Experience and the Binet-Simon Tests
- Author:
Rudolf Pintner and Donald G. Paterson,
Ohio State U7iiversity, Columbus, Ohio.
The ideal measuring scale would test a child’s innate mental ability without taking into account knowledge that he may have acquired through experience. This is obviously an ideal that will never be absolutely realized. The nearer we can approach this ideal, however, the more reliable a scale shall we possess for the grading of children and adults. The Binet-Simon Scale at first made great claim to be immune from the influences of experience. Although this is, no doubt, true of many of the tests, perhaps of a majority of them, there seem to be a few at least that can be justly criticized in this respect. Without agreeing entirely with the sweeping criticisms of Ayres,1 we believe there is much to be said on this point, particularly with two of the tests, i.e. naming the days of the week and naming the months of the year.
The days of the week was regarded originally by Binet as a nine year old test and the months of the year as a ten year old test. In the revised scale of 1911, however, Binet2 omitted some of the original tests and one of these is the Days test. He says, “There are some tests which demand knowledge that does not do any honor to the intelligence of a child. To know one’s age, to know the number of one’s fingers and to know how to name the days of the week proves above all that these simple lessons have been learned from the parents. We have thought it well, therefore, to omit these three tests.” On the other hand the Months test is retained, but is made a nine year old test without further comment.
Goddard’s3 results on 2000 normal children for the two tests in question are given on the following page:?
1 L. P. Ayres, The Binet-Simon Measuring Scale for Intelligence: Some Criticisms and Suggestions. The Psychological Clinic, Vol. V, 6, pp. 187-197. 1 Binet, Nouvelles Recherches sur la mfaure du niveau intellectuel chez les enfants d’ficole. L’annie psychologique, Vol. 17, 1911; pp. 145 ff. 3 H. H. Goddard, Two thousand children measured by the Binet Measuring Scale of Intelligence. Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1911, Vol. 18, pp. 232-259.
TABLE I. Binet Old Scale. Age 10 11 12 1X2. Days X 1. Months 13 0 11 1 85 11 55 48 2 102 1 14 P=Passed, F=Failed.
Upon these results is based to a great extent his revision of the Binet Scale as now generally used in this country. It seems questionable to the writers as to whether he is warranted in replacing the Days test as an eight-year-old test, when he has tested only 24 seven-yearolds and finds among these a percentage of 54 correct answers. Again with the months there are only 17 cases among the eight-year olds and 65 per cent of these pass. With Binet, on the other hand, only 20 per cent of his eight-year-olds pass this test. It is not the purpose of this paper to go further into this question. The uncertainty of these two tests even as they now stand for normal children in the approved scale, has only been mentioned in view of the results that have been found by the writers in work with adults.
Even if these tests are adequate for children, are they equally so for adults? Is not such ordinary knowledge as is contained in knowing the days and the months likely to be forced upon an adult during years of experience in the outside world or within the walls of an institution, even although the adult possesses a lower mentality than the child of nine or eight? In other words does not the factor of experience, of constant repetition of these common names, enter unduly into these two tests? We believe this to be the case from a study of 988 Binet blanks of the inmates of a large institution for the feebleminded.4 The results of the tabulation of these cases seem to point to the fact that as a feebleminded person grows older his ability to pass these two tests increases. The cases have been divided into two groups,?those below a chronological age of fifteen when tested, and those above fifteen when tested. Age fifteen was chosen arbitrarily. Tables II and III show the number of failures and passes in the two tests for those below and those above fifteen respectively. ‘The Ohio Institution for the Feebleminded. The authors desire here to thank Dr E. J. Emerick, superintendent of the institution, for his kindness and courtesy.
TABLE II. ALL AGES BELOW 15 WHEN TESTED. Mental Age. 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Number of Cases. 3 21 52 95 100 72 31 Days of Week Passed. Failed 1 1 14 56 87 71 31 2 20 38 39 13 1 0 0 Percentage of Passes. 33 4. 27 59 87 98. 100 100 Number of Cases. 1 2 19 66 100 71 31 Months of Passed. 0 0 1 7 35 55 27 6 Year Failed. 1 2 18 59 65 16 4 2 Percentage of 0 0 5.3 10.6 35 77.5 87 75 Total.. .382 TABLE III. ALL AGES ABOVE 15 WHEN TESTED. Mental Age. 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Number of Cases. Days of Week Passed. Failed 5 28 50 77 127 128 101 70 20 2 4 27 62 125 128 101 70 20 3 24 23 15 2 0 0 0 0 Percentage of Passes. 40 14.3 54 80.5 98.5 100 100 100 100 Number of Cases. 1 15 36 70 112 128 101 70 20 Months of Passed. 0 2 5 20 76 118 94 68 20 Year Failed. 1 13 31 50 46 10 7 2 0 Percentage of 0 13.3 13.9 28.6 68 92.3 93 97.2 100 Total.. .606 Grand total. .!
In the first column the mental age as determined by the BinetSimon scale (Goddard’s revision) is given, in the second column the number of cases, in the third column the number passing the Days of the Week test, in the fourth column the number failing in that test, and in the fifth column the percentage of cases correct for that test. The last four columns give the analogous data for the Months of the Year test.
Looking at the percentage of passes for all ages in table II, it would seem that the Days test is too easy for our eight year olds, that it is in fact a seven year old test. The significant rise in the percentages is between ages six and seven, a rise from 59 to 87 per cent. Similarly with the months, we have the significant rise between the ages of seven and eight, a rise in this case from 35 to 77.5 per cent. We do not mean to infer that these tests are not correctly placed in the Binet Scale as it now stands, since it may be that these large percentages in ages seven and eight respectively are caused by children who are chronologically between ten and fifteen. What we are particularly interested in here is to compare the percentages in table II with those in table III. Here the significant rise in the percentages takes place one year earlier than in the first set of cases. For the Days test at age six we have now 80 per cent passes as compared with only 59 per cent for the younger children. For the Months test at age seven we have 68 per cent passes as compared with only 35 for the younger group. In other words we might say that about 80 per cent of the feebleminded adults of a mentality of six can pass an eight-year-old test and that 68 per cent of a mentality of seven can pass a nine-year-old test. This must be obviously due to the fact that they have come to learn or have been taught this commonplace knowledge. It may be in many cases a mere repetition of words with very little meaning content. But the point seems to be that it is experience alone and not mental ability that is shown. The inability of a child of nine or ten to pass these two tests does not preclude him from being able to pass them at a later date notwithstanding permanent mental arrest. If the entire scale were made up of such tests it is obvious that it would be of little use in testing adults. But such is not the case. It might seem well, however, in view of the facts we have called attention to in the present study, to improve the scale by eliminating these two tests altogether, or at least in placing them two years lower in a revised scale for testing subjects chronologically older than fifteen years.
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.