Please read chapter 8. After reading chapter 8, please respond to the following questions:
What were two things from the chapter that you found interesting? Why were they interesting to you? Which two things did you find the least interesting? Why? What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology? Finally indicate two topics or concepts that you would like me to cover in more depth in class.
Include a list of the terms and concepts you used in your post. (example - Terms: positive reinforcer, extinction, reinforcer, discriminative stimulus...)
Let me know if you have any questions,
--Dr. M
I found the two topics of Binet’s terms of mental capability and the Army testing program to be two interesting topics in this chapter. Binet had three categories to his mental disabilities. First were the idiots, they were severely handicapped and not capable of caring for themselves. Second were the imbeciles, who were somewhat more capable but still not able to be independent. The last category were the debiles, they were children capable of learning, but not in normal classroom settings. I found these to be very interesting and quite improper when you think about how we categories them today. In today’s society the term idiot is a bad thing rather than a mental description. These descriptions went on to develop and change into mental age when Goddard mistranslated Binet’s mental levels. Mental age is the child’s mental capability, reported in the terms of years.
Another topic I found interesting was the concept of the army testing program to be different. I never really knew that they separated the army people that could read and the ones that couldn’t and tested them based on those qualities, to see what other qualities they had. The recruits either took the Army Alpha or Army Beta test. Army Alpha test was a group intelligence test developed by Yerkes for testing the abilities of the literate soldiers. The Army Beta tested those of the illiterate soldiers. The Army Alpha test was associated with how well soldiers could follow directions and the test determined how well they followed these directions. The Army Beta test consisted of such things as mazes and digits symbols, and filling in the blank type of things. Sadly the war ended before these tests were really put into use.
The most important thing I took for this chapter is how important intelligence quotient is and the importance it has to psychology and society. The intelligence quotient (IQ) was invented by Stern and used by Terman in the Stanford-Binet tests; IQ equaled mental age divided by chronological age, the result multiplied by 100.
I feel like I could use a little more information on the completion test and meritocracy.
Terms: Mental age, Army Alpha test, Army Beta test, Intelligence quotient, completion test, and meritocracy
The first topic I found interesting in chapter 8 was Binet's mental level. I found this interesting because it tests what each child is or should be able to do at a certain age and whether your intelligence is above or below the average child. This is just like the ITEDs we took in high school saying what grade level we scored at. I also found this interesting because of the different criteria he had for each age. I feel as if children today are ahead of what the criteria is in one of the tables in the chapter. I also find this interesting because I am a teaching major and it shows the development of the children over periods of time. Many other studies branched off of mental level later in the future. The second topic that I found interesting in this chapter was the section on the Kallikaks that Goddard studied. Deborah Kalliak was a woman that never scored higher than 9 years old in the mental level tests (Binet-Simon Tests). Goddard looked at her family history as means of why she could score no higher than she could. It is interesting that intelligence is hereditary. I found it also interesting because of the critique of his studies. He failed to state how environment played a big role because richer can get more helath, help, and other resources to facilitate learning, but the poor don't really have that option. It makes me wonder how some children today could turn out if their families weren't wealthy or poor. I find it interesting that Goddard became a eugenist and was a supporter of not allowing the mentally defective to breed and knocking them out in a few generations. It is interesting because it shows how the history of psychology has dramatically changed over time and lacked a system of ethics and morals all human beings.
One section that I did not find as interesting as the other sections was Munsterberg and Employee Selection. It wasn't as interesting because it is kind of obvious in itself that the better suited worker will be better for the company in the long run. The other section that I was not as interested in was ergonomics or the study of how systems and products can be made the most efficient for people to use. It was neat to know the things that Lillian Gilbreth did to make things more efficient but the section was not as appealing as previous sections.
The section on mental age or mental level is, in my opinion, the most important section the the history of psychology. I think this because it created a way to test intelligence and to be able to group people into ways they tested. Basically everything we are tested on now is done by what our age/level should be at. Everything in education is based on this same concept today and Binet helped lay the foundtation for this.
I would like to learn more about the army tests and how they have evolved today, and I would also like to learn more about how attrition.
terms: Binet, mental level, mental age, Kallikas, Goddard, eugenist, Munsterburg, Employee Selection, ergonomics, Lillian Gilbreath, army tests, attrition
Being in the National Guard, I found the topic of Yerkes and his mental testing of soldiers during World War I very interesting. Yerkes created 2 separate tests to give soldiers, the Army Alpha Test and the Army Beta Test. The Alpha test was given to soldiers who could already read and write while the Beta test was given to those with reduced literacy. Those who failed the Alpha were given the Beta and those who failed the Beta were given individual testing. Testing was over following orders and quick mental thinking. Although the war ended before much, if any benefit could be recorded by the tests, it helped give psychology more credibility and became the gateway to IQ testing for schools.
The second interesting topic to me was the topic on the controversy of intelligence. I found it interesting because I always found all these standardized tests we take throughout our educational years to be a waste of time and energy. A lot of psychologists at the time held the belief that intelligence was hereditary, that the environment had little to no effect on intelligence, that intelligence might be composed of a variety of skills, but among them was a single ability that was eventually tested as "intelligence." Statistics from Yerkes Army testing reported that the national IQ was 13 among soldiers, when it was thought the average was around 16. It also stated that immigrants had lower IQ, specifically immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. This caused a sense of nativism against immigrants and caused alarm that they were turning America into a "nation of morons." This sense of racial superiority foreshadowered what eventually would occur in Europe during WWII against the Jews.
I found most of this chapter interesting, but Goddard's study on the Kallikak family was slightly less interesting than most. Goddard found that there were 2 Kallikak families, one "good" and one "bad." The good one had a lot of doctors, lawyers, educators, etc and the bad one were all degenerate and feebleminded as described by Goddard. This problem with the study was that did not take the environmental aspects into consideration. He said the girl in the tavern was "feebleminded" because she was simply in a tavern and got seduced by a soldier. If that causes someone to be considered feebleminded, then today we really probably are a nation of idiots by that standard.
I didn't find the topic on the Binet-Simon Scales very interesting either. It is kind of like the ITBS tests we had to take during elementary school, we are usually placed as some kind of grade level that apparently determines our intelligence. This could be a precursor to that except instead of grades, it is determined by age. Binet had beliefs about intelligence such that it was multifacted, he believed that mental levels could increase with training, going against the evolutionary view that intelligence is completely biological. Lastly he believed his scale was only useful within the narrow educational context of identifying weak students, which we know today it is now used in many situations.
The Intelligence testing and the Army studies I believe will be most useful in learning about the history of psychology to me. It helped determine why we take all the tests we do today to determine intelligence.
Two topics I would like to learn more about are more on the army tests and Hugo Munsterberg's application of psychology.
Terms: Yerkes, Army Beta Test, Army Alpha Test, nativism, IQ, Goddard, Kallikak, Binet-Simmons Scales, Munsterburg
Two topics I found interesting in this chapter were Binet’s intelligence testing and the development of industrial psychology. Ebinghaus developed a completion test, which was a way to determine the effects of mental fatigue on students. Ebinghaus found his test to be ineffective in actually measuring mental fatigue so he moved on to other projects. The completion test was picked up by a researcher named Alfred Binet. Binet was concerned about educational practices occurring in school systems and wanted to measure the mental levels of kids in schools. He believed that some students started off developmentally behind other students, and would need special classes to get them caught up. He used a type of individual psychology to explain this. He was interested in the properties of mental processes that vary from individual to individual. He was also interested in how much these differences affected an individual. Binet developed mental levels to rank children developmentally. For example, if a child was behind what a “normal” 5 year old was capable of, their mental level would be that of a four year level. The formation of this system made identifying children in need of special education easier. I found this interesting because it’s surprising to think back now and imagine that teachers hadn’t recognized that some students were not at the level of other students. It shows how psychology can be applied to explain aspects of things that would not be thought of otherwise.
I also found Munsterberg’s work in applied psychology to be interesting. I found this interesting because I’m interested in Industrial/Organization Psychology, and at this time in history that area was just beginning. Munsterberg had his largest impact in industrial psychology. He used psychology to fit work and workers together, something that is still a main focus of psychology today. Applied psychology was also an important concept in the history of psychology. Another industrial psychologist of the time was a woman. Gillbreth was one of the first in a field called ergonomics. Ergonomics was the study of how systems and products could be made most efficient for human use. This is also interesting because it shows psychology can tie into the business world.
I found Goddard’s work on Binet’s tests to be uninteresting. I found it uninteresting because the book made it seem like the only contribution he made to it was changing the names of the mental age categories. Mental age was Binet’s existing classification for mental age levels. Goddard believed that he should change the term “feeblemindedness” to the term moron. Goddard strongly believed that intelligence was inherited and little could be do to change it. I also found it uninteresting that Goddard tried to use these intelligence tests at Ellis Island to try to control the types of immigrants that were allowed entry to the United States. I think this shows how untrue psychology can be used in ways to hurt other people instead of helping.
The two things that were most important in understanding the history of psychology from this chapter were the development of intelligence testing and the interest in psychologists to apply psychology to the real world. I think I understood everything from this chapter.
Terms: completion test, individual psychology, mental levels, ergonomics, industrial psychology, applied psychology, Goddard, mental age, moron
Something I found interesting was Yerkes Army alpha and army beta tests. At this time, about 30 percent of army recruits could not read or write, so tests were given to them to establish their intelligence and elligability for certain tasks in the army. Those who were literate were given the army alpha test which was comprised of 8 different exams, and those who were not were given beta which was comprised of seven. Those who failed Alpha were then given the Beta, and those who failed beta were tested individually. These tests were also very biased, however. Those who were given the Alpha test were told that it was to understand different tasks and identify where they would be best fitted, whereas those given the beta were given no explaination and simply just instructed to follow the rules. The war actually ended up ending before the tests were even put to use, and the results were also not very clear.
One thing I didn’t find as interested was Terman’s study of gifted children. Mostly just because there wasn’t a lot of information on it and I had heard about it before. During those times, children who were seen as “gifted” were thought to burn out easily when they get older and never quite fulfill their childhood promise if intellectual superiority. Terman conducted case studies of many gifted children, who came to be known as the “termites” and found that this was quite the opposite as many of the follow ups resulted in the children being more productive, physically healthy, and successful than their counterparts.
Another thing I found interesting was Binet and the Binet-Simon Scales. They at first divided children up into the capable ones and the less mentally capable, and comprised a series of (what ended up to be 58) tests to figure out exactly their mental status. He figured out a way to properly diagnose children by giving them a “mental age.” A normal five year old would score a mental age of 5, whereas a subnormal child would probably score around a mental age of 4. He believed that children scoring two years behind their actual age were considered “debiles” and should be sent to special classes. Binet also believed that intelligence was multy faceted and comprised of many different types of mental functions, and could be strengthened by a certain type of mental “orthopedics.”
Soething I found less interesting was Lillian Gilbreth’s involvement in the pioneering of ergonomics which was the study of products and how they can become more efficient for human use. Her and her husband raised a dozen children and had to re-educate and re-evaluate how they got household chores and tasks done because there was so many people around all the time. She was largely responsible for the way our modern kitchens are designed.
I thought Munsterburg and his studies were some of the most important things in the chapters- and in psychology. He was the epitome of an applied psychologist, and used his knowledge of psychology to understand and better business with advertising and selling and worker productivity.
The chapter talked about two specific studies- the first was how to decrease accidents with the railways by bettering the productivity of the railway workers/drivers. He at first tried to break down their working processes to figure out any deficits between the workers, but realized that there was really no difference between the men with spotless records and the men with multiple accidents on their records—they all drove fast and if you were slow, you were fired. He then decided to use simulation by having the workers react to an array of different stimuli while operating their vehicles. He did this by creating a “track” with cards on either side of it with different stimuli (such as horses, carriages… etc) and then motormen would have to decide whether or not it was dangerous or avoidable. However, the results of this study were not very clear as the outcomes were very vague with hardly any actual statistics.
He also conducted a similar study with telephone operators, realizing that their job was very stressful and required a number of different mental tasks at the same time. He conducted tests that involved recalling numbers to test memory, attention, and word association.
In addition, munsterburg published a number of different studies on the effects of monotony and fatigue on worker productivity as well as the effect of ads in regard to their placement, size, and images.
I would like to learn more about Goddard, Yerkes, and Munsterburg.
terms: Army alpha and beta tests, mental age, debiles, ergonomics, munsterburg, binet-simon scales, lillian gilbreth
Chapter 8 basically covers intelligence testing. So for my two parts I will discuss what Binet had to say about creating the test and what controversy’s were involved. Binet first created this test in order to ween out the not smart children in the schools that were beginning to expand. Starting by using the tests on his daughters and other adults Binet was able to see a change in adult memory and child memory. Binet first believed that intelligence was multifaceted. It was overall composed of many skills. Second he believed that within limits mental levels could increase with training. And third he believed that his scale was useful only within the narrow educational context of identifying weak students. From testing children to finding the “good” and the “bad” side to genetics with knowledge the testing then moved into the army field. Yerks a commander began doing the tests on soldiers. Because of the large increase he hoped to one day make a better test. The test in the army divided men up into two groups.
The controversy comes into play when Yerkes’ states that the overall army ranged from 8-12pts which were considered to be morons. After people were starting to get worried that we were the dumb group, immigrants began coming to America. The mental testers were given the steryotype of not letting people immigrate. Not everyone accepted what Goddard, Terman, Yerkes and others had to say about IQ. Other controversies included baseing a childs welfare over a 50min test, defining intelligence without knowing what it really means, etc.
Two topics I did not like include. The Applying Psychology to Business. Was just a bunch of mini chapters about who did what where. For example Munsterberg basically continued to use the IQ test finding to then determine where to place workers. And I guess I didn’t like the segment on Army Alpha and Army Beta. While it was a good use to create two tests for the mass amount of illiterate people there wasn’t much more than that on the topic.
Terms: Applied psych, Army Alpha, Army Beta, Munsterberg, Yerkes, Goddard, Terman, Intelligence testing, memory
More on mental testing and its way of "applying" psychology into buisness and other aspects. Cattell was the man who coined the term mental testing. Binet was the one who created the mental levels. first he believed that intelligence was multifacedted, composed of a variety of skills. Second he believed that within broad limits mental levels could increase with trainging. and Third he believed that his scale was useful only within the narrow educational context of identifying weak students. Goddard studied the Kallikaks family.
The two things I found most interesting from the chapter were Goddard’s theories about the Kallikaks’ family and immigration intelligent testing. I have always thought that people telling other people they should not breed because of their lack of intelligence was ridiculous. In this chapter I see in full motion one man campaigning for people below a certain level of intelligence based on tests he, as well as others, had created. To be honest at times I found his efforts humorous as well as a little off base. I do, however, understand where he was coming from, but regardless telling people they can or cannot breed is not in his job description. Also, his study of Kallikaks made me crack up slightly at how much effort he and his researchers put into proving their biased opinions of the matter of intelligence levels and how smart people give birth to smart people and there is no other reason a person would be born with mental or physical disabilities unless the mother or father was a moron.
I did not particularly like the section over Terman and IQ testing. I am not a fan of standardized testing nor do I do well at it. I actually have been pissed at the men who created it, ironically now I’m learning about them. Personally I have felt that standardized testing is biased and not equal for everyone. I get lower test scores than what I am capable of, and that frustrates me at times. I actually wonder if I had lived back in the day if I would have been considered a moron or given a different set of tests because of my inability to accurately take the tests given to me.
I think the chapter really focused on intelligence which is a main contribution to the world of psychology. Although I do not always agree with standardized testing and IQ testing, it is important to learn about these things and how they came about because they are used quite regularly in the world of psychology.
I would like to go over the military testing and if it is still used today or some form of the testing is used today.
Goddard, Kallikak, moron, Terman, IQ, standardized testing
One topic that I found the most interesting in chapter 8 was Robert M. Yerkes and his army-testing program. His main work came during World War I when psychologists were given the task to improve how the services examined tests. Before WWI, tests were given individually and had to be replaced by group testing. His Army Alpha and Army Beta tests was what made me the most interested. Army Alpha was a test that was given to fully literate soldiers and consisted of such subtests as: commands test, practical judgment, analogies, and disarranged sentences. The commands test concerned how soldiers were able to follow orders. Army Beta was for soldiers with reduced literacy and consisted of: maze test, number checking, pictorial completion, and geometrical construction. Each of these tests were designed to select the best candidates for officer training and helped identify those with special abilities and placed them where there could best serve.
Another topic that I found interesting was Hugo Munsterberg and his work in industrial psychology. He is best known for improving how employers evaluate those applying for the job. The railway company was the first to hire him because they wanted to decrease the amount of accidents and figured that they needed a new process on hiring employees. Munsterberg believed that the most effective way to evaluate employees was to break the work down into sub processes and develop test for each of these. Munsterberg wrote a pioneering book about his studies in which he examined such topics as the effects of monotony and fatigue on productivity.
The 2 topics from the chapter that I found uninteresting were the sections about Walter Van Dyke Bingham and Lillian Moller Gilbreth. I didn’t fully understand the importance of these psychologists and why they were included in the chapter. I found Gilbreth’s study in ergonomics very confusing because I don’t understand how modern kitchen design, pop-up trashcans, and side-door shelves in refrigerators have to do with psychology.
I would like you to discuss the Binet-Simon scales more in class because I didn’t really get where the textbook was going with it.
Terms: Robert M. Yerkes, Army Alpha/Beta, Hugo Munsterberg, Walter Van Dyke Bingham, Lillian Moller Gilbreth
I found it interesting how the concept of IQ unraveled. There were a few mini breakthroughs that I found interesting in this topic. It started with pressures for psychology to become applied. They didn’t want people to just be doing stuff in the lab all the time. At the time people also thought that intelligence was inherited. This stemmed off the idea that British men were on the top of the pyramid. The IQ test started with Cattell who was at the time studying reaction time. Cattell was the guy that was injecting morphine, hashish and opium into himself to see what this does to your consciousness. Cattell coined the term “mental test.” I really liked his quote psychology cannot attain the certainty and exactness of the physical sciences unless it rests on the foundation of experiment and measurement.” It was too bad when they discovered that his mental tests did not correlate with academic progress, proving them inaccurate. Then there was Alfred Binet’s Completion test. He wanted to study children’s attention span because he thought that they were getting fatigued during their 5 hour school day. So for starters… Ebbinghaus did this thing with kids that proved kids didn’t get fatigued during school. He took sentences and left out syllabus or even full words and had them complete this. He then showed the children were not getting fatigued. Binet was concerned with children that were disabled. He wanted to find a way to test them so they could be in special education classes. He was very concerned with Individual Psychology. Individual Psychology is “a study of the properties of psychic processes that very from individual to individual. It has to determine the various properties and then study how much and in what ways they vary with individuals.” At the time people with mental disabilities were categorized into three groups, Idiots, Imbeciles, and debiles. Schools still needed a way to measure this in order to know where to place someone. Binet and Theodore Simon made up a test to determine this. The tests for “Mental Level” were tests to determine how many years behind a child was. The children that were scoring two years behind their actual age, were considered debiles. Binet-Simon’s mental level IQ testing caught on and evolved. When Henry Goddard found out about Binet’s test he grew to like it as well and he brought it to America! He studied it on individuals and eventually brought it to the American Association of the Feeble-minded. They grasped Binet’s concept of mental level concept and they named it mental age. That meant that people that had the mental age of one or two would be idiots, imbeciles, three to seven, and the third category was renamed from debile, to moron.
Although I found the mental testing to be interesting I thought that some of the sections on it were to me. I thought some of it would be considered kind of common sense.
I found the part section in the book about how they thought intellectual disabilities came to be in individuals to be disturbing. They couldn’t explain why some individuals had these issues and others didn’t. They decided that it ran in families. They thought that some people were just never going to be any smarter than they were because it was in their genes. I think that is sad, and I know it isn’t true. If a person had a “brief affair” with a young feeble minded girl at the tavern (of course it would be a “brief affair” and of course it would be a feeble minded girl…. ugh yuck) well if you do that you get a feeble minded kid. And then they go on to compare it to a “respectable girl of a good family” and say that then your kids will have good genes. Dislike.
I think the most important part of the chapter would be the intelligence testing. It is a major breakthrough of this time. We use a refined form of it today to help us in so many areas. Good Job
Things I would like to learn more about would be attrition and the army testing.
TERMS: IQ, Cattell, mental test, Alfred Binnett, completion test, Ebbinghaus, Individual psychology, idiots, imbeciles, debiles, moron Theodore simon, mental level, Henry Goddard
One thing that I found interesting in Chapter 8 was James Cattell’s mental testing movement. I enjoyed reading about his history because it seems rather controversial. The part in this chapter that grabbed my attention about Cattell was that he believed intelligence was inherited and only those who were wise should procreate and those who weren’t should be discouraged from it. This reminded me of Darwinian thinking. Natural Selection basically weeds out the weaker members of a tribe. Cattell seemed to want to enforce natural selection unnaturally. Throughout his career he was compared to Galton a lot and many of their ideas seemed to overlap. Cattell was hired and fired from Columbia, then decided to pursue other aspirations like professionalizing psychology. Another topic I found interesting in this chapter was how Psychology can be applied to business. I found this interesting because there is a lot more research put into advertisements than most people probably realize. Literally everything is planned out to try and get the attention of the desired consumer.
One topic that was not very interesting to me was Hugo Munsterburg’s history. I enjoyed reading about his later findings, but his earlier life story did not exactly grab my attention. The other topic that wasn’t very interesting to me was about IQ tests. This is mainly because it reminds me of standardized tests which are not my thing. It was cool to see how they have evolved over time, but I still don’t care for them.
I think the concept of mental testing in general is a big topic to grasp and one of the most important in understanding Psychology. Considering where mental tests started and where they are today it is pretty remarkable. Standardized tests are difficult for me, but I think for the majority they are productive and a helpful indicator how where the majority of society falls.
Two topics I would like you to cover in class are nativism and forensic psychology.
One thing that I found interesting in Chapter 8 was James Cattell’s mental testing movement. I enjoyed reading about his history because it seems rather controversial. The part in this chapter that grabbed my attention about Cattell was that he believed intelligence was inherited and only those who were wise should procreate and those who weren’t should be discouraged from it. This reminded me of Darwinian thinking. Natural Selection basically weeds out the weaker members of a tribe. Cattell seemed to want to enforce natural selection unnaturally. Throughout his career he was compared to Galton a lot and many of their ideas seemed to overlap. Cattell was hired and fired from Columbia, then decided to pursue other aspirations like professionalizing psychology. Another topic I found interesting in this chapter was how Psychology can be applied to business. I found this interesting because there is a lot more research put into advertisements than most people probably realize. Literally everything is planned out to try and get the attention of the desired consumer.
One topic that was not very interesting to me was Hugo Munsterburg’s history. I enjoyed reading about his later findings, but his earlier life story did not exactly grab my attention. The other topic that wasn’t very interesting to me was about IQ tests. This is mainly because it reminds me of standardized tests which are not my thing. It was cool to see how they have evolved over time, but I still don’t care for them.
I think the concept of mental testing in general is a big topic to grasp and one of the most important in understanding Psychology. Considering where mental tests started and where they are today it is pretty remarkable. Standardized tests are difficult for me, but I think for the majority they are productive and a helpful indicator how where the majority of society falls.
Two topics I would like you to cover in class are nativism and forensic psychology.
I thought it was interesting that Binet's test sort of...blossomed. Alfred Binet basically took Ebbinghaus' unfinished testing and developed the Binet tests to help with the educational system- France needed a way to "weed out" children who were not intelligent enough to be in a normal classroom. These children would be placed in special education classes. Binet was interested in intelligence especially after using Galton's sensory tests on his two young daughters and realizing that their scores were not that different from adults. Adults seemed to be superior only on tasks that required mental processing that went beyond sensory capacity (for example, the book uses the example that his daughters did poorly on remembering color names, but did just as well as adults on color matching- a perceptual test). Eventually, Binet and his research assistant revised and revised over again a series of tests that incorporated ages 3-13 that test intelligence. The age levels was how Binet determined if a children was not at the level expected (for example, a subnormal five year old might test at the four year old level).
Another interesting topic of this chapter was how after Goddard brought the Binet test to the states and translated it, Lewis Terman introduced the first standardized version of the test (Standford-Binet!).He did this by testing 2300 hundred children and adults and came up with 90 test items, rather than Binet's orignal 54. The Standford-Binet test was the reason the IQ was born- or at least the idea that mental capacity could be measured in a single number.
I guess intelligence testing is so interesting to me because it deals alot with the developmental aspect of psychology which I'm drawn to.
The least interesting parts of this chapter to me was applying psychology to business section. My best friend was an advertising major and always use to discuss with me ways to use psychology to keep people interested in what she was trying to present. It;s interesting to think about, however Applied psych and Industrial are just not my cup of tea. Hugo Munsterberg used his research to expand forensic psych, abnormal psych and "economic" or industrial psych.
Terms used: Binet, intelligence testing, Standford-Binet, Ebbinghaus, Galton, Lewis Terman, developmental psych, IQ, industrial psych, Munsterberg, applied psych, forensic psych
Where a child scored on the Binet tests, he called "mental level". If you scored 2 years behind your mental level, he believed you should be placed in special classes.
Goddard discovered Binet's work, and proposed at a meeting that they should refine his system, with the mental level now being called "mental age". Idiots=age 1 to 2, imbeciles = 3 to 7. Goddard also proposed a new name as well - "moron". He felt these would be the children with mental a mental age of 8 to 12.
Goddard believed that intelligence was inherited.
Goddard was also was the one who used the Binet tests on immigrants on Ellis island. They picked out "defective" looking immigrants and asked them to complete questions from the test which was totally unfair.
Lewis Terman basically invented the IQ number by taking the "intelligence quotient" or IQ number and multiplying the number by 100.
Terman also believed that leaders of America should be able to show they are capable - (meritocracy). They should take an intelligence test.
Applied Psychology :
Walter Scott was asked to write a series of articles p psych and advertising which eventually were complied into a book and thus "industrial psychology" was born.
He believed that consumers were not rational decision makers and could be influenced by suggestion and appeals to emotion.
Hugo Munsterberg and forensic psychology: argued that eyewitnesses testimony often fails and hypnosis should not be used in court room (power of suggestion).
One topic I found to be interesting from the chapter was mental level which was proposed by Alfred Binet. This term was used to indicate a child's level of mental functioning. He believed that children were considered to be subnormal if they could not solve tasks at their age level. For example, a five year old who is considered subnormal may only be able to score at the four year old level whereas a normal five year old could score at the five year old level. Children that scored at a mental level two years behind their actual age were known as debiles to Binet. These children made up seven percent of the population and were put into special classes. This topic was interesting to me because I haven't heard about it before now. I think that it is interesting especially because it is hard to categorize children based on mental abilities particularly before the age of five as mentioned in the book. All children develop and different rates so I'm not sure if I would really believe this to be reliable.
Another topic I found to be interesting was the army testing program. Robert Yerkes came up with the program as he believed that psychological testing could help the war effort. Eventually, testing was given to all new recruits. In the early part of 1918, the testing was being given to many and by the time the war ended Yerkes and his team had tested 1,726,966 soldiers. Two versions of the test were made so that those with higher skills and those with lower skills could all participate. The Army Alpha test was given to recruits that could read and follow written instructions while the Army Beta was for those with lower levels of reading and writing. The goals of these tests were to find out what each individual was good at doing in the Army. The reason this is interesting because it is new to me. I had never heard of this until now and it seems to be a good way to test people on their abilities and what they may and may not be good at.
A topic I found to be less interesting is ergonomics. The name ergonomics even sounds boring and less exciting. Ergonomics is the study of how systems and products can be made most efficient for human use. Lillian Gilbreth was a pioneer of ergonomics. Making different things out of different designs for the better use of them, like modern kitchen designs, pop up trash cans, and side doors for refrigerators aren't too complex and interesting to me.
Another topic that I thought was less interesting is attrition. Attrition is when time goes by during a study, subjects drop out for a variety of reasons. Lewis Terman had very low levels of attrition in his studies on the gifted. I have already had a decent understanding of the term and it doesn't have much to it which makes it somewhat boring and less interesting.
I thought the most important part of the chapter in learning the history of psychology was Intelligent Quotient or IQ. Terman changed William Stern's term "mental quotient" into IQ. A lot of psychology deals with IQ levels and where people stand and how we categorize people. It is an essential part of psychology that will always be used.
Two topics I would like to discuss further in class would be Leta Hollingworth's variability hypothesis which states that the evolution based idea that women showed less variation in traits than men and were therefore less suited for intellectual tasks. The second topic is meritocracy which is the belief, especially by Terman, that the most intelligent people should be the leaders.
Terms used: mental level, Alfred Binet, Army testing program, Army Alpha test, Army Beta test, Robert Yerkes, ergonomics, Lillian Gilbreth, attrition, Lewis Terman, Intelligent Quotient (IQ), Leta Hollingworth, variability hypothesis, meritocracy.
I found interesting the process of how today's modern intelligence test came to be. James McKeen Cattell wanted to bring Psychology up to the same level as the physical sciences and he believed to do that unless it was based on experiments and measurements. This led him to set up Mental Tests. These tests were based mainly on reaction time which he believed to measure intelligence. Along came Alfred Binet who was interested in intelligence and spent time observing the development of his two daughters. At that time he the terms Idiots, Imbeciles, and Debiles were used to describe those who are now known as mentally retarded. Along with Theodore Simon they developed a test that would test intelligence based on age. How one scored relative to their what normal kids their age were thought to be able to do determined where they were at on the intelligence scale. Henry H. Goddard replaced the term Debiles with moron. He observed a need for children with special needs. Goddard believed that intelligence was genetic and helped with eugenics movement. He was involved in development of immigration tests which would allow immigrants to enter the States. Lewis M. Terman took the Established test from Binet and Simon and evolved it into the Stanford-Binet IQ (Intelligence Quotient) test. This tested people based of their age performance as well and one was given a one number score to represent their intelligence. This leads into the second thing I found interesting in the concept of Meritocracy. This concept suggests that only those with the best IQ's should be involved in politics so that they can use their superior mental ability to create a better society. He said that leaders should be able to lead.
I didn't find the army testing interesting. The army for world war one used the theories of the time to try and find the best troops and jobs for the troops in World War I. Those who could read and write were designated Army Alpha, and those who were illiterate were given different tasks and were labeled Army Beta. This was disregarded as ineffective. I also didn't find interesting Lillian Moller Gilbreth's home life with raising 12 kids.
I would like some more examples of early intelligence tests. I would also like to go over the difference between individual psychology and general psychology.
I found Robert Yerkes and his Army testing to be quite interesting. Though he had started out as a comparative psychologist he soon was pressured to deal more with the human part of psychology. After the U.S. entered WWI there was a meeting to discuss how psychology could help the war effort. The psychologist and his team came up with mental tests for those hoping to join the ranks; he had also hoped to make it so the Army could discover special skills of different recruits and place them wherever it suited their skills best. Because almost 30% of the recruits were considered illiterate there were two types of test created. The ‘Army Alpha’ test was the test created for those who could read on their own, the ‘Army Beta’ test was the test created for those who could not read as well. By the time all of the testing was done at the end of the war 1,726,966 soldiers had been tested by Yerkes tests! However, many feel that these tests were not beneficial because there military never really used these tests to their advantage, by the time the war ended the tests had not been used effectively. Another thing I found interesting was the controversy over intelligence. Goddard, Terman, and Yerkes shared the thoughts that a few different components made up intelligence. 1. Mental capacity was primarily the result of genetic inheritance, 2. Environment had little if any effect on this overall ability, 3. Intelligence might be composed of a variety of skills, but underlying all of them was a single, unitary capability, and this capability was what intelligence tests measured. I thought this could be tied into today’s society. Schools now rely on their standardized tests for funding for the government, but because all kids are different that is not a very reliable way to go about it. Like how Yerkes army tests showed that the intelligence of the soldiers was around 13 years – his testing was not very reliable and actually showed us very little. Anne Anastasi later wrote that the “testing boom of the 1920s probably did more to retard than to advance the progress of testing.” Some things that I found to be uninteresting in this chapter were the psychologists from the end of the chapter – Lillian Gilbreth and her study of ergonomics, which is the study of how systems and products can be made most efficient for human use, and Walter Van Dyke Bingham. Something that I think is beneficial to psychology is all of the intelligence testing, like Terman and his IQ testing and the Binet-Simon/Standford-Binet scales. Something I would like to hear more about in class is Munstenberg and his work.
Terms: Yerkes, Army Alpha, Army Beta, Terman, Goddard, Lillian Gilbreth, ergonomics, Walter Van Dyke Bingham, Binet-Simon scales, Standford-Binet, Munstenberg.
Chapter 8 is probably one of my favorite chapters currently because I find it fascinating how obsessed people are with classifying information. The reason chapter 8 is so interesting is because it is the start of intelligence testing, or in short trying to put quantitative values to personal and intangible qualities. I feel that James Cattell is one of the most prominent names in Applied Psychology even though he didn't necessarily bring any tests or procedures to the field. Cattell is not the FIRST person to say that psychology couldn't become a respectable science without measurable data. This is really the first time that Mental Testing became a prominent focus in psychology. Again, it's important to emphasize that all he really did was collect data and open the doorway for other psychologists to do all of the mathematical legwork.
Another thing of particular interest to me in chapter 8 is Henry H. Goddard. He discovered Binet's testing while he was visiting Europe and decided he really didn't care for it. He adapted Binet's mental level concept and called it Mental Age. This is the start of a slew of name calling in its essence. People with incredibly low Mental Ages (one or two) were called idiots, people with mental ages between three and four are imbeciles, and people with mental ages between eight and twelve are morons. So it's better to be a moron, than an imbecile, than an idiot.
Honestly, there wasn't anything about this chapter I particularly disliked because this was a starting point in where we are today in psychology. For instance, I just had work orientation for an academic program I work for in the summer and we did assessments to show our dominant qualities and show us how we learn best so we can teach others more effectively. Without mental testing we would not have come to these conclusions.
I would like to know more about Coolidge, more specifically his book on Theory of Advertising. I would like to see the differences in advertising over the last 100 years. It would also be nice to see if any trends stayed the same.
Terms: Cattell, Mental Testing, Goddard, Mental Age, Idiots, Imbeciles, Morons, Advertising
One thing that was interesting was learning bout James Cattell. He worked with reaction time research and the researched the effects of various drugs, using himself as the participant. He brought Galton’s research to America when he came to the University of Pennsylvania. He coined the term mental test in an article he wrote and spent years collecting data only to have his assistant Clark Wissler find that none of his 10 tests were correlated with academic performance. However, he was not a total failure because he launched the Psychological Review and turned a Science magazine into a success.
Also interesting was learning about Alfred Binet, he had a key insight that was the difference between the intelligence of children and adults could only be determined by higher mental processes. He had two types of psychology; Binets general psychology was concerned with the discovery of general laws that apply to everyone to some degree. Binets individual psychology studied the properties of psychic processes that vary from one individual to another.
Herman Ebbinghaus came up with a completion test as a way to assess the effects of mental fatigue in school children but only ended up differentiating between strong and weak children. At this time there were two names for people with handicaps and mental disabilities. They were: Idiot (those who were severely handicapped and unable to care for themselves), imbeciles (somewhat capable but not able to live independently), and there was another kind that Binet named debiles which were kids who required special education
Binet and his assistant believed that subnormal children could be defined in terms of how far behind they were in years, they called his a mental level. The felt that intelligence is multifaceted and composed of a variety of skills, within broad limits, mental levels could increase with training, and that the scale they made was only useful within the narrow educational context of identifying weak students.
When Henry Goddard brought Binets mental tests to America the term mental level became mental age. It was also established that the mental level of idiots were 1-2 year, imbeciles were 3-7 years and debile (which became moron) was 8-12 years. One case study was on Deborah Killikak who was 22 years old and had a mental level of 9 years old. Her family had many defectives. It was found that a distant relative had an affair with a ‘feebleminded’ girl but later married a ‘respectable’ girl. The descendants of the affair tended to be feebleminded and the descendants of the marriage were mostly normal. This study solidified the belief in the inheritance of mental defects, however it was very flawed. Environment was not looked at in the least and Goddard had a huge bias. I thought this study was really interesting and I would’ve liked to have known what the results would’ve been if environment was looked at.
One thing that was uninteresting, mostly because I didn’t like the idea was that Goddard made it so that immigrants were tested. If they looked defective they were given a mental test in order to screen for ‘feebleminded’ people. These tests were unfair and obviously incredibly bias.
Also uninteresting was learning about industrial psychology. Walter Dill Scott was asked to write an article that later turned into industrial psychology. Hugo Munsterburg applied psychology to selecting employees with two approaches to measurement. The first was simulations of the task and the second was analysis to component skills. Walter Van Dyke developed programs for training and Lilliam Moller Gilbreth studied ergonomics, which is how systems and products can be made most efficient.
What I think was important to understanding the history of psychology was learning about where it started. Galton started testing, (later called mental testing by Cattell) in order to measure individual differences and to identify those who were best able to further his eugenic vision. He believed intelligence was inherited, an opinion that was generally supported by psychologists of the time, but especially by James Cattell.
Something I’d like to talk about more, is IQ testing. Lewis Terman developed meritocracy which is the idea that leaders should be those shown to be capable of leading. IQ testing could identify such people. Letta Hollingsworth was the first to advocate for specialized education of gifted children.
Robert Yerkes was put in charge of psychological testing of the Army. This was a challenge because he had to create group testing and identify those who were unfit for the army and also hoped to identify who should go in what area. He had two test s; Army Alpha which was for literate soldiers and Army Beta which was for those with reduced literacy. He did a lot with this but it was never able to be used by the army, as WWI ended before they could. What I don’t really understand was that I read that Goddard, Terman and Yerkes believed that intelligence might be composed of many skills but it had one underlying capability. I don’t understand what that capability would be?
Terms used: Binet’s Key Insight, Binet’s General psychology, Binet’s Individual psychology, Mental testing, completion test, idiots, imbiciles, debiles, mental level, mental age, moron, Industrial Psychology, ergonomics, Meritocracy, army alpha, army beta.
One thing I found interesting this week was Alfred Binet and his Binet-Simon Scales. It's hard for me to think that children that were not considered as mentally retarded, which sounds harsh, but they were labeled as idiots, imbeciles and debiles which is an even harsher way to label a child who is disabled. I do realize that these words didn't have the connotation that they do today. To think that a child wasn't even given a fair chance at an education blows my mind, but I have to tell myself that this is in the late 1800s. I also thought his theory on the mental level was interesting. Binet believed that children could be defined in terms instead of how far they are behind in years. Binet would take say a child who is five years old and test them and say they would score at only a four year old level. And wherever the child scored it was called the mental level. The same would go for a child who was eleven and scored at a nine year old level. I also found Goddard to be interesting and how he changed the mental level to mental age classifying those who had a mental level to be compared to a certain age. Also the term moron was added onto the list of what would now be called mentally retarded classifications. Goddard also brought in the term feebleminded which was a term to describe the mentally retarded. Goddard also believed that feeblemindedness was inherited by one recessive gene. Goddard also gave the example of Deborah Kallikak and how she was thought to be feeble minded because she was slow in reading and in math, but was able to sew, cook and do wood working. Goddard saw her as a prime example as someone who should go to Vineland. After taking taking classes on special needs children I feel as if Deborah may have been dyslexic or had a form of ADD or someone who needs a little extra help or even someone who would be considered at risk because of her environment, possible nurture vs. nature? But she is certainly not a moron. But Goddard saw Deborah as an opportunity to show that it was hereditary. Goddard may have been onto something with this hereditary thing, but not enough to pin point exactly what gene went wrong, but his plan was flawed which brings me to the point of nurture vs. nature again. Overall I enjoyed this chapter and being able to compare from the 1800s to today's society and how things have changed. There was one thing that I found to be particularly uninteresting and that was applying psychology to business or industrial psychology. Scott, the creator of industrial psychology thought this could be applied to increasing worker productivity. It just didn't strike my attention, so I couldn't really tell you why I didn't like it. Overall it was a good chapter. I think there are a couple things that will help me understand the history of psychology and that is that people have to start somewhere and work on figuring it out. I have also learned that no matter what kind of studying goes on and who is doing the research it will most of the time always come back to one subject or Germany. A couple things I would like you to go over would be more about Vineland, I was intrigued by this place, but I want to know more. Another thing I would like you to go over is applying psychology to business because I'm sure it's important and I need to know it, but reading about it is a bore so maybe if someone tells me about it, it may capture my attention.
Terms: Binet, Binet-Simon Scales, idiots, imbeciles, decibles, mental level, mental age, moron, retarded, feebleminded, Deborah Kallikak, Vineland, Goddard, Scott, industrial psychology.
Goodard using the Binet test on Ellis Island to lower the number of immigrants allowed into the country was a smart idea, but when looked at today may not have been the best accurate way to eliminate the "unnecessary" ones. Finding out if they were free from physically capable of hard labor would be easy to determine, even finding out if they were contagious of any infectious diseases wouldn't be hard with the right testers and equipment, but mental illnesses isn't easy to detect because it is more than just "retardation" that is considered a mental illness (the most visible of mental illnesses). Without any scientific evidence and just taking his word for it, his mental test deported triple the amount of immigrants from the previous years before he arrived and put the test in effect. He claimed his test was 90% accurate but didn't provide any visual nor scientific evidence to back his claim. Goodard actually revised the original version of the Binet IQ Test believing some areas were too easy for the young children and too tough for some of the older ones. So technically this wouldn't still be considered the Binet Test with changes made to it.
16 years later Goodard reversed a lot of his views. He once treated every ethnicity and cultural situation the same when it came to his mental test and quickly labeled individuals as morons. Later on he realized that someone with the mental capacity of a 12 year old is still able to be a productive member of society and wouldn't necessarily produce "moron" offsprings because their children would have a chance to receive a better education than they did.
This is the test that introduced "IQ", Intelligence Quotient.
Terman's development of the IQ Test was originally designed to identify children with special needs, but later realized that his test could not only identify children with special needs, but also special children with exceptional intellectual gifts. He designed the "Study of Giftedness" to identify children with exceptional gifts with intentions of finding them and then following up with them later on in their lives to see how they held up. Little did he know that his test would still remain LONG after he would pass away. He is definitely a Psychologist to remember when you think of Psychology and it's history. A belief he was well known for was his belief in Meritocracy, that leaders should be those a show that they are capable of being leaders and not just because of their name or rank. He believed in the democratic view of equal opportunity, but only for individuals who are able to profit from their opportunity and make the best out of it. Not just because they have an equal chance. This statement fit his situation in discovering this study pretty well, because it is said that Leta Hollingworth is the first noted for specializing in education for gifted students, only thing is she didn't STUDY it in depth like Terman did. Also being a woman didn't help her case in those days either.
The two things that i found to be the most interesting in this chapter were the army tests that they had used and the attempts they made towards trying to classify students into the different categories. I found these interesting because looking at the army test it seemed to have a lot to think about for only having a couple of seconds to do the task they gave you. I found the different classifications of students to be interesting because it seems that we kind of do that today to our current students, while we don't label the students as idiots or anything like that we still today have special education classes and also advanced placement classes so we can divide up the students.
I would have liked if this chapter had included the kalikak family tree, or at least a small part of it, i feel like that would have been interesting to look at, especially the different ways that the "inferior" were classified. One other thing that i didn't like as much was the section about using psychology in businesses, there were a few interesting points in that part of the chapter, but it could have been better.
one thing i would like to learn more about is specific ways that Hollingworth figured out the best color for trains for the railroads that he worked for.
I found the mental test movement and applying new psychology to business very interesting. In modern intelligence testing, with its emphasis on measuring cognitive rather than sensory processes, Binet’s goal was to identify students who were academically weak, so that special programs could be developed for them. The test was scored in terms of mental level and children in need were considered to be those scoring two mental levels below their actual age. His theory in which he called individual psychology, was to emphasize the study of individual differences rather than the search of general laws. When talking about Munsterberg’s Psychology and Industrial Efficiency he included several examples in which that could be used to employees. He suggested two approaches to measurement: simulations of critical features of the worker’s task, and analysis into component skills.
Chapter 8 was mainly about the mental tesing movement. Alfred Binet helped pave the way for intelligence testing. He was appalled at the current diagnostic criteria and decided to make a more reliable way of figuring out the differnce between weak children and the normal school population. His first version of his test came out in 1905 and was revised again three years later and just before his death. He developed his test empiracally by finding one clearly normal and one impaired child and giving them a series of tests that seemed related conceptually to intelligence. Eventually a series of thirty tests were produced with increasing difficulty. In 1908 there was 58 tests and was for the age levels between three and thirteen. To solve the diagnosis problem his continued to add age levels. He thought that children whom were impaired could be defined in terms of how far behind they were in years. He then developed the mental level. This was were the child scored on the test.
Henry Goddard discovered Binets test while in Europe and was unimpressed at first but still brought it back to America. He soon became a believer of the test and suggested a restructuring of the current classification system at the American Association of the Feeble-Minded. He wanted it to be based on Binet's mental concept and would instead be alled mental age. He also proposed the use of the owrd moron which means foolish and it would be used to describe people with mental ages between eight and tweleve.
This was all interesting to me because I could see how some common words such as moron and idiot came to be used to describe people in today's language even thought it doesn't have the same psychological meaning to the past degree.
words of importance- mental level, mental age, moron, Henry Goddard, Alfred Binet
Intelligence testing really came about because of the work of Alfred Binet. He created his first intelligence test in order to separate significantly less intelligent children from the normal school children so they could be placed in special education programs. His first test was made with help from his research assistant Theodore Simon in 1905. The test was created by taking students and splitting them into groups, one normal and one group which was clearly impaired, and then giving them a series of tests he believed to be related to intelligence and observing which tests showed the largest differences between the two groups. The eventually created a series of 58 tests that would be administered at different ages between 3 and 13. This is where the idea of a mental level came from, because Binet would seek to determine at what age level the child performed. A normal 10 year old would perform at the mental level of a 10 year old, but an impaired 10 year old might perform at the level of a 6 year old. He believed that children performing 2 years below their age should be labeled as mentally impaired and placed in special classes. Binet is of course also responsible for the now widely known concept of IQ, or intelligence quotient. Terman, who felt that the test was too easy for young children and too difficult for older children, developed the standard IQ test from Binet’s work. He worked to standardize the test, and in 1916 he published the Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon test, which is now known widely as the Stanford-Binet test. Terman is also responsible for bringing the concept of IQ to the US in his test. IQ is basically a relationship between the mental age of a participant, and their chronological age. It is because of his development of the concept of IQ that we now have a number we can place on intelligence, 100 being the average IQ.
At the turn of the century it became very important in the field of psychology for psychologists to apply their research in order to improve everyday life. One of the earliest examples of this was by E.W. Scripture, who published an experimental psychology book in 1895. In this book he goes about describing the experimental methods used in psychology, but he did something that had not been done before; he applied these methods to everyday life. For example, when talking about measuring reaction times, he related it to activities such as fencing. This application of research was necessary because psychology was working to become a more respected science, but it didn’t want to be seen as pure laboratory research because of psychology’s direct connection to the human experience. Also I personally think applying the work makes the entire science more accessible to the public, because it is much easier to understand a concept if you are given examples that you can easily relate to. Because of the push to apply psychology to everyday life we saw an increase in work dealing with education, business, medicine, and law because they are subjects that greatly affect the everyday life of all human beings. Some of the most lasting work was done initially by Binet, and improved by Terman, in the area of intelligence testing. The Stanford-Binet IQ test is still used today by many people, and their ideas have greatly influenced the creation of current standardized tests used to assess students.