Intelligence Part One

Intelligence Part One

1. Binet

   • identify children needing special education
   • lots of very different short tasks. Individual testing by trained examiners
   • mental age
     • used test to determine child's mental age e.g. child of 7 passed 6 yo task but failed 7 = mental age of 6
     • children with real age significantly under real age = give special education
   • stern (1912) iQ = mental age / chronological age x 100
   • Binet's fears
     • intelligence too complex to capture in a single number
     • "Refined" as if a "real" entity
     • assume can't be changed rather than to identify need for help
     • assume intelligence inborn
     • self-fulfilling prophecy
     • used to rank ALL children rather than just to identify those less able

2. Goddard

   • Hereditarian
     • intelligence is innate and unchangeable, no special ed could ever help
   • part of eugenics movement
   • invented the moron, under normal IQ. argued for confining and sterelising morons. tested 152 immigrants on Ellis island
     • italians 79%; hungarians 80% jews83% and russians 87%

3. Robert Yerkes

   • the army tests
     • testing of WWI recruits
       • hereditarians created IQ tests
       • two test versions
         • army alpha
           • written exam for literates
         • Army beta
           • pictorial exam for illiterates
       • avg US mental age = 13 years
       • Grade European immigrants by mental age
       • placed the negro at the bottom
       • problems with the army texts
         • Alpha & Beta tests not equivalent
         • Beta didn't require literacy but did require ...
           • holding a pencil: some had never done this so couldnt mark the page properly
           • Recognise/understand numbers: required in 3 of the 7 parts of the Beta
             • Test 5: identical numbers? 50 sequences in 3 minutes
         • instructions were very different beta had demonstrated instructions
           • no questions asked for both
     • Re-evaluate score differences
       • other factors affecting scores
         • literacy
         • numeracy
         • attention
         • reassurance and explanation
         • anxiety
         • perservance
         • self confidence

4. Sir Cyril Burt (fanatic and fraud)

   • twin studies and other frauds
     • identical twins reared apart
       • would support heredity over environment
     • Fraud
       • 20 -> 50 pairs but correlation stays same to 3 decimal places (statistically impossible)
     • tried to re-write history so he was father of factor analysis rather than Spearman