names four cardinal colors.

_Age 8:_
1. Compares two objects from memory.
2. Counts from 20 to 0.
3. Notes omissions from pictures.
4. Gives day and date.
5. Repeats five digits.

_Age 9:_
1. Gives change from twenty sous.
2. Defines familiar words in terms superior to use.
3. Recognizes all the pieces of money.
4. Names the months of the year, in order.
5. Answers easy "comprehension questions."

_Age 10:_
1. Arranges five blocks in order of weight.
2. Copies drawings from memory.
3. Criticizes absurd statements.
4. Answers difficult "comprehension questions."
5. Uses three given words in not more than two sentences.

_Age 12:_
1. Resists suggestion.
2. Composes one sentence containing three given words.
3. Names sixty words in three minutes.
4. Defines certain abstract words.
5. Discovers the sense of a disarranged sentence.

_Age 15:_
1. Repeats seven digits.
2. Finds three rhymes for a given word.
3. Repeats a sentence of twenty-six syllables.
4. Interprets pictures.
5. Interprets given facts.

_Adult:_
1. Solves the paper-cutting test.
2. Rearranges a triangle in imagination.
3. Gives differences between pairs of abstract terms.
4. Gives three differences between a president and a king.
5. Gives the main thought of a selection which he has heard read.

It should be emphasized that merely to name the tests in this way gives
little idea of their nature and meaning, and tells nothing about Binet's
method of conducting the 54 experiments. In order to use the tests
intelligently it is necessary to acquaint one's self thoroughly with the
purpose of each test, its correct procedure, and the psychological
interpretation of different types of response.[10]

[10] See Part II of this volume, and References 1 and 29, for discussion
and interpretation of the individual tests.

In fairness to Binet, it should also be borne in mind that the scale of
tests was only a rough approximation to the ideal which the author had
set himself to realize. Had his life been spared a few years longer, he
would doubtless have carried the method much nearer perfection.

HOW THE SCALE IS USED. By means of the Binet tests we can judge the
intelligence of a given individual by comparison with standards of
intellectual performance for normal children of different ages. In order
to make the comparison it is only necessary to begin the examination of
the subject at a point in the scale where all the tests are passed
successfully, and to continue up the scale until no more successes are
possible. Then we compare our subject's performances with the standard
for normal children of the same age, and note the amount of acceleration
or retardation.

Let us suppose the subject being tested is 9 years of age. If he goes as
far in the tests as normal 9-year-old children ordinarily go, we can say
that the child has a "mental age" of 9 years, which in this case is
normal (our child being 9 years of age). If he goes only as far as
normal 8-year-old children ordinarily go, we say that his "mental age"
is 8 years. In like manner, a mentally defective child of 9 years may
have a "mental age" of only 4 years, or a young genius of 9 years may
have a mental age of 12 or 13 years.

SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BINET-SIMON METHOD. Psychologists had
experimented with intelligence tests for at least twenty years before
the Binet scale made its appearance. The question naturally suggests
itself why Binet should have been successful in a field where previous
efforts had been for the most part futile. The answer to this question
is found in three essential differences between Binet's method and those
formerly employed.

1. _The use of age standards._ Binet was the first to utilize the idea
of age standards, or norms, in the measurement of intelligence. It will
be understood, of course, that Binet did not set out to invent tests of
10-year intelligence, 6-year intelligence, etc. Instead, as already
explained, he began with a series of tests ranging from very easy to
very difficult, and by trying these tests on children of different ages
and noting the percentages of successes in the various years, he was
able to locate them (approximately) in the years where they belonged.

This plan has the great advantage of giving us standards which are
easily grasped. To say, for illustration, that a given subject has a
grade of intelligence equal to that of the average child of 8 years is a
statement whose general import does not need to be explained. Previous
investigators had worked with subjects the degree of whose intelligence
was unknown, and with tests the difficulty of which was equally unknown.
An immense amount of ingenuity was spent in devising tests which were
used in such a way as to preclude any very meaningful interpretation of
the responses.

The Binet method enables us to characterize the intelligence of a child
in a far more definite way than had hitherto been possible. Current
descriptive terms like "bright," "moderately bright," "dull," "very
dull," "feeble-minded," etc., have had no universally accepted meaning.
A child who is designated by one person as "moderately bright" may be
called "very bright" by another person. The degree of intelligence which
one calls "moderate dullness," another may call "extreme dullness," etc.
But every one knows what is meant by the term 8-year mentality, 4-year
mentality, etc., even if he is not able to define these grades of
intelligence in psychological terms; and by ascertaining experimentally
what intellectual tasks children of different ages can perform, we are,
of course, able to make our age standards as definite as we please.

Why should a device so simple have waited so long for a discoverer? We
do not know. It is of a class with many other unaccountable mysteries in
the development of scientific method. Apparently the idea of an
age-grade method, as this is called, did not come to Binet himself until
he had experimented with intelligence tests for some fifteen years. At
least his first provisional scale, published in 1905, was not made up
according to the age-grade plan. It consisted merely of 30 tests,
arranged roughly in order of difficulty. Although Binet nowhere gives
any account of the steps by which this crude and ungraded scale was
transformed into the relatively complete age-grade scale of 1908, we can
infer that the original and ingenious idea of utilizing age norms was
suggested by the data collected with the 1905 scale. However the
discovery was made, it ranks, perhaps, from the practical point of view,
as the most important in all the history of psychology.

2. _The kind of mental functions brought into play._ In the second
place, the Binet tests differ from most of the earlier attempts in that
they are designed to test the higher and more complex mental processes,
instead of the simpler and more elementary ones. Hence they set
problems for the reasoning powers and ingenuity, provoke judgments about
abstract matters, etc., instead of attempting to measure sensory
discrimination, mere retentiveness, rapidity of reaction, and the like.
Psychologists had generally considered the higher processes too complex
to be measured directly, and accordingly sought to get at them
indirectly by correlating supposed intelligence with simpler processes
which could readily be measured, such as reaction time, rapidity of
tapping, discrimination of tones and colors, etc. While they were
disputing over their contradictory findings in this line of exploration,
Binet went directly to the point and succeeded where they had failed.

It is now generally admitted by psychologists that higher intelligence
is little concerned in such elementary processes as those mentioned
above. Many of the animals have keen sensory discrimination.
Feeble-minded children, unless of very low grade, do not differ very
markedly from normal children in sensitivity of the skin, visual
acuity, simple reaction time, type of imagery, etc. But in power of
comprehension, abstraction, and ability to direct thought, in the nature
of the associative processes, in amount of information possessed, and in
spontaneity of attention, they differ enormously.

3. _Binet would test "general intelligence."_ Finally, Binet's success
was largely due to his abandonment of the older "faculty psychology"
which, far from being defunct, had really given direction to most of the
earlier work with mental tests. Where others had attempted to measure
memory attention, sense discrimination, etc., as separate faculties or
functions, Binet undertook to ascertain the _general level_ of
intelligence. Others had thought the task easier of accomplishment by
measuring each division or aspect of intelligence separately, and
summating the results. Binet, too, began in this way, and it was only
after years of experimentation by the usual methods that he finally
broke away from them and undertook, so to speak, to triangulate the
height of his tower without first getting the dimensions of the
individual stones which made it up.

The assumption that it is easier to measure a part, or one aspect, of
intelligence than all of it, is fallacious in that the parts are not
separate parts and cannot be separated by any refinement of experiment.
They are interwoven and intertwined. Each ramifies everywhere and
appears in all other functions. The analogy of the stones of the tower
does not really apply. Memory, for example, cannot be tested separately
from attention, or sense-discrimination separately from the associative
processes. After many vain attempts to disentangle the various
intellective functions, Binet decided to test their combined functional
capacity without any pretense of measuring the exact contribution
of each to the total product. It is hardly too much to say that
intelligence tests have been successful just to the extent to which they
have been guided by this aim.

Memory, attention, imagination, etc., are terms of "structural
psychology." Binet's psychology is dynamic. He conceives intelligence as
the sum total of those thought processes which consist in mental
adaptation. This adaptation is not explicable in terms of the old mental
"faculties." No one of these can explain a single thought process, for
such process always involves the participation of many functions whose
separate roles are impossible to distinguish accurately. Instead of
measuring the intensity of various mental states (psycho-physics), it is
more enlightening to measure their combined effect on adaptation. Using
a biological comparison, Binet says the old "faculties" correspond to
the separate tissues of an animal or plant, while his own "scheme of
thought" corresponds to the functioning organ itself. For Binet,
psychology is the science of behavior.

BINET'S CONCEPTION OF GENERAL INTELLIGENCE. In devising tests of
intelligence it is, of course, necessary to be guided by some
assumption, or assumptions, regarding the nature of intelligence. To
adopt any other course is to depend for success upon happy chance.

However, it is impossible to arrive at a final definition of
intelligence on the basis of _a-priori_ considerations alone. To demand,
as critics of the Binet method have sometimes done, that one who would
measure intelligence should first present a complete definition of it,
is quite unreasonable. As Stern points out, electrical currents were
measured long before their nature was well understood. Similar
illustrations could be drawn from the processes involved in chemistry
physiology, and other sciences. In the case of intelligence it may be
truthfully said that no adequate definition can possibly be framed which
is not based primarily on the symptoms empirically brought to light by
the test method. The best that can be done in advance of such data is to
make tentative assumptions as to the probable nature of intelligence,
and then to subject these assumptions to tests which will show their
correctness or incorrectness. New hypotheses can then be framed for
further trial, and thus gradually we shall be led to a conception of
intelligence which will be meaningful and in harmony with all the
ascertainable facts.

Such was the method of Binet. Only those unacquainted with Binet's
more than fifteen years of labor preceding the publication of his
intelligence scale would think of accusing him of making no effort to
analyze the mental processes which his tests bring into play. It is true
that many of Binet's earlier assumptions proved untenable, and in this
event he was always ready, with exceptional candor and intellectual
plasticity, to acknowledge his error and to plan a new line of attack.

Binet's conception of intelligence emphasizes three characteristics of
the thought process: (1) Its tendency to take and maintain a definite
direction; (2) the capacity to make adaptations for the purpose of
attaining a desired end; and (3) the power of auto-criticism.[11]

[11] See Binet and Simon: "L'intelligence des imbeciles," in _L'Annee
Psychologique_ (1909), pp. 1-147. The last division of this article is
devoted to a discussion of the essential nature of the higher thought
processes, and is a wonderful example of that keen psychological
analysis in which Binet was so gifted.

How these three aspects of intelligence enter into the performances with
various tests of the scale is set forth from time to time in our
directions for giving and interpreting the individual tests.[12] An
illustration which may be given here is that of the "patience test," or
uniting the disarranged parts of a divided rectangle. As described by
Binet, this operation has the following elements: "(1) to keep in mind
the end to be attained, that is to say, the figure to be formed; (2) to
try different combinations under the influence of this directing idea,
which guides the efforts of the subject even though he may not be
conscious of the fact; and (3) to judge the combination which has been
made, to compare it with the model, and to decide whether it is the
correct one."

[12] See especially pages 162 and 238.

Much the same processes are called for in many other of the Binet tests,
particularly those of arranging weights, rearranging dissected
sentences, drawing a diamond or square from copy, finding a sentence
containing three given words, counting backwards, etc.

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