Mental Measurement of Pre-school Children
REVIEWS :Author: Rachel Stutsman. New York: World Book Co. 1930. The research, instituted at the Merrill-Palmer School, a preliminary report of which was published in Genetic Psychology Monographs, January 1926, lias eventuated in the Merrill-Palmer Scale for the mental testing of pre-school children. To the presentation of the research and the resulting scale, this volume is devoted.
The book falls into three parts. Part one is devoted to the problems and history of the mental testing of pre-school children. The difficulty and importance of an early diagnosis of general mental defects, special disabilities, superior special ability from the standpoint of educational treatment and social adjustment are succinctly and clearly set forth in chapter one. Chapter two contains a valuable survey of the work done previous to the MerrillPalmer Scale in the testing of infants and children of the pre-school ago, with critical comments. The chapter carries an implicit argument for the need of such a battery of tests, carefully standardized and statistically evaluated, adapted to children of five years and under. The criteria for the selection of tests for children of this age, presented in chapter three, are well-taken and express the ideals which guided the author in the formation of this scale. These criteria are inherent interest for the child, the testing of a large variety of activities and abilities, tests graded in difficulty by equal or approximately equal steps, tapping congenital abilities that all children have had some chance to develop, simplicity of material. Ease of administration, objective scoring, marked differentiation between age groups, range of groups small enough to yield a high positive correlation between the score and age of the child within the group, adequate sampling, size of group sufficiently large to render conclusions statistically valid, ease of scoring constitute the large order on the formal side.
Part two is devoted to the Merrill-Palmer Research, showing in what way and how far the aims and principles adopted and described above were attained. The preliminary experiment in which seventy-nine tests were tried out, thirty-six of which were retained, the standardization of the scale and the statistical evaluation of results, together with a study of the influence of environment, sex, and resistance are set forth in notable chapters that give evidence of careful thoroughgoing scientific work. 631 children were classed into age groups of six-months intervals from 18 to 77 months, with at least 50 in each group. The author, however, does not recommend the scale for children of a chronological age of over 63 months and under 24 months. Difficulty in securing the large number of cases required appears as the deciding factor in choosing six-month intervals rather than two- or one-month intervals which are admitted to be highly desirable at this age level where mental growth is rapid.
Two types of tests were used, seventeen all-or-none tests in wldcli the child either succeeds or fails and thirty-eight variable-score tests. The median score in each age group is considered “par,” and the variable-score tests are made to yield seventy-six all-or-none elements, giving a battery of ninety-three tests. The tests are arranged in order of difficulty, and a gross score on a point scale is given.
The method of treatment of omissions and refusals appears to be both reasonable and satisfactory. The counting of a test refused or omitted for some reason indiscriminately as either a success or a failure is highly unsatisfactory as well as is a total disregard of the refusal or omission. The solution adopted counts as “successes all refused or omitted tests below the ievel of the child’s attainments on the whole scale, and as failures all above this level.’’ The assumption that the child would have succeeded in a refused ?r omitted test below his level of attainment on the whole scale is based upon the judgment that such failures are due to personality deviations. The solution, obviously, admits a subjective element into objective scoring, but it niigl<t be difficult to provide a more acceptable scheme.
Adequate tables of norms are presented. Total scores are translated into Wental-age-norms. Interpretation on the score by standard deviation in terms of score value or mental-age value and by percentile rank according to exact chronological age are provided, which leave little to be desired for exact diagnostic purposes. These tables have proved more valuable than a table which expresses the score by standard deviation in terms of intelligence quotients inasmuch as the variability in terms of mental age does not increase at an evenly progressive rate on the Merrill-Palmer scale. This method of interpreting the score is not recommended. The validity of the scale rests upon the following points: the test elements Were selected because they differentiated children who were differentiated in ability by the judgment or impression of teachers in the school; the total score correlates .921 ? .004 with chronological age; 79.3 ? .192 with the StanfordBinet scale; overlapping of the scores between age groups is relatively small; the scale differentiates the feebleminded child from the normal. The correlation with chronological age is admittedly high, but not high enough to conclude that other factors except chronological age are not being tested. The correlation with the Stanford-Binet is not as high as the correlation of the Pintner-Patterson scale and the Koh’s Block Design scale with the Stanford scale, and would not indicate that one test could be substituted for the other. A correlation feature left unexplained is the fact that the Action Agency test, the chief vocabulary test of the Merrill-Palmer Scale, correlates with the entire scale .710 rt .017 while it correlates with the Binet test ?67 ? .034. This cannot be explained on the basis of the Action Agency test being a part of the battery as “the difference between complete success and complete failure would alter the score by only six points out of a possible 93.” On the other hand the correlation between two tests, the Seguin Formboard and the Action Agency test, is only .086 ? .081.
Part three is a guide for administering the scale, includes instruction for the computation of the total score and the use of norms, as well as a guide for personality observations. The 93 test elements are derived from 3G tests classified as follows: language, 3; all-or-none tests, 17; formboards and picture puzzles, 7; other tests of motor coordination, 9. Personality ratings on eleven traits, employing the familiar five point scaJe are provided for. Attention to qualitative observations as well as to quantitative ratings is especially commendable in the study of egocentric children of the pre-school age.
Part four consists of illustrative case studies. The point of view in this chapter is essentially clinical. The folly of attempting a clinical diagnosis after a single hour of examination, and solely by a quantitative rating on a single scale is rightly stressed. The importance of related factors, heredity, physical condition, home environment and opportunity for development receives proper emphasis. The value of diagnosis of a child’s mental level is set forth from several angles. Finally two cases are presented representing a group where there is a great discrepancy between Merrill-Palmer scores and Stanford-Binet scores, individuals who do well or poorly in either type of test. This last fact confirms the findings of Dr Rebecca Learning i who found four types of children, those who do well or poorly on both or either the verbal and non-verbal type of test.
Arthur Phillips i Learning, R. E., Tests and Norms for Vocational Guidance at the Fifteen-Year-Old Performance Level. Psychological Clinic, Vol. 14, 1922, pp. 193-217.
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.