Need for Correlation of Binet-Simon Tests With other Tests of Doing
- Author:
Eleanor Keller,
Vanderbilt Clinic, New York City.
The standardized tests for intelligence that have won the widest recognition are doubtless the Binet-Simon tests. These as used generally in the United States are the result of a gradual development. In 1904 Paris required the selection of all the mentally defective children in the public schools, to be ascertained by individual examination of pupils. For this purpose Binet and Simon chose from many tests a certain number arranged in the order of increasing difficulty, and tried them out on a selected group of children of pedagogically average intelligence. Ten children of each year, three to seven, and fifteen of each year, seven to twelve, were chosen. The tests were then arranged in groups to suit each age. To adapt this scale to testing feebleminded children, the inmates of the Salpetriere were examined with it. The results correlated well with the classification previously made by diagnosticians who had devised tests from their experience with feebleminded children. Binet was anxious to secure a uniformity of diagnosis into which the personal equation of the examiner would not enter. He was a student of language development, and believed that steps of intellectual progress are well marked by language ability. He divided all feebleminded into three groups: (1) idiots, in whom the power to express thoughts by language is wanting, their wants being made known by gestures or grunts; (2) imbeciles in whom the power of speech is often very poorly developed, isolated words or short, broken sentences frequently suffice, though the higher imbecile may speak as well as the next class but power to read or write it lacking; (3) lastly the morons who in addition to speaking can also read and write. While there are no hard or sharp lines of division between these classes, the idiots are grouped as one or two years old, the imbeciles as three to eight, and the morons as eight to twelve. In Binet’s opinion, if there is congenital brain defect causing feeblemindedness, the subject does not pass into adolescence. Twelve years of age evidently marks for Binet the dividing line between childhood and adult life. Binet and Simon, assisted by their students, revised this scale again and again from 1904 to 1911.
In America Goddard in Vineland, Huey of Johns Hopkins, Whipple of Cornell, Wallin of Pittsburgh and Terman of Leland Stanford University have changed and adapted these tests for use among American children. Previous to 1910 Goddard tested his translation and arrangement of the Binet-Simon tests on 400 feebleminded and about 2000 normal children.1 Dr Leonard P. Ayres of the Russell Sage Foundation has compared the results of Goddard’s tests of 1547 normal children with his own results, gathered by him, showing the progress of children in the public elementary schools of twenty-eight American cities. Dr Ayres has marked as normal all children who have covered the seven grades in seven years; those who have completed the same in six years as one year in advance; those taking eight years as one year behind; those taking nine years as two years behind, etc. When all reports are massed we get a normal curve for all cities; but by doing so we cover up the many variations in the different 1 See Pedagogical Seminary, Sept., 1910, June, 1911. s Ayres, Leonard P. The Binet-Simon Measuring Scale for Intelligence: Some Criticisms and Suggestions.
I’ i ‘ i ; ” i -7 -6 -5 -1* -3 -2 -1 H +1 +2 +3 ? Distribution curves showing variations from normal of 1547 children tested by the Binet-Simon scale (solid line) and 14,762 children in 28 cities rated by their progress through seven grades (dotted line). Curves based on relative figures showing distribution of 1000 cases of each kind. (Ayres.*) grades and cities. If the distribution curve were based on ages the normal curve would not be obtained.
This distribution curve obtained by measuring all returns from all cities, rating their standing by progress through the grades, almost corresponds to the curve obtained by Goddard for his 1547 children tested by Binet-Simon test. The curve is based on ratio of 1 to 1000 as there are 14,762 children by grades and 1547 for the Binet-Simon tests. Dr Ayres rightly concludes: “If this were true there would be far less need for securing a measuring scale of intelligence than there undoubtedly is, for in our public school system we should have just such a scale, scientifically correct and already at hand.”
Let us bear in mind that Binet’s method of standardization was testing public school children of Paris, a selected group chosen by school standards. Progress was based on language development. Remembering the overemphasis that the schools put on language work, talking versus doing, are not the results just what might be expected? Do the tests measure native ability or do they not rather measure scholastic attainment?
It is significant that those psychologists who have used the Binet-Simon most, agree that tests for the youngest are too easy and those for the older pupils too difficult. With the disappearance of the old faculty-psychology and the rise of experimental and objective psychology, we note an advent of better things in the increasing interest of medical practitioners, neurologists, and psysiologists in the mental life of the child. They would all put more emphasis on what a child does than on what he says. A measuring scale of intelligence would prove more significant when doing rather than talking is given greater prominence. Not that language development is not closely correlated with mental development, but any series of tests founded so largely on this one point must tend to give it undue weight. The finer musculature and neural centers involved in speech are but a part of the muscular and neural development of childhood. If the normal order of development is from the larger musculature, neurones and synapses involved, to the finer, would not a graded series of tests call for use of these muscles more than does the Binet-Simon scale? The Binet-Simon tests fail the clinician in three kinds of cases: in the lower range, in the upper range, and in certain neuropathic cases.
1. In the lower range, the child, often backward in speech development, is still intelligent in every other way, making his wants known by gestures, smiles, etc. If tested by the BinetNEED FOR CORRELATION OF TESTS. 21 Simon scale, a great wrong would be done such a retarded child. Such a child might be classed as an idiot or low grade imbecile, but there are other marks than speech which help in his diagnosis. Low grade children are brought at an early age to the clinics. They are a menace to other children at home, absorb entirely too much of the mother’s time and there is a great need for standardized tests to diagnose these cases properly and separate them from the merely retarded. They should be passed over to institutions for proper care and training as early as possible. They can be made happy among their peers, cleanly in habits and in a small way helpful as institution workers. Otherwise they will be a source of misery to their families and themselves and an unnecessary cost to the community.
2. Furthermore in the upper limit of the scale, little satisfaction is gained by use of the Binet-Simon tests, that is for those girls and boys of thirteen through fifteen who read and write, but have been laggards in school; never interested in the sedentary work of the school, longing to do things, and often landing in the truant school. Such a child would often be diagnosed as a moron, if the grade teacher or the strict devotee of the Binet-Simon scale were the diagnostician. The teacher complains of lack of attention, restlessness, disorder, etc., etc. Give such a boy something to do, involving initiative, continuous attention, memory, judgment, and see his response. Give the same problem to the congenitally feebleminded and note the difference. In the latter case there is no initiative, no continuous attention, poor judgment. In order to carry out his work all must be planned for the feebleminded step by step, almost incessant guidance and care is needed, but the boy who has failed in arithmetic, grammar, etc., takes a new lease of mental life if given something to do, something involving the exercise of the larger musculature; something calling for initiative, persistent attention, reason, judgment. Tests of doing rather than of talking will help to separate these two classes and test native ability rather than scholastic attainment.
3. The children who have been pressed (neuropathic cases) and in whom the nervous affection is marked by facial tics, twitches, stuttering, stammering, lisping. They are often ahead of grade, but lack any wholesome interest in school. They are brain-fagged at twelve years of age. They have happened to have that type of mind which enables them to grasp abstract reasoning early in life. They shine in the arithmetic and grammar classes. These are subjects which make a premature demand on the association centers.
If as Kraes and others assert the entire middle cortical layer is lacking in association fibres in childhood, but after the new growth of the later teens they increase rapidly and continue to grow in complexity up to fifty years of age, should our course of study put such emphasis on subjects like arithmetic and grammar before the lower teens, subjects which call for the exercise of these centers? Should healthy boys and girls who fail here but succeed in tasks of doing, gathering and retaining facts to broaden their experience, be diagnosed as retarded? These neuropathic cases may show affections due to premature exercise of the association center. Would not tests of doing help us separate these cases from the retarded and feebleminded?
Furthermore for clinical use, tests of doing help one to get a line on choreic tendencies, and note a lack of coordination, give signs of dementia praecox, or other cerebral affections, and assist in the separation of dementia from amentia. What the clinician particularly needs are first, tests of doing rather than of talking; and secondly, tests involving the larger as well as the finer musculature. To Binet and Simon is due credit for arranging a scale according to age?a scale intelligible to all, but founded as it is on speech development, tests of doing are needed, to correlate and perhaps take the place of some tests in the scale.
It requires a trained and experienced psychologist to give the Binet-Simon tests, to record results and personal and family histories and in conjunction with these try out other standardized tests, preferably those of doing. It is also necessary to study the normal child, his interests and activities at certain ages, in order to formulate other tests leading to a more just estimate of the child’s native ability at certain ages.
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