Chapter 4 – Wilhelm Wundt and the Founding Of
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CHAPTER 11 – HISTORICAL USES AND ABUSES OF INTELLIGENCE TESTING Dr. Nancy Alvarado Motivation for Intelligence Testing In schools, the first intelligence tests were developed in France to enable public schools to measure children for proper grade placement. Rural schools were primarily one-room with all ages taught by a single teacher. Schools in cities were stratified by academic accomplishment (not age as is now done). Children moving to large cities needed to be placed. Other, concurrent efforts focused on measuring intelligence as an individual difference. Broca’s Craniometry Broca measured the body to understand its functions, including the head. He equated a larger head with greater intelligence and concluded that men were more intelligent than women because their heads were larger. He concluded that the sex difference was greater in contemporary people than in the past. His assumptions exemplified the biases of the times, against women, the elderly, primitive people – he believed differences in brain sizes supported them. Broca and Darwin Broca used ideas from Darwin’s evolutionary theory to support his thinking. “I would rather be a transformed ape than a degenerate son of Adam.” Broca believed that men struggle to survive whereas women are protected, so bigger brains are selected for in men but not women. Broca’s work was cited to justify denying education to women. Criticisms of Broca Stephen Jay Gould pointed out that brain weight decreases with age – the women studied were older than the men, introducing a confound. Taking cause of death into account, Gould concluded that there is probably no difference in brain weight between men and women. A man of the same height would have the same size brain as a woman of that height. The sample size for prehistoric brains is too small (7 male and 6 female brains). Alfred Binet (1857-1911) Binet developed the first psychological scales to measure intelligence, supplanting earlier attempts using physical measures and subjective judgments. Informal, subjective assessments may be correct or wrong, but are prone to prejudice and cause trouble when people place excess confidence in them. An important result of Binet’s work was replacement of these haphazard and prejudiced methods with standard, uniform, objective methods of assessment. Alfred Binet Binet’s Early Education Binet read Darwin, Galton & John Stuart Mill – he was a self-taught library psychologist. This deprived him of interaction with others and training in critical thinking. Binet accepted a staff position at La Salpetriere working with Charcot as his mentor. Charcot used circular reasoning – people who could be hypnotized had unstable nervous systems – as evidence of this, they could be hypnotized. Binet accepted Charcot’s reasoning without question. Studies of Hypnosis Binet and Fere claimed that hypnotic phenomena could be transferred from one side of the body to the other using magnets. They also reported “polarization” in which a red hallucination would turn green with use of a magnet. They believed the magnetic field was responsible. Patients had full knowledge of what was expected so the expts were poorly controlled and carelessly conducted. Ultimately they had to admit their errors. Hypnotizability was not necessarily linked to hysteria. Binet’s Research on Cognition Binet was humiliated and became obsessively concerned with suggestibility in experiments. He became increasingly withdrawn and more shy. Studying his own children, he published 3 papers describing their cognitive development. He devised a number of tests of their thinking. These studies anticipated Piaget’s work – Piaget later worked with Binet’s collaborator, Simon, analyzing the wrong answers children gave on intelligence tests. In 1891 at the Sorbonne, he did a variety of studies Binet’s Test of Intelligence In 1882, a law established mandatory primary education for children from 6 to 14 years old. A national system of exams had been established to select students for secondary and university education and vocational schooling. Competition was intense, with 969 applicants to 1 opening at university (compared to 290 to 1 in the US). Concern about “retarded” children in the schools (children unable to learn in school) motivated interest in a systematic way of identifying them. Test Questions Binet & Simon developed 20 subtests and investigated a variety of other measures and relationships between them. They concluded craniometry had little value. Tests included: association tests, sentence completion, themes on a given topic, picture descriptions and memory tests, object drawing and description, digit repetition and other memory and attention tests, tests of moral judgment. They carefully specified controlled testing conditions. Revised Binet-Simon Scale They administered their tests to larger numbers of schoolchildren and a small number of retarded children, to develop norms. In 1908, they developed a revised scale consisting of 14 of the original tests, 7 modified, 33 new tests. Tests were arranged according to age levels from 3-13 The average 5 year old should score at a mental level of 5. If a majority (75-90%) passed a test it was assigned to that age level. Binet and Simon rejected the concept of mental age. IQ Scores They believed that even retarded children could raise their mental levels and devised a system of training for the retarded (like Montessori’s). Louis Stern introduced the concept of mental quotient as a ratio of chronological age to mental age. A score below 1 indicated retardation, a score above 1 indicated superior intelligence, x 100 = IQ score. Binet and Simon strongly opposed this concept of IQ. Despite their objections, IQ became the standard way of depicting performance on intelligence tests. Testing Spreads The Binet-Simon scale was easy to administer and reasonably brief, so was quickly in wide use. By WWI in 1914 the tests were being using in a dozen countries, often simply translated without any attempt to standardize them for the new setting. Before the end of WWI, 1.7 million inductees to the US Army had been tested. Terman revised the scale for use in the US and 4 million children were tested. Henry H. Goddard (1866-1957) In 1984, the editors of Science named development of the IQ test as one of the 20 most significant discoveries in science, technology & medicine of the 20th century. Henry Goddard and Lewis Terman were the two men primarily responsible for introducing the IQ test to America. Goddard earned a doctorate at Clark University, then was appointed research director of a New Jersey home for 230 “feeble-minded” children. Goddard’s Studies Goddard became convinced of the need for a way to distinguish between normal and feeble-minded children, and a reliable way to identify levels. He was given a copy of the Binet-Simon test in Europe. He translated the scale into English, with some minor changes, such as names of coins. He administered the test to 400 children at Vineland and 2000 in NJ public schools. The scores at Vineland agreed with their records. The scores of public school kids varied widely. Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) Hothersall reviews Mendel’s work to put the study of the Kallikak’s into perspective. Mendel did the first systematic experiments studying genetics and heritability of characteristics. First Mendel bred wild mice with albinos to see what color coats they would have, then bred bees. Next he bred peas to study blossom color, smooth or wrinkled seeds, green or yellow seeds, tall or dwarf plants – 10,000 plants, 300,000 peas. His work established valid principles of inheritance. Mendel’s Findings First he bred tall & short plants – the resulting hybrids were all tall. Next he bred hybrids with each other – most were tall, a minority were short. He guessed that height was controlled by two genes (one from each parent). Tall height was dominant, short recessive. His ideas did not catch on and his papers were burned. Example Using Pea Blossom Color Results across multiple generations Mendel is Rescued from Obscurity William Bateson published “Mendel’s Principles of Heredity: A Defence” (1902). Dutch botanist Huge de Vries also described Mendel’s work. Goddard read De Vries’ report and applied it to intelligence – a major leap influenced by Galton’s reports of hereditary genius. Goddard discovered that many of the siblings of the inmates of his institution had themselves been evaluated as feeble-minded. The Kallikak Family Deborah Kallikak was found to have a mental age of 9 (at age 22). Goddard traced her ancestry back to Martin Kallikak Sr. in the Amer. Revolution. Deborah was descended from an illegitimate liaison with a feeble-minded barmaid, starting the “bad side” of the family tree, full of “riff-raff.” Later Martin married a Quaker woman and founded the “good side” of the family tree, which was found to have little feeble-mindedness. He concluded that feeble-mindedness is genetic. Family Tree Good side: 496 descendants, 3 Bad side: degenerate (2 A, 1 Sx) 480 descendants, 15 infant deaths 143 feeble-minded, 33 Sx, 3 E, 24 A, 36 illegitimate, 82 infant deaths A=Alcoholic, Sx=Sexually Immoral, E=Epileptic http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Goddard/chap4.htm Criticisms of Goddard’s Study The study took 2 years, which seems short. Conducted by untrained staff, perhaps biased. Little objective testing of the relatives – reliance on reports by family & associates. Position in society used to infer intelligence, etc. Criminal behavior and feeble-mindedness were equated. Assumption of a single gene for IQ is implausible. Influence of environment was totally ignored. Pictures of Kallikaks Stephen Jay Gould claimed that Goddard tampered with photos to make them appear less normal. Fancher suggested the publisher Pictures of Deborah perhaps tried to eliminate blank, staring expressions. Goddard believed the feeble-minded look normal, so he would have been less are attractive.