The Binet-Simon Scale AjSid the psychologist
The Psychological Clinic Copyright, 1912, by Lightner Witmer, Editor. Vol. V, No. 8. January 15, 1912. :Author: Clara Harrison Town, Ph.D., Director of the Laboratory of Clinical Psychology, Lincoln State School and Colony.
The great publicity which has been given the Binet Scale has laid upon psychologists a serious and perhaps unexpecte r.e^ sibility. A peculiar situation has developed. A psyc o oeis devised a method by which the intelligence of a c 1 ^ accurately estimated; he has offered the metho to is co ‘ describing it with much detail, much commentary flrmaanalysis. The method has the virtue of simp icity a ratus required beyond a few pictures, some bits o wo , little money, being a mind well trained in psyc^ o osic ^ and methods. The educational public has been given a g version of the tests without much commentary. a . , nized the value of such a method for pedagogy, an a so e its simplicity. Accustomed to the complicate ?^a.ra sgary chological laboratory, the laity were pleased to n 1 ^ and overlooked entirely the fact that the psychologist hims 1,01 “Sed that this very thing would happen and tried , guard against it in the following paragraphs. is , of appearances, an automatic method, compara e o ? j t when one stands up on it, throws out a ticket on which one s weig is printed. It is Lot a mcchauical method and we P f f f ^ busy physician who wishes to apply it in hospitals, that.tow meet lifh disappointments. The results of our examinations are Of no value if hey arc separated from all common ary an into pretation is necessary. We are aware that.* ? Slty we apparently open the door to t e ar 1 examination method of all precision, but this is on y app ? p^oniinations will always hi much superior to the ordinary rding because it has several advantages over them, to an invariable plan, it takes the age into express account, and it notes the answers and compares them with a norm which is a true mean. If, in spite of all this precision, we recognize that it is necessary to use the Scale with intelligence we do not consider its value diminished by this reservation. The microscope and the graphic method are admirable methods of precision, but what intelligence, circumspection, erudition, and art are essential to the practice of these methods! Imagine the value of observations made with the microscope by an ignoramus scarcely better than an imbecile. We have seen examples which caused a shudder.
“The idea that a method of examination can be made precise enough to be trusted to everyone must be abandoned; all scientific procedure is but an instrument which requires the direction of an intelligent hand. We have explored with this new tool, which we have forged, more than three hundred subjects, and at each new examination our attention has been awakened, surprised, charmed, by the observations which we were able to glean from the manner of response, the manner of comprehension, the malice of some, the obtuseness of others, and the thousand particulars which show themselves when we have before us the fascinating spectacle of an intelligence in activity. A few persons to whom, very rarely, however, we accorded the favor of witnessing our examination, appreciated this also, and told us spontaneously what a comprehensive impression they had received, and what an adequate idea they had formed of the intelligence of each child. …. It is this comprehensive impression which it is necessary to secure, to interpret, and to estimate at its true value. The system of marking, which we present, should be used only as an aid to the memory and to facilitate the grouping of the elements, the synthesis of which exists only in our own minds.
“It is with the privilege of these reservations that we explain the following system of marking:
Unfortunately the American public has not read these paragraphs, and the result which is threatening is a wholesale use of the Scale in an unscientific manner, which will do nothing but postpone the time of its real usefulness?that time when it will be applied by experts along the four practical lines indicated by Binet himself?the grading of normal and backward children in the schools, the diagnosis and classification of abnormal children, the arrangement of school curricula, and in the courts of law. The Scale has suddenly become very popular. It is at the same time being subjected to much adverse criticism, and many men are engaged in improving it. M. Binet also predicted this. He says: “These tests are not the first of which we thought, we have decided on these after long trial; they seem to us both good and practical. But we are far from assuming that they are the best. Those who repeat the work will find better; they will certainly eliminate more of the tests dependent upon instruction.” In April of this year he partially fulfilled his own prediction, publishing a revised series of tests in which he himself eliminated all the tests involving reading and writing which occurred earlier in the series than the twelve-year group.
Dr Ayres, in his critique of the Scale in the November number of The Psychological Clinic, groups the tests in several categories corresponding to the several abilities which he considers they test. It is interesting to compare with this analysis the analysis offered by Binet himself, and it seems only fair that the readers of the Clinic, having read one, should read the other. We, therefore, quote the following from his 1908 article: “We do not measure the intelligence considered apart from concrete circumstances… . That which we measure is much more complex ?the result depends upon, (1) intelligence, pure and simple; (2) school knowledge which may be acquired earlier than the usual age; (3) school knowledge which cannot be acquired before the usual age; (4) knowledge involving language and vocabulary, belonging under both (2) and (3) ; and depending partly upon the school and partly upon the general surroundings.” The arrangement of weights, definitions superior to usage, definitions of abstract terms, and interpretation of pictures throw light upon number (1) ; the naming of colors, the naming of the days of the “Week and the months of the year upon number (2) ; counting from 20 to 0, recalling the essentials of a paragraph immediately after reading the same, constructing a sentence containing three given words, and responding to the second series of questions involving reason, upon numbers (3) and (4). “Does our Scale do justice to the child who possesses an intelligence beyond the ordinary, but who has had no school training, or to one whose school training is much inferior to his intelligence? We think that it does. The gifted show their superiority in the repetition of numbers and phrases, the correct drawing of the figure produced by cutting the folded square of paper, the arrangement of weights and the interpretation of pictures. It is interesting that these tests enable one, when the need arises, to distinguish between the ability to learn at school and a good native intelligence.
“It remains to make a distinction between two kinds of intelligence … the maturity of intelligence and the accuracy of intelligence. An intelligence which is not ripe is an infantile intelligence; an intelligence ripe before its time is called precocious. Maturity consists in part in a development of the abilities of comprehension and judgment, at least that is possible,? a child comprehends less and judges with less penetration than an adult; it consists also in the increase of the bulk of acquisitions of all sorts?the child has less experience, it knows less than the adult. … We believe that maturity of intelligence is brought out by three or four tests… . These tests are definitions, description of pictures, construction of a sentence containing three given words, and perhaps also the arrangement of weights… . It is easy to see in what the infantile turn of thought consists?in definitions it is the utilitarian point of view, the idea of the self is not lost and the objects are imagined in their relations to the person; in description of pictures it is in enumeration, instead of a recognition of the relations of things; in the construction of sentences it is in the production of three different ideas, in the lack of synthesis; in the comparison of two weights it is the contrast between the difficulty of comprehending that a comparison is desired and the ease with which the difference in weight is noticed; in the arrangement of weights it is somewhat analogous, the contrast between the difficulty of comprehending and retaining the idea that the blocks are to be arranged in the order of weight and the facility of comparing one with another. These are some of the traits of infantile intelligence. That the maturity of intelligence is entirely distinct from its accuracy is proved by clear examples of an intelligence, mature but not accurate. A subject twelve years old constructed a sentence containing the given words, but the sentence did not make sense?there was maturity without accuracy. Another, a man of twenty-four, a veritable fool according to his friends, gave an interpretation of a picture, but a remarkably false one. The interpretation shows maturity, the making of gross errors shows lack of accuracy.”
The object of this paper is fulfilled now that I have given in his own words, though not in full, M. Binet’s estimate and interpretation of his Scale. Dr Ayres’ article, however, suggests a few further observations. The first is that his wholo critique is based upon the 1908 series of tests, which has since been rovised and greatly altered by Binet himself. Some of the tests criticised by Dr Ayres for their difficulty have been transferred from the thirteen year group to a new adult group. The second is that Dr Ayres’ method of estimating the emphasis laid upon any one ability by the number of tests devoted to it is hardly in accordance with the character of the Scale. For instance he states that 1/7 of the tests deal with the repetition of words and numbers. The fact is that Binet desired to test the immediate memory for both unrelated and intimately associated auditory stimuli; for this purpose he selected two tests?the repetition of numbers and the repetition of phrases. His results showed that these abilties increase with age in a regular manner, and he was able to assign exact degrees of maturity of the abilities to various ages. In testing a child we find his limit in repeating numbers, his limit in repeating phrases, practically using two tests though the score card shows more. The score shows more because the series is a hierarchy designed to show the level of development of a given intelligence. The tests are admirably arranged to show this clearly in the mental age indicated by the responses, but they are not adapted to any numerical evaluation based upon a given value for each test, because in such case credit is given for the same ability several times.
Next there is a word to be said for the test which requires the child to count backward from twenty. It is one of those tests which depend jointly upon acquired knowledge and intellectual ability. Quite a degree of concentration is necessary for success if the child has never before attempted to count in this manner. The degree of success achieved indicates the amount of mental control and also whether the child has simply memorised a series of sounds which can only be produced in a certain order or has learned numbers as such. Quite apart from its value as a test there may be even some pedagogical value in training children to count backward. Many teachers, especially teachers of backward children, find that addition is a much simpler process for the child than subtraction. As an experiment children have been taught to count backward as well as forward, with the idea of leading to subtraction by easy steps. The results justified the effort, and indicate that the process of subtraction was in this way much simplified. Finally the tests as described by Dr Ayres are not in every instance the tests as given by Binet. One test is described by r. Ayres as follows: “It uses for material a visiting card cut along the diagonal and asks the child to describe the resulting shape if ?ne of the triangles were turned about and placed so that its short, ]eg was on the other liypothenuse and its right angle at the smaller of the two acute angles. So far the writer has failed to find any one able to describe the resulting shape.” In the original the subject is not asked to describe the shape; the directions for making the tests are as follows: “Place the two pieces of card on a sheet of paper in the original position. Say to the subject?Look well at the lower piece. Suppose that I turn it around and place this edge (tracing the edge a-c with the finger) on the edge a-b of the upper piece. Suppose further that the point c is placed just on the point b. Now, I take away the piece; turn it around in your imagination and draw its outline as if it were in place. Commence by following the outlines of the first piece.” In the thirteen-year tests Dr Ayres quotes as one pair of abstract terms? pleasure and honor. The original is pleasure and happiness; the point is lost entirely when honor is substituted. In the 1911 version of the Scale this pair of terms is omitted and laziness and idleness substituted?the whole test being transferred to the adult group.
The Scale is published in compact form in the Bulletin de la Societc Libre pour I’Etude Psycliologique de I’Enfant, April, 1911. The last paragraph of this final article of Binet’s is significant: “A last word to those persons who desire to employ the method. Any one can use it for his personal satisfaction or to obtain an approximate evaluation of the intelligence of a child; but for the result of this method to have a scientific value, it is absolutely necessary that the individual who uses it should have had an apprenticeship in a laboratory of pedagogy or possess a thorough practical knowledge of psychological experimentation.” Our hope is that those who are interested in the tests will go to the original for their information.
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