Please read chapter 8. After reading the chapter, please respond to the following questions:
What were three (3) things from the chapter that you found interesting? Why were they interesting to you? What one (1) thing 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?
How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
What topic would you like to learn more about? Why ?
What ideas did you have while reading the chapter?
The first section I found interesting in Chapter 8 was the section on the Binet-Simon scales. Simon and Binet published the first version of this test in 1905. They developed the test empirically by identifying two groups of students, one normal and one clearly impaired, and giving them long tests that seemed to be directly related to intelligence. They were looking for tests that differentiated between the two groups. In 1905, Binet and Simon produced a series of thirty tests, when they revisited it in 1908, the number of tests grew to fifty eight. They also incorporated age levels ranging from three to thirteen. Binet believed that adding age groups solved the diagnosis problem, he believed that somewhat normal children could be defined by how many years they were behind the normal child. Where the child scored, Binet called the mental level, if the child scored two years below their age group on intelligence tests, then he was believed to be disabled, therefore that he or she should be placed in special classes.
The second section that I found interesting in the chapter was the section about the Kallikaks. Henry Goddard made his case that “feeblemindedness” had a genetic basis in a book he published in 1912 called “The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeblemindedness”. In this book he described an extensive study where he studied one of his wards in Vineland. Deborah Kallikak was a twenty two year old woman at the time and had lived in the ward for fourteen years. She was referred to Vineland at the age of eight because it was believed that she did not get along with other children at school, therefore believed to be “feebleminded”. At Vineland, Deborah was tested with the Binet-Simon scale, never achieving an intellectual age of nine. Although she learned to sew, cook, and do some woodworking, she could barely read or do math. Goddard extensively studied Deborah and the rest of her family, he believed that genetics were to blame for Deborah’s “feeblemindedness”. Goddard’s workers began to gather information about other members of the Kallikak family, noting back through six generations, logging “an appalling amount of defectiveness.” Although a lot of data was found on the family, Goddard’s study was seriously flawed. He looked past the idea that nutritional and health deficiencies could account solely for the differences in the family. Later on, Goddard became a confirmed eugenicist, believing that all mentally defective people should be prevented from breeding.
The third section I found interesting was the Army Alpha and Army Beta section. Firstly, this section went really in sync with my industrial psychology class that I am taking right now. Yerks developed two versions of a test that would help recruit soldiers that could not read or write. Recruits literate enough would be given the Army Alpha test, while Army Beta was for those who were illiterate. The test took an hour to administer, those who failed the Alpha test were then instructed to be given the Beta test, those who failed the Beta test were to be tested individually. Soldiers were told that Army Alpha test was to measure how well you were to carry out your duties, essentially. Those given Army Beta test were simply told to follow direction and not ask any questions. Two million soldiers were given the test, unfortunately, the war ended before the soldiers could be used in the Army. Yerks believed that the project showed that you could in fact administer a test to a large group of people.
I did not find anything wrong with this chapter. I think it was because I was given more information about things that I was learning in this class as well as my industrial psychology class, especially in the section about applying psychology to business. This chapter builds on other chapters by showing how the application of psychology moved forward and into the 1920s. How Binet brought his methods to America and replaced Galton’s methods. I would like to learn more about the Kallikak family experiment, I found this section really interesting. I think the sections on the Binet-Simon scales were really interesting and important to understand especially when talking about the history of psychology because another test was developed to replace the one developed in an earlier year. Therefore, reconfirming that we can develop from past ideas and make them better.
The first interesting thing in chapter 8 that I found was one of the first things mentioned that psychology felt a lot of pressure to justify it's science as a helpful thing for society. The reason I found this interesting was because still today psychologists are doing this all the time. I find that a lot of people still do not see the applicability of psychology as a science and this chapter outlined how people really started to let the world know that psychology is important.
The second thing I found interesting was the thought that at one point people who were maybe a little bit slower were considered idiots and inbiciles. That they literally had little to no diagnostic criteria for people who had special needs and it just makes you think about how far we've come in our treatment of these individuals.
The third thing I found interesting was the alpha and beta army testing. These tests seemed very culturally biased when looking at them and it seemed really weird to me that if you took the alpha test then you were allowed to fail it and take the beta test but if you were told you could only take the beta test then you failed you were immediately put into the category where you would have to be tested individually.
One thing that I disliked about this chapter was that it seemed to spend a lot of time on the history of the people they were talking about (like all of the chapters) but this chapter didn't seem to say a lot about how they related to the main theme of the chapter (applying psychology) or how these people contributed to the field of psychology.
I think the thing that would be the most useful to understanding the history of psychology would be the history of the IQ test and the mental age. This chapter really explained how Catttell coined the term mental test and how that started the whole age of new intelligence. I think another important thing was the section about Binet and his new concept of intelligence.
Up until now psychologists in this book and their concepts have only been talked to us within the concept of the field of psychology. They talked about all of these new ideas in this chapter that applied to a lot of different fields other than psychology and also told us about how people could relate psychology to things they know about or use in their everyday life. This chapter built on the history of psychology by adding a new element about how it could be used in other fields or in terms that ordinary nonpsychologists can understand.
I would really like to learn more about the alpha and beta testing in the army and how effective it really proved to be over longitutinal studies. Also I wondered if those criteria taken from those tests were ever used to bias who was included in the army and maybe exclude those who did not do as well on those tests.
I had a lot of ideas about how bias and how ehtnocentric maybe those first few intelligence tests were. I am sure that there was a lot of confusions between countries about what types of things were important for people to know and what should be included on an intelligence test.
I also thought about how, though we claim that there are a lot of different ways to learn, we are still using intelligence tests to claim how smart people are. This is not a good judgement of intelligence for a lot of people and those tests are often held to high standards and are used in some very important places (for example the GRE for graduate school admissions)
After reading chapter eight, one of the first interesting things I learned was about the Binet-Simon test. This was an intelligence test that was made to measure cognitive processes rather than sensory processes. I thought it was interesting to learn about since I had already heard a little information on Binet but it was neat to learn a little of the background information with his discoveries. I think it is interesting that he used his daughters as subjects, and that he used this test to measure children’s learning difficulty and their results were later used to develop what is now known as special education programs. Another very interesting part of this chapter to me was learning about the Kallikak family. I had never even heard of them before this but after reading the section on them in the chapter I felt a little depressed for them. I have to wonder, that since some of the Kallikak children were able to learn basic life skills, even though their IQ’s were similar to a nine-year olds, what would have happened if they were given a real opportunity to learn? It is bazaar to me that at one point your family could literally just drop you off somewhere and say you were feebleminded, even if they didn’t fully believe it, but because they couldn’t afford to keep you. I wonder what the criteria are not before you can commit a family member or send them away. The third interesting thing I learn in this chapter was Leta Hollingworth and her fight against the gender biases in her professional career and in her education. In this case, she was the one in the relationship that would need to support her husband while he was in graduate school. She faced issues when she discovered that there was a policy that would not allow a married woman to be a teacher. Despite this, she went on to graduate school and earned her Ph.D. from Columbia and went on to study gifted children and helped discover that they needed a more advanced set of curriculum to thrive, but should still be around children their own age.
One thing that I found to be the least interesting was looking at the Army Alpha and Army Beta tests! It looked complicated and very confusing! I think that it does a fairly decent job measuring what it is supposed to measure…but as far as face validity, when you look at the tests it seems strange that they could be of much help! I think that one of the things from this chapter that was most important to my learning about psychology was learning about the intelligence testing. I think it is important that it was discovered that there was a major difference in learning to test the cognitive abilities rather than sensory abilities since those can be relatively the same for adults and children.
I think that this chapter built on the previous chapters in several ways. We learned more about the gender biases from Leta Hollingworth, which is something that was previously discussed in the book. We also heard more about the feeblemindedness of that era and what they thought to do about those children. You can tell that people are actually starting to care when we hear about special education programs being established. I would like to learn a little more about Hugo Munsterberg. He probably has one of my favorite names for a psychologist and I like that he didn't prevent women from trying to learn. Some of the thoughts I had reading this chapter were that you can tell that slowly the times were changing and that people were starting to care more about things like giving children the education they need and the education that is beneficial to them and their learning styles and abilities. Women are getting a voice as well!
The first thing I found interesting in chapter 8 was the Kallikaks and Goddard’s views on “feeblemindedness. Goddard believed that intelligence was inherited and represented a fixed quality. Therefore, if your parents are not smart, you are not going to be smart. We now know that this is not true but I have a further argument with this. If you really want to go out and find something, you are somehow going to find it. Example, if you really want to go out and find some kind of imperfection in the mind of someone, somehow no matter what it is, you are going to come up with something that is imperfect. Therefore, by thinking that intelligence is inherited and going out and finding the simplest example, you can “prove” it. The second thing I found interesting in this chapter is how the terms idiot, imbecile, and moron have come to have such negative terms in today’s society. Back then when they used these terms, they did not mean it in a bad way, they were just putting words to these people’s set backs. Today these words are used to tear down people. This makes me think, if the people who coined these terms knew how they were used today, would they still label them? The third thing I found interesting in this chapter was the tests used at Ellis Island on the immigrants. Now I have a little background history on this and I know the tests were absolutely unfair. As the text said, many immigrants were confused about why they were taking these weird tests and the results did not justify the people. How can you look at someone and know how intelligent they are? You can’t, and it is something that our country did that was very unjust. The one thing I found uninteresting in this chapter was the section on Lillian Gilbreth. I understand she did contribute to the history of psychology and she did it while raising 12 children, but I just didn’t find her part very interesting compared to the other psychologists in this chapter. I think in this chapter the one thing that is most important in understand the history of psychology is the mental testing and the view of intelligence. We still have do mental testing today and it is important to understand how we used to do it in the past and how we can improve on it and make it better. I think this chapter built on the previous chapters because it gave more information about topics that were previously discussed such has mental testing, intelligence, gender biases, etc. I would like to learn more about the testing at Ellis Island and what these tests exactly entailed. I would like to learn how they actually believed they could look at someone and determine their intelligence. The only idea I really had during this chapter involved the mental testing. How many people did they diagnose incorrectly? How did this affect their lives? Could they have made a difference in this world had they not been labeled?
The first thing in chapter 8 that I had found very interesting was the research on the Kallikak Family, which was also published into a book. It was interesting to me how the information that these psychologists and researchers were trying to prove were put into a story context using real people, their histories, and scnearios; and not just stating “c results because b happens as a result of a”, for example. He had made one woman, Deborah, his subject that was said to be feebleminded, and used her and her family as an example to prove his theory of heredity in regards to feeblemindedness. He had found that there were two separate branches of the family surname because the initial man had relationships with both a feebleminded woman and a regularly functioning woman. Without regarding the limitations and generalizations of his study, he had found that more of the descendants of the relationship with the feebleminded woman had more offspring through the generations that were also feebleminded. On the other end, the relationship with the regularly functioning woman had little to no feebleminded offspring.
Another topic within the chapter that I found interesting was how mentally deficient people children were classified. It was interesting to me because nowadays these classifications are derogatory terms that are said intending to hurt somebody. During Binet’s time (1857-1911) the term mental retardation didn’t exist, and the terms used to classify people with lower cognitive functioning were: idiots, imbeciles, debiles. Idiots were those considered to be severly handicapped and couldn’t care for themselves, imbeciles were on a little bit higher functioning level, and debiles were considered those children who needed different classes to be able to learn. Debiles were later considered morons, a term coined by Goddard. Morons were those that needed special help, and couldn’t be identified without the help of trained professionals. Now it’s like we’re almost making fun of these psychologists’ beliefs and classifications of their day, because these terms were considered legitimate used in a diagnostic setting. This sparked an idea in my head of wondering what other previously legitimate terms are now used as derogatory terms, poking fun at past beliefs.
Another thing I found interesting, as well as appalling, was how Goddard and other’s way to fix mental deficiencies was to eliminate the cause of them, the gene. These eugenicists believed that these people should be separated from society and not be allowed no procreate. Their beleifs even went as far as sterilizing these people would be an effective procedure. It’s appalling because they’re basically treating people that are considered defective like animals. Loading them all up like a herd of cattle and shipping them away for them to eventually die out was their solution to the problem. For the people that were criminals and not considered to be mentally defective, would their result to the problem be to just get rid of them? Ship them off to prison for them to die out because they stole something? Like the book had said, Goddard failed to take environmental influences into account for lower functioning people and said heredity was the sole cause. Using the example of the criminal stealing shows how important environmental or situation contexts are. Maybe they had stolen food from a market because they needed to feed their starving family? Would criminality be inherited then if it was so convinced that mental deficiency was inherited?
A concept that I didn’t find interesting was the application of psychology to business and industrial psychology. I just have no interest in business in general as well as using psychology to better business practices. I had already taken a course on industrial and organizational psychology, and to be honest I found it very boring! I’m not saying that their contributions were pointless, but it’s not something that I would want to research myself.
One way that this topic builds on previous chapters is the discussion of more women contributing to the field instead of it being male-dominated. This chapter discuses Leta Hollingworth and her contributions of research on gifted children. As the chapters progress, there are more and more influential women being discussed.
I would like to learn about Terman’s study of gifted people in more depth. There has to be reasons why this is still the longest running longitudinal study. The book discusses how he kept relationships with the subjects of the study, but it’s very hard to believe that this is so with the number of participants in the study. I would like to know more about how he kept his ties with the subjects and how there was low participant drop-out, a common problem with longitudinal studies.
One thing from the chapter that I found interesting was reading about James McKeen Cattell. He worked in Wundt’s laboratory but had a big interest in Galton’s work. So he interested in mental testing and looking at individual differences. He studied reaction times by using the letters of the alphabet. He believed that letters that took long to identify should be modified. Cattell used himself as a subject in order to study the effects of different types of drugs on behavior and consciousness. I found that to be very interesting and shocking. He must really believe in his work and love psychology to put himself under experimentation like that. I also thought it was fascinating to learn that he coined the term mental test.
I also found it interesting to learn about Alfred Binet’s ideas about intelligence testing. He became interested in this because so many children were starting to get educations in the nineteenth century and some had such a lack of mental ability that it made it basically impossible to succeed in normal classes. We needed to have a way to identify which kids needed to be put into special education classes. The test he helped to create was called the Binet-Simon test and it scored students in terms of mental levels. If you were two levels below where you should be according to the test than you would be considered one of the children in need of special education classes. He used individual psychology in order to figure out what the general strengthens are to some degree in everyone. This interesting to learn about I feel for anyone who is in school. We are all tested to see if we have learning disabilities when we are young, research like this is part of how the test we take now has evolved.
I liked reading about mental age. It was interesting to see how times have changed because using a term like moron to describe someone is not okay in today’s society. Goddard proposed us to use this word to label individuals with a low mental process (that of an eight – twelve year old) when looking a people’s mental age. He argued that trained psychologists were needed in order to determine who these “morons” were.
One thing I found the least interesting was reading about Goddard and the immigrants. This is mostly because the idea of how they could pick out immigrants is ridiculous. Administering a test is not a way to find an immigrant. I also find it funny that they tried to find immigrants by picking people out who looked defective. Technically we are not citizens by our looks; we are immigrants if it was based on looks.
I thought the controversy over intelligence would be most useful in understanding the history of psychology. Intelligence has to do with the people doing research as well as the individuals being experimented on. Knowing the disabilities a person has can open a window to see how a different group of people react to certain things. It can also make it easier understand different mental disabilities and help us figure out how to help them. Mental testing is important in order to help all people grow in society and education.
This chapter builds on the previous chapters because this chapter is all about applied psychology. So, it is the idea of using all the findings and information that has been gathered to start being used to help people and apply the work.
I would like to learn more about Walter Van Dyke Bingham. There was a very short section about him in the book, but it was filled with a lot. He seems to be a very well-rounded and experienced individual. He traveled and studied at prestigious colleges like Harvard and Dartmouth. Most importantly he was a big part of establishing the credibility of the Psychological Corporation, which made him a part of army testing. Bingham recruited Walter Dill Scott to help make a guide to aid in helping select a salesman. It gave application forms, interview questions, and recommendations of what they should do for testing.
An idea that I had while reading the chapter was how bad our education system would be if we didn’t have these people that invented testing to help figure out who has mental disabilities and the best ways to select people for things or positions.
After reading this chapter, one thing I found interesting was the Binet-Simon test. I have heard of Binet in several of my other classes but I never knew (or never remembered) what his work was about, so I liked learning this and knowing that I will remember it now! His studies were based on cognitive processes, which he used to study children’s learning abilities. He then used this research to come up with what we know today as special education. Special education is a very extraordinary field to me. I find it very interesting how children at a lower level of learning can learn and apply the same things that I learn. Going off of this topic, another thing I found interesting was the fact that people during this time, and times before it, did not know how to treat people with learning disabilities. They basically labeled them as stupid and were seen as idiots in the public eye. On the other hand, there simply wasn’t enough information about the way we learn, so there was no way to justify these learning disabilities. The terms “mental retardation” or even “special education” did not exist, so these people were given derogatory names. Today, we are much more aware of these disabilities and we know that these people are not stupid; they simply cannot function or learn at the level that many of us can, or they just have a much harder time doing so. Another thing I found interesting in this chapter was the idea of mental age. This fits in with the previous two things I found interesting, because these people that were called “idiots” would be seen as having a very low mental age. Goddard thought that we should label people with low mental ages “morons”. In today’s society, that is highly unacceptable (unless you are joking, of course). We should be proud that we have developed ways to identify learning disabilities, and to not label someone as a moron just because they have a low mental age. I think this concept is important to understand because we often forget that just because someone is 40 years old does not mean that they have a mental age of 40 years old. And that is even more important when it comes to children, since the first two decades of our lives are centered on learning. One thing I found not interesting in this chapter was combining psychology with industry and business. I am not a business major for a reason, and although I know it is important, it just does not interest me whatsoever.
The thing I found to be the most useful in understanding the history of psychology would be the whole controversy over intelligence. Between Binet’s work, the mental age tests, and the other intelligence tests applied at this time, we certainly can learn a lot at how we should and shouldn’t measure intelligence. Also, we have learned that just because someone scores low on a test does not mean they are stupid. Looking further into exactly how someone learns is much more important to understanding that person and how they function.
I think this chapter built on the previous chapters in several ways. First, women were discussed as moving up in the science-related fields as discussed previously. Women certainly were not viewed as equal, as they are not even today, but certainly were given more privileges in the psychology field. Secondly, the intelligence tests were brought up again, only more in-depth this time. I think this really helped me better understand how intelligence tests came about and were administered. And lastly, this chapter is mainly about applied psychology. The previous chapters have given us a good basis on so many topics, and this chapter is about applying these topics in psychology.
I would like to learn more about the intelligence tests that were administered at Ellis Island to the immigrants. I would really like to understand how these people thought they could look at someone and be able to determine how intelligent that person was. I can’t even wrap my head around this idea, so it would be interesting to get some feedback from the people who gave these tests. Another thing I would like to learn about is the army alpha and beta tests. I think it would be interesting to see how effective these tests actually turned out to be, and whether or not these tests determined who got in the army and who did not.
While reading this chapter, I really noticed that people were becoming more involved in their work, and I think that can be said for every field that was discussed. I feel that psychology was being seen as a science now, so people took it more seriously and actually became interested in learning about it, or even researching things themselves. This is so important because it is kind of like a mini-revolution. If psychology never really took off, then where would it be today? I also think that because it was becoming more popular to the public, that this allowed women even greater opportunity and access when it came to having jobs in these fields.
After reading this chapter the first section I found interesting was the section on James Mckeen Cattell. I found him interesting because as mentioned in the book we learned about him briefly in chapter 4. He did research on things like reaction time. The parts of this section I found most interesting was how he tested some of his ideas. He used himself as the test subject when studying the various effects of behavior and consciousness while on certain drugs. He tested caffeine, morphine, hashish, and opium which was quoted as saying “perhaps the largest doses ever taken without suicidal intent.” I found this interesting that he tested on only himself. It makes sense partially because you could describe every effect in detail without relying on someone else’s interpretations. It was also interesting that Cattell coined the term mental test. He also had 10 procedures he described for a mental test that was interesting as well. Another thing I found interesting was the Binet-Simon Scales. These scales were used to identify two groups of student’s one normal group and one clearly impaired. They were given a series of tests. From 1905 it increased to 30 tests and by the time it was all done it was at 58. There were also age levels from 3-13. They believed that normal age students would be able to solve their age groups tests while impaired students would be able to solve under their age group which was then determined how far they were behind. Where they scored was called their mental level. It was interesting to read the different age descriptions in table 8.3 and see what he classified as normal compared to impaired students. The third thing I found to be interesting was the tests used on Ellis Island for the immigrants. Having read about this in the past I still cant believe that’s the way they chose to determine acceptance. The book even mentioned that a lot of immigrants had no clue of the purpose for these tests which therefore mad it more difficult to perform to the level they needed. It also is baffling on the amount of immigrants that arrived daily which could reach up to 10,000. I felt this was the wrong way to approach the process of entry but there also needed to be some classification of entry. Re reading this still had me thinking on how difficult that would have been back then. One thing I didn’t find as interesting was the brief section on Lillian Gilbreth. Some of the things she did were marvelous but at the same time I felt like the section didn’t focus primarily on her. It described her husband and her, the business of bricklaying. It went on to tell of her achievements but was very vague in doing so. She did a lot of great things but it didn’t expand on them enough to keep me interested. One of the things I felt was important in understanding the history of psychology was the section on mental testing. Today we still do numerous types of testing on mental ability along with things such as reaction time. The U.S.A seems to be based on testing and competition for advancement and this chapter shows to me how the ground work was laid out for our current method of doing things. Reaction time is still used in sports today to classify athletes and their different levels of skills. This seemed to be the biggest thing that was the most useful for my understanding of the history of psych. Some of the ideas I had while reading this chapter were the types of tests used for students and immigrants. This made me really think about how lucky we are today to not have to take these tests regularly to determine things such as citizenship, mental ability or even athletic ability. I also thought about how each psychologist seemed above most during their time frame. Most had breakthrough ideas and even some research that can still be applied today. This chapter built on previous chapters by adding and expanding on such things as reaction time, IQ testing and psychologists such as James McKeen Cattell. Each chapter adds a little more information to previous chapters by bringing up people that had minor roles earlier in the book and then had their own breakthroughs later. Or by expanding on their findings and discussing the advancements that were made within them. Something I would like to learn more avout would be the army alpha & army beta testing. This section was very interesting. I would also like to learn more about the long term results of these tests. It would be interesting to see how they changed if they changed. The section in the book with examples of the tests were very beneficial to get an idea of how they were.
Chapter 8
The biggest thing that I found interesting in chapter eight was the section Applying Psychology to Business. Psychology is actually just my minor and my major is Marketing with an emphasis on Advertising, so this section was especially interesting to me because it combines my major and minor. One thing that has always been apparent to me is endless amount of differences between my psychology classes and business classes. Whether it is how the students dress or the way the professor structures the course, it is two different worlds for me in one class versus the other. I understand and appreciate these differences, but I find it somewhat upsetting or strange when my friends or classmates think it’s weird that I am a business major and psychology minor. To me, the two go hand in hand and a lot of business (especially marketing) is all psychological. An example that sticks out to me is last fall semester. For my marketing requirement I was enrolled in Consumer Behavior and for my psychology requirement I was taking the elective Motivation and Emotion with Kim. A lot of my business classmates struggled with the class and said the professor was hard and they didn’t enjoy it; I on the other hand looked forward to that class every week and for the first time in my life set the curve on a test. I didn’t see the professor as hard because I could compare him to a psychology professor. There would be days in my psychology class where we would cover the same stuff my business class covered and vice-versa. I strongly believe that psychology is going to give me a better advantage in the business world because it has helped me understand people and behavior, not just finances and production. The second thing that I found interesting was the Binet-Simon test. I found this interesting, for the most part, because I like the idea of modern intelligence testing more and I prefer learning about the cognitive processes as opposed to the sensory processes. I found Binet’s individual approach to psychology interesting and I like his emphasis on studying individual differences rather than just searching for general laws or ideas. I can agree with that just because I like the idea of not stereo-typing anything and appreciated that people differ in everything that they do. I think if we focused on searching for general laws, we could group children in too general of an intelligence level which is not fair to the child. The third thing that I found interesting leads off of Binet when the tests came to America. I had never really thought about what the term “moron” really meant, I just assumed it was a dumb person. It was interesting to think about Henry Goddard’s classification of the term more deeply. It made me think that you could technically look at the word moron as just simply being the intelligence of an 8-12 year old, which if you did then all it would be is a discriminatory word used against adolescents. Children between the ages of 8-12 are just not mature enough yet to have a high intelligence capacity. Learning is a never ending process that continues as a person ages. The one thing that I found the least interesting in chapter eight was the IQ test. I have always wanted to take one just to see what I would get, but I have mixed feeling about whether it really determines the overall intelligence of a person, but just being book smart.
The most useful thing I read for the study of the history of psychology would probably just the overall understanding of the different methods of intelligence testing that has taken place to get us where we are right now. Socially and culturally, we group people together depending on our perception of high intelligence, but I think it is important to recognize how broad and differently intelligence can be explained. This chapter continues to build on the cognitive processes of humans and brings up the question of intelligence and how much control our body has over it. I would like to learn more about Robert Yerkes’s method of psychology that he used during World War I with the army because it caused controversy with nature versus nurture and IQ testing which I think would be interesting to learn about since I can somewhat agree with Yerkes.
The overall idea that I had throughout the chapter was the true meaning of intelligence and if that is even correct. There is a certain degree of intelligence that includes education and excelling in math and science, but I think there is more to intelligence than that. The idea I had is somewhat consisting of book smarts versus street smarts or common sense. Basically, I just think that a person with high intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean they are book smart which we usually compare it to.
Chapter 8 included many very interesting topics that made the chapter a very easy read. One of these topics would be the Binet-Simon Scales. At the turn of the century school officals in Paris were in need of a way to tell the mental capacity of diffenent children, so that some could be placed in special classes. During the time of Binet children with lower mental capacitis were placed into one of three catergories. "Idoiots" were those individuals that were severly handicapped. "Imbeciles" were capapble of accomplishing some things, but always on their own and "debiles" were those that were considered capable of learning and were those that he wanted to determine were in need of special education classes.
In 1905 Binet and his assistant Simon published the very first of many mental tests. These tests were numerous, long, and tedious, with what would become a total of fifty-eight tests. These tests included age levels in order to avoid classifiying people as under or overly intelligent due to an age difference. His tests were scored on a basis of age with those that were normal scoring the number of their age and so on.
Another section of this chapter that was very interesting was that of the Killikak Family study. It was very common at the time for scientists to have a case for the belief that intelligence was entirely heriditary (contrary to todays belief that intelligence is particially heriditary and partically due to the environment). Anyway, to prove his point that intelligence was heridetary in his study of the Killikak Family. More specifically Goddard came across a young women by the name of Deborah Killikak at Vineland (the mental hospital he worked at) who had been "given away" because her mother remarried and her husband refused to take care of her and some of her other younger children.
In his studies of the Killikak Family he found that there was a large number of "defectives", but there were also members of the family who were considered to be the opposite and were well educated. In his research on the family he found out during the Revolutionary War a distant reletive procreated and had a child with a "feebleminded" women in a tavern. The solider then went back to his normal life without knowing that he had fathered this child and had chilren with his wife (well educated girl from a well respected family). He then traced the families through the years and found that the Killikaks that were "defective" came from the roots of the women in the bar and the ones that were well respected were from the marriage of the soilder.
This study however, had it issues not taking into account the environment tha the two different sides grew up in. The family of the women in the bar did not have the means for good education as well as lower incomes which can be correlated to a life of crime, etc. Whereas with the other family they had steady income and the abiltiy to become educated and survive more easily. There was also some questions as to whether or not the information that Goddard used was good. Many of it was secondhand and may have included bias and the like. On top of that he also assumed that the women in the bar was feebleminded, just because she was in a bar and seduced be a soilder.
The last section of the chapter that I would like to mention in a positive note woudl be the section on Goddard and Immigration. As we all know the United States in a country of immigrants (the melting pot). During the turn of the century there was question of the quality of immigrants that were intering the US. Many people saw these new immigrants as inferior, becuase of there origin Early immigrants were from Norhtern Europe and the ones at the turn of the century were from Eastern Europe. In addition to that pure numbers of immigrants was on the rise reaching about 10,000 on the early 1900's. To deal with the larfe numbers of immigrants at the time the government built a station so deal with it located on Ellis Island (just of the shore of New York). Most immigrants made it through the station in about 2 hours and for others that had to have additional checking it took longer. Only about 2 pecent of individuals were turned away and not allowed entry.
This of course was the the concern. Was the government allowing to many "feebleminded" people intot he country, which was lowering the IQ of the nation. With this problem looking to be addressed Goddard went to Ellis Island and said that he could test the immigrants with the Binet-Simon Scale, but the test was hugely linguistic, which of course posed a problem for the new immigrants and showed as many as 80 percent as defective. Despite this testing became part of the procedures at Ellis Island and many potential immigrants were deporteted because of it.
One thing that I found to be less interesting in the chapter was the attitude of Harry Hollingworth. He wanted to study psychology in a lab, but instead had to study applied psychology, becasue of his financial means. He seemed very bitter about this and kind of brought the section about his down a little bit, even though his accomplishments in applied psychology were huge as he helped companies like Coca Cola with questions about sales and the side effects of ingredients. Despite this attitude even this section was interesting to read and discover the begining of marketing and IO Psychology as well as applied psychology.
Perhaps one of the best ways that this chapter relates back to what we have already read would be on the section about Lillian Gilbreth and Leta Hollingworth. Despite the troubles that women were still having many advanced had been made for them and these to were able to make achievements that may have been questionable for earlier women psychologists. Perticularly Lillian Gilbreth earning the first Doctrate in Industrial Psychology. However, I had to ask myself when I was reading was this due to the fact that she had her husband by her side the whole time to help her. Even though they worked together to me it seemed that she made far more contributions to the field than her husband.
Soemthing else I thought about was in the section about the Killikak Family Study and the way the author presented it in the book. In the story he said that the soilder "behaved like soldiers sometimes do" this was of course in reference to him having an affair with the women in the bar, but this statment was really troubling to me. Was it just the author translating the work of the study? Or was it the author speaking the way he was thinking? It is hard to tell. I think this shows a double standard for women. It probably is the case of the author relaying the message of Goddard however, because at the end of this discussion the author says that the "good" Killikaks had onl three "degenerates". Two were alcoholics and one was sexually loose. Within the context of the study I am forces to assume that the person who was sexually loose was a women. Which of course represents a double standard that had already been described, by the soilder being said to be doing what soilders do. I would like to look more into the Killikak study, but I am conserned with finding information, because of the name change.
Chapter 8
1. I found that the Binet-Simon Scales, were very interesting because in elementary schools today, we still use this kind of system to see if children are behind for their age. I think the scale is interesting because the mental level could have to deal with if the child is good at test taking. I have always analyzed how these scales actually work, and how the Binet mental level places children in “special classes.” I think intelligence scales and tests are very useful in some areas in life, but sometimes I have a hard time understanding how intelligence is measured. One of the examples of the scale is that a 9 year old should know the days of the week, and at 13 solve paper cutting problems.
2. The second topic I found interesting was the Yerks Army Alpha and Army Beta test. Again, the two tests were separated for those with higher reading abilities and those with reduced literacy. The tests were used to see that there were no “crazy people” recruiting in the army. The tests were not used effectively by the Army at this time, because the war ended. However, some Army members refused to use the test and thought the results were meaningless. Therefore, the test included mazes, numbers and picture completions that concluded psychology was emerging.
3. Hugo Munsterberg was a very interesting man in forensics and applying psychology in the work place, which is now known as I/O psychology. Munsterberg is very unique because he was one of the most hated men in his era, because of his outburst of the prohibition. Moreover, Munsterberg used psychology to the process of fitting work and workers together. I thought it was interesting how Munsterberg thought of using psychology in the work place to better the work power and industry. Employee selection and testing workers, were approaches used to ensure that employees “fit” their specific duties.
* The one thing I found least interesting was learning about ergonomics. I have never really been interesting in designing new products to “better” human use. I have never been able to be as creative as Lillian Gilbreth’s designing accomplishments.
*The most useful information about understanding the history of psychology is knowing where mental testing and intelligence testing originated. My generation has evolved by having tests based on our knowledge throughout our lives.
*Chapter 8 relates to the other chapters in educating readers on people that have influenced psychology, and the approaches used that have changed/stayed the same throughout the years. Each chapter can relate to one another on the different ways psychology has influenced different categories of education, experiments, and technology.
*I would like to learn more about Hugo Munsterberg, and why he was one of the most hated men in his lifetime?
*One idea I had while reading this chapter was: How can jobs today still use IQ tests to determine if a person would be a good worker or not? How is it legal/fair?
The first thing that interested me was the material on the Binet-Simon Scales. Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon designed a test in 1905 and later revised it in 1908, and once again in 1911. They developed the test by putting together two groups of students, one normal and the other clearly impaired. They gave them a long series of tests that were related to intelligence, and they looked for differences in the results of the tests. The tests were given by age groups. A normal seven-year-old would score at a seven-year-old level. An impaired seven-year-old may only score at a six-year-old level or lower. Binet called the score the mental level. He thought children, who scored a mental level of two years behind their actual age, were considered impaired and needed to be placed in special classes. Binet’s work on the intelligence testing is said to be the birth of intelligence testing. He obviously had a huge impact on the future work of intelligence testing. I think what he did was great as his tests helped children get the extra attention they needed.
The next thing that interested me was the information provided about the Kallikak family. It was a study conducted the study at his ward in Vineland, where Deborah had lived for 14 years. She was sent there when she was eight, because she didn’t fit in at school, and they thought she could be feebleminded. While she was at Vineland, she was often tested with the Binet-Simon scale, where she never scored higher than nine years old. She learned to sew, cook, and do fine woodworking, but she could barely read or do math. Goddard thought Deborah wouldn’t be able to handle leaving Vineland. He thought the “problem” was heredity as the Kallikak family had six generations where multiple defections were found. Goddard found that out of 189 family members studied, only 46 of them were normal. However, Deborah’s great-great grandfather was said to start the “good” Kallikaks. Of the 496 family members studied on this side of the family, only three were found to be somewhat degenerate, but not mentally defective. There were two alcoholics and one member who was “sexually loose”. Goddard’s study is seriously flawed. He didn’t take account for the possible effect environment had on the two sides of the family. His views on feebleminded people were very questionable. He made these wards so feebleminded people could be removed from society. He also said they shouldn’t be allowed to have children. The study as a whole is very interesting, but his views on feebleminded people are very wrong. It sounds like he basically thought of them as pets. Although his views are very questionable, he was a big part in the advancement of studies in feebleminded individuals.
Another thing that interested me was the Stanford-Binet IQ Test. I was interested to see how this differed from the Binet-Simon scales. Lewis M. Terman wanted to revise the Binet-Simon scales test, and he accomplished in doing so. He thought Binet made the tests too hard for older children and too easy for younger children, as average five-year-old children tested at a higher mental age than five, and average ten-year-old children tested at a lower mental age that ten. In his version, Terman added some new tests, revised others, and eliminated some. Once it was completely revised, Terman’s version had a series of 90 test items. Binet’s final version only had 54. Terman had his version published in 1916 and called it the Stanford-Binet IQ Test. In his study, Terman found that three five-year-olds with mental ages of four, five, and six would have IQs of 80, 100, and 120 respectively. With these findings, he believed mental capacity could be represented in a single number. This is all very interesting. Even though Binet wasn’t a fan of IQ, Terman still put his name on the revision of his work. I always wondered where the term IQ came from, and now I know. I think this method of testing mental ability is a good one. Normally, there aren’t reports of the IQ test being drastically wrong. It always seems to be a very accurate measurement of testing mental ability.
The part of the chapter I found to be the least interesting was the material on application. I just found myself losing focus way too often while reading the section. There was a lot of information that I just thought wasn’t necessarily the most important material in understanding psychology’s history. The material that will be most useful to me in understanding the history of psychology is the information provided about intelligence testing. The Binet-Simon scales test and the Stanford-Binet IQ Test were both very interesting. Binet’s original test is where intelligence testing began, and Terman’s revision is where we are now. I think the Stanford-Binet IQ Test is a better measure for intelligence testing. However, if the Binet-Simon scales test hadn’t been created, Terman wouldn’t have had the information he needed to make his revision.
This chapter builds on previous chapters by continuing to move forward in time while going more in-depth with things previously mentioned. This chapter digs more into women and their opportunities, education, and intelligence testing. Also, this chapter brings up what role psychology had on other fields, such as business. I would like to learn more about the Stanford-Binet IQ Test. It’s something we still use today, and I’m interested to see how much the test has been revised over the years, if at all. Something I thought of while reading the chapter was the amount of intelligence tests that were created in the past that just flopped. It’d be interested to learn the details of different intelligence tests that just didn’t work out and weren’t used. Also, I wondered if there have ever been any dramatic inaccuracies in the IQ tests. Is it always accurate? If it’s inaccurate, is it the test’s fault, or is it the person who orchestrated the test at fault?
I found many things interesting in this chapter, but the three that stuck out most to me were how Cattell studied the effects on drugs, the terms used to describe mental disabilities in Binet’s time, and Goddard and the Kallikaks. James Cattell conducted research to study the effects of various types of drugs on behavior and consciousness. What is so interesting about this is that he was his only subject. He even made a comment how he thought that he ingested the largest amounts of these drugs ever taken without the intent of overdose. It is interesting to see the lengths that these psychologists will go to discover new things and to make strides for the science. I also thought the terms used in Binet’s time to label the mentally disabled were interesting, because we know use these same terms as derogatory names for people. For example, the term Idiots was used to describe severely mentally handicapped people that are not able to care for themselves. I can’t even count how many times that I have called myself or others an idiot, and it is sad to see that these were actual terms used to classify these people, and how society has changed them into such a negative thing. Another thing that I found interesting was Henry Goddard, and his research on the Kallikak family. Goddard had an idea the feeblemindedness was passed on from generation to generation through genes. He studied the Kallikak family through six generations to trace this feeblemindedness, because the family was known to have a lot of delinquents and defectives. He discovered that there was a “bad” side of the family and a “good” side. The “good” side produced many doctors, lawyers, and educators; while the “bad” side produced feebleminded people and alcoholics. Although this evidence could support Goddard’s theory for genetics, he forgot to take in account for living conditions and the environment that these people grew up in.
I found this chapter interesting, but one thing that I didn’t like was how Goddard thought the mentally defective shouldn’t be able to have children. He thought that we could eliminate feeblemindedness if people with it didn’t breed. In order for this to happen, he supported the sterilization of the mentally unfit. Even though mentally unfit people may not be able to care for children, I don’t think it is humane to just sterilize people.
One thing that will be most helpful in understanding the history of psychology is the history of intelligence testing. I think that this is important, because these tests are so widely used today. For example, colleges use the ACT as a way to gather more information on one’s intelligence before admitting them to their school.
This chapter builds off of chapter 7 where it talks about Spencer and Social Darwinism . Like Spencer, Galton supported procreation from the able, but discouraged it f or less capable.
One topic that I would like to learn more about the information James Cattell collected while studying drug effects on himself. I think that it would be interesting to see how he was able to collect this information first-hand and think scientifically while high on drugs.
One idea that I had while reading this chapter was how intelligence testing will change in the future. There has been so many different types of intelligence testing in the past, like Ebbinghaus’ completion test, and I think it will be interesting to see how we build off the tests we have.
Most research in any field, including Psychology, is funded by either taxpayers or donations. Taxpayers would not want to pay taxes on research that would not benefit society in some way. People would also not donate money to research if the outcome would be useless. For this reason, the public wanted to answers to psychology and how it could be applied to everyday life. This sudden interest in application of psychology was brought on by a book written by E.W. Scripture. Written in 1895, Thinking, Feeling, and Doing was a psychology book for the general public. Scripture state in his book that psychology could be applied to sports, gymnastics, and other athletic work. He illustrated this in his book with reaction times in fencing. The belief that psychological research should be used to improve the quality of everyday life was held by almost all American Psychologists. Unfortunately at the time, technology was overshadowing psychology. Technology was proving to improve the lives of citizens. In order for psychology to gain any support for funding, it needed to start producing results that would benefit the public, just as technology did. I found this introduction to be interesting because I took an applied psychology course. I really enjoyed this course and realized how much psychology can be seen in our everyday lives. One of my favorite parts about the class was a book called Influence. This was a book all about how psychology can be used to influence people. These aspects included “reciprocation, liking, social proof, authority, and scarcity.” This book is just one of many that have illustrated how psychology can be used to improve our lives. All of this started with E.W. Scripture’s book.
The next section that I found to be pretty interesting was the section over Jame McKeen Catell and the Mental Testing Movement. One of the main reasons that I am so intrigued b this section is that during research for a Psychology and Law paper that I’m writing, I came across his name. Cattell was a student of Wundt’s who later returned to the United States and was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Cattell’s research mainly focused on mental testing. One of his test concluded that mental capability did not correlate with academic performance. In my Psychology and Law History research, I found that he also did testing on memory. This research showed that some aspects of our memory were quite reliable, while other parts were not reliable at all. This was research that later helped spark studies in Psychology and Law (regarding to eyewitness testimony).
The final section that was extremely interesting was “The controversy over Intelligence”. This is a topic that I hold very strong opinions over, so it was not difficult to actively read this section. Goddard, Terman, and Yerks all thought that intelligence was almost all inherited. They believed that environment had almost no effect on intelligence. The testing that they used for intelligence was extremely flawed. Native born Americans scored higher (obviously). My point of view on this is that all types of intelligence testing will be flawed. What exactly is intelligence? “Joe” can figure out extremely difficult math equations, but unfortunately he is an extremely poor reader and does not use correct grammar in speech or writing. “Joe” also lacks social skills. Is “Joe” intelligent? I think that people can be intelligent in different ways. Grades and Standardized tests aren’t COMPLETELY bad, but I think that they may be weighed a bit too heavily in our culture. Just because someone is able to perform so well on a test, does not necessarily could perform well in real life application.
I’d like to learn more about the controversy over intelligence. I think it’s an important topic for anyone in the class that is considering future education. Intelligence is a very subjective matter, although sometimes it is not treated that way.
The first area I found interesting was on the mental testing movement. I found this interesting because mental testing is rooted in the vision of eugenics which is a very controversial field. Galton headed this research in an attempt to measure individual difference and to be able to label whose genes should be allowed to be passed on. In the world, every great super power country that emerges believes that they are genetically superior to all other countries, German and Great Britain, and every ethnicity that finds themselves on top likes to believe that they too are a superior race, but these beliefs never end well, usually resulting in war. I think that this section is also the most important for understanding psychologies history. This is when countries started to use psychology to “weed out” inferior people to make sure that the country was home to only the best and brightest. Up until these intelligence tests psychology was not used as strongly and widely by major government operations. This was the emergence of psychology into the big picture of countries and governments.
The second area I found interesting was on Goddard and the immigrants. This was where intelligence testing, Binet-Simon’s test, was used to screen immigrants coming into the country to make sure that “morons” were not allowed to slip through the screening. Before the intelligence tests were administered around 2 percent of immigrants were denied entry. With the intelligence test and even after trials and tweaking of the scoring tables it was found that 40 percent of immigrants scored in the “moron” range. I think that it is crazy that Goddard was so ready to accept these results instead of trying other tests as well, maybe ones that weren't so verbal.
The last area I found interesting was on the army alpha and army beta testing. Personally I think that it would have been much more beneficial if the army had provided a short term class where they worked on soldier’s abilities to read and follow orders. This would standardize the knowledge base and allow for more productive work to be done. The tests that were administered, the alpha and beta tests, were so different and the instructions given for each test were so different that the results could hardly be thought of as being accurate. I am surprised that such sloppy research was done even by the military who you would expect to be more uniform it its procedure.
The section I found least interesting was over Munsterberg and employee selection. I found this section least interesting because it seems like it should be much more useful than it actually is. The results of testing people and telling them which job they are best for seems like a great idea, but skills and interests are so mixed together that one person is usually not best for just one job, but a number of jobs in which they could excel at. I am disappointed that Munsterberg did not get recognized as much as he should have until late, but in the grand scheme of things he was doing studies on the working population in a time that most of the focus was on immigration.
This chapter built off the last chapter mainly in the very beginning in regards to reaction time. Studies in reaction time have been heavily covered in previous chapters. Also, this chapter built on women in psychology, talking about psychologist like Munsterberg who let women into his research labs and Lillian Moller Gilbreth who was a “pioneer in ergonomics and industrial psychology.”
I am torn between two areas to do more research on. First I would like to learn more about immigrant intelligence tests and second I would like to learn more about the intelligence tests done by the army. My main interest in these subjects mostly extends from the fact that my grandpa immigrated to America in the 1940’s during war time and immediately signed into the military as a medic. While he came at a much later date than the experiences described in the book I am interested to see what kind of experiences he would have had with intelligence testing.
One of the main thoughts I had while reading this chapter was with the idea of eugenics. It is crazy how easily it is to get caught up in the idea that some people are far superior to others. Sometimes if you see a really smart or athletic or good looking man and a really smart or athletic or good looking women you think, if they had kids their kids would be perfect, but how often do super stars get together and have a kid who grows up to be ordinary. Having parents with good genes accounts for very little because in the end there is only a chance that some of the good genes will be passed on.
The first topic I found interesting was Alfred Binet. While Galton and Cattell were before him they did not seem as nice or as close to what we seem to still believe in today. Binet wanted to help identify children who might need extra help, special needs children.
I thought the whole Kallikak section was interesting. Goddard and his time at Vineland seemed to be close and like he was on track but he was sort of out of touch with the reality of common or poor America. I can see how he assumed that it was only genetics that produce these morons or whatever it was because of his social class. What if he had been poor and somehow got to where he was, I bet he would have looked at things differently. I was also interested by Goddard’s belief in eugenics. I do think parts of these thoughts are sort of right but the reality of implementing such a touchy theory is near impossible. I do not think we can do it but in a way wish there was some modification that could be humane and just where it would work.
I also thought the testing at Ellis Island was interesting. I bet a lot of it was inaccurate due to language barriers and cultural differences. I thought it was interesting that Binet’s work kept going on after him and maybe in directions he would not have approved of. Teman’s interpretation on the Binet test is interesting. How can it be called Binet but without his input?
The least interesting was maybe the reason why psychologists had to apply psychology because it seemed sort of annoying or whiny. I think that, yes, they should have wanted to apply their work and not done so with resentment. The world likes to see and use productivity and you need to contribute to society in a meaningful, tangible way. Sometimes it is not glamorous so I felt like just get over it and suck it up.
I think the whole history of why and how intelligence developed is very important. The chapter helped to understand basic vs. applied research. This gives the history of how intelligence was thought of and how it was tested for. It goes beyond the testing but into how environment was not so much thought of as a cause of intelliegnce but rather genetics. It goes into the history of how words like moron and retarded, etc. were first used. Then there was also the topic of applying psychology to business. Ergonomics development in this area was an important detail.
This chapter finally applied psychology. We saw it moving out of the lab, away from philosophy, physiology and into its own applied field. It got more interesting. It was less theory and more practical. All of the work of the past researchers seems to be paying off at this point in the book.
I really liked Binet but he was covered a lot. I was very intrigued by Ellis Island. Maybe also the Vineland spot, maybe I would like to learn more about its history. This was one of my favorite chapters so I will have trouble narrowing it down.
I thought a lot about eugenics and how it is right in some ways but very unfair in others. Is there any modern form? I thought about how would I have done at Ellis Island, my ancestors? Also because I am pregnant now I wondered about my growing baby and its future intelligence. I thought about my own intelligence. I thought a lot about my genetics.
While reading chapter 8, one of the things I found interesting was Alfred Binet and how he developed his test - mainly focusing on children, specifically his two daughters
Binet used some of Galton’s sensory tests with his two daughters; there wasn’t much difference in scores between his two daughters and the adults Galton tested. The adults only seemed to do far better in tasks that went beyond sensory capacity. Binet concluded that Galton’s test didn’t assess age differences in mental ability. Binet stated that intellectual differences can only be determined by more complex mental processes. At that time Paris schools wanted to identify students who had low ability so they could be put in special classes. Binet had three categories, or divisions, when it came to children who were not ‘normal’. The first were “idiots” (who were severely handicapped and not capable of taking basic care of themselves), the second was “imbeciles” (who were somewhat capable, but not able to be independent), and the third was “debilles”- or weak ones (who are capable of learning, just not in’normal’ classes.)
With his assistant Theodore Simon, Binet published his test. They didn’t define this as an intelligence test -rather it was a test to separate two groups of students, i.e. the ones who were considered normal and the ones who were clearly impaired. Binet classified the groups in terms of mental level, with was based on age. For example, a five year old was expected to be capable of copying a square, compare 2 boxes and repeating a 10 syllable sentence. If a child was two years behind their actual age they were considered debilles (weak ones). Binet did not think intelligence was fixed, or unchanged, he thought intelligence could be increased with training.
I found that passage very interesting, how he took Goddard’s work and changed it to measure what he thought to be a true measure of mental capability. I was surprised to see that his test was mainly focused on children and that he didn’t agree with the idea that intelligence was fixed – which most psychologists at that time believed.
A second thing from the chapter that I found interesting was the work of Goddard. I found Goddard interesting in many aspects of his life, including how he brought the Benet-Simon test to America and changed debilles to” morons”, from the Greek word “moronia,” meaning foolish. Goddard used the test on adults and older individuals, which was not what the Binet test was created for. Binet believed his test was only useful for identifying weak students in the context of education. Goddard also differed from Binet because Goddard thought intelligence was inherited and fixed. Goddard also believed that feeblemindedness was caused by a recessive gene and thought that the gene should be eliminated. This later idea “blossomed” into Goddard believing in eugenics. He thought the feeble mined should be prevented from reproducing. He was supportive of the idea of sterilization, but was concerned with the long terms effect of this. His main recommendation was to build more institutions for the feebleminded.
Goddard based his ideas on the study of one family: the Kallikaks (the named he created to protect their identity). He started with a feeble minded girl he met at the institution where he worked. Goddard then studied her family and found out that one of her distant relatives had fathered two families (from two different women). One “line” from this relative was a child (son) from a feebleminded tavern worker whom he got pregnant and the second was his wife. After studying the generations of the two families Goddard found that the family from the feebleminded tavern worker (or the Bad Kalliakas as Goddard called them) had many criminals and feeble minded children -- while the good Killikaks were upstanding citizens. Goddard believed that the environment had little to do with this result. He thought it was heredity that determines most of ones abilities. I disagree; I think environment had a huge effect on the two families.
The third thing from chapter 8 that I found interesting was Lewis Terman’s study of the gifted. The thing I found most interesting about this section was the concept of his experiment – i.e. how he picked the gifted students and studied them over many years. I thought that it would be better (so did the book) if minorities and more different social classes had been represented. He also tested the gifted with his own intelligence test - which was his version of the Binet-Simon test, which he called the Stanford-Binet IQ test.
If I had to name one thing that wasn’t as interesting in chapter 8 it would be the section about James Cattel. Nothing caught my eye about him. It was mildly interesting to read how he found out that his test of intelligence had very weak correlation with what he thought he was measuring and how he was the fourth president of the APA; but I found the other sections more fascinating to read and made me think more in depth than this section.
The concept from this chapter most useful in understanding the history of psychology is that it reinforces the idea of how psychologists learn from each other and take someone else’s idea and expand on it. For example how Benet took Galton’ s test and changed it, then Goddard and Stanford took Benet’s test and added to it, etc…
This chapter relates to previous chapters because Goddard and Terman came from Stanly Hall’s program at Clark University. It expands on the study of individual differences.
The topic would I would like to learn about is the Binet-Simon scale. I would like more examples of questions and more information on the classifications of mental age and if there is a way to see the correlation with other intelligence tests of children (such as the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) and others).
The main idea I had while reading this chapter was the idea of intelligence itself: what is intelligence, what true ways we can measure it? How big of effect does genetics and environment play on intelligence? …..
I really enjoyed this chapter. The first thing I really found interesting was the section on Goddard. Some of his ideas were rather scary as were many concerning the learning disabled and mentally ill at this time. What I found enlightening was that he in the end reversed his views. It almost seemed that he admitted error in his earlier ideas. I wondered if he felt a lot of regret for the people that had been hurt by his inaccurate and faulty ideas on intelligence.
I really enjoyed this chapter and I really had a difficult time finding something I could say I didn’t find interesting or that was low on my interest radar. Some things about the intelligence area I found disturbing but it was still very interesting.
The second two things I most enjoyed about this chapter were concerning industrial psychology. First Munsterberg did some pretty neat things in this field. I really admired how he kept at it even when things didn’t seem to e working out he kept trying new things. It seems that most pioneers in their field made it by perseverance. The second was the section about Lillian Gilbreth. She was just awesome! I cannot imagine how much adversity she overcame to become what she became. I thought about the old adage that “when life gives you lemons make lemonade” and really that is what she did.
This chapter was helpful in showing the history of Psychology as it showed the transition into various avenues of applied psychology. It really built from previous chapters as it showed how the science of psychology has evolved and become useful for the public. The chapter also showed how while white men dominated the science how women were bucking the system and fighting for their place in the psychology profession.
I would like to learn more about the work of Gilbreth and Munsterberg. I am interested in Industrial Psychology and they both have done some fascinating things in this area.
I wondered if some of these ideas might have been tempered a bit had we had some of the ethical regulations in place to protect against overzealous scientists.
The first part of this chapter that I found interesting was where it talked about the birth of intelligence testing. Hermann Ebbinghaus was a memory researcher who came up with the completion test. Before this came along, there was Cattell/Galton’s strategy which looked at people’s differences by using “physical measurements” and “simple sensory and perceptual tasks.” The new completion test was used to “assess the effects of mental fatigue in school children.” I find this interesting, because I love learning about different mental testing’s. I also think that this test has a very good research topic that was; looking at the effects of mental fatigue in school children.
The second part in this chapter I found interesting was where it talked about the Binet-Simon scales. Binet used age levels to solve “the diagnosis problem.” It told how Binet believed that children who were below their “mental age level” should be shown how far they were behind in years, and example given in the text would be a five-year old should be at a five-year level, but sometimes a five-year old may be at a four-year level. He believed that children whose mental level is two years behind their actual age should take special classes. I find this interesting because there are classes in schools now where children can go to get help with their school work, if their “mental level” is considered not to be where it should be.
Another topic I found interesting was where Terman made a revision to Binet-Simons scale, and found in his research that Binet’s test was too easy for younger children and too hard for older children. After coming to this conclusion Terman added some new tests, fixed others, and got rid of some. His test items were around ninety all together. To me this is interesting, because it makes me wonder how “intelligent” children should “actually” be for their age level; I think it would be hard to determine this.
I can’t really think of anything that was least interesting to me in this chapter. I found it mostly interesting; because I think learning about intelligence testing is interesting.
I think the most useful part of this chapter was how it explains the different testing’s, because it shows how these intelligence tests have evolved into tests that are more established now than they were before.
This builds on to previous chapters well, because it continues into the discussion and the different ideas of intelligence testing. This chapter gave more tests that were made, and went into talk about why others who studied this had a “better way.”
I would like to learn more about how these researchers decided what the proper “intelligence” was for children at a certain age.
I was confused as to how people thought of the right “intelligence level” for children of a certain age. I want to know how they determined that this is how smart a child should be if they are this age.
I found the mental testing movement section to be of great interest. Partly because we are still developing this discipline of psychology to this day. It was interesting to me because how do we measure intelligence? We know that there is fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence now, but I mean really, it’s like measuring someone’s consciousness. How do you do it? We can only judge someone’s intelligence by what society deems as useful to that society.
I thought it was interesting that when Cattell was doing reaction time research in Europe, he used himself as the test subject. The reaction times that Cattell was measuring were how long it took someone to identify different letters, and if letters written in different ways influenced reaction time. The interesting part though, is when Cattell was doing research on drugs and reaction time/consciousness/behavior. Cattell also used himself as the test subject for this study as well and ingested large amounts of caffeine, morphine, hashish, and opium. It was stated in the text that Cattell said something along the lines of, “him ingesting the largest amounts ever taken without suicidal intent”.
Lastly, I found it interesting that Henry H. Goddard was a eugenicist. Not only that he was a eugenicist, but the methods he advocated to be completely absurd. Goddard advocated to the fact that people deemed “feebleminded” shouldn’t be allowed to breed. I think it’s also safe to say that people were “forced” not to reproduce by being sterilized. I feel as if there is some sort of connection of what was going on here and what later went on in Nazi Germany.
The least interesting section for me was Hugo Munsterberg’s explanation on employee selection. I can’t really say that this was all that un-interesting, but I had to pick something. I liked a lot of the chapter and found it hard to select anything that I disliked. I didn’t like the section because I thought it was dry and was already previously covered in my past applied psychology class.
The chapter as a whole really helped me understand the history of psychology. Over the course of the text, we have seen psychology start as a subsidiary of philosophy and eventually move to its own specific field. Now, we are seeing how psychology must become relevant to civilization and prove its use. Thus, applied psychology. Now, psychology is being applied to everyday life and proving to be beneficial in certain ways. Psychology can be applied to business, law, education, and several other facets.
I would like to learn more about the Kallikaks study that Goddard did. I found it very interesting of how Goddard tracked down both sides of the family and actually found some evidence (even though it was totally biased and didn’t take into account environment influences)for heredity. I would like to learn more about this particular study because I found it very fascinating at how much the environment (nurture) plays in how prestigious/educated an individual becomes.
Idea I had:
-If American eugenics played a role in German eugenics (the holocaust)
The first section that was very interesting was the Binet-Simon Scales. In 1905 the two psychologists came up with a test that was supposed to compare intelligence between a smart group of students and an impaired group. They were mainly looking for differences between the two groups and how they scored the long test. Simon and Binet wrote a total of thirty tests originally and revisited them in 1908 which the test grew to an astounding fifty eight. He also incorporated the age of his test subjects to toddlers at the age of three up to thirteen year olds. They believed that the age range had a deciding factor on the intelligence level of the child. They came to the conclusion that if a child is two years of more behind the average intelligence that the child should be held in a special class. This concept not only helped to improve psychology and its testing of intelligence, but also the education field which is a direct correlation to what we learned about in chapter 7 with John Dewey and his education theories.
The Army Alpha and Beta tests were very interesting as well. The idea behind the test was to determine if a soldier was illiterate or not before they were drafted into the war. The alpha test was for the literate readers which if they failed they were given a beta test and then tested individually. The test usually took an hour to administer and the result of it was determined on how well an alpha soldier could carry out his own task and the beta testers were told to just follow orders and that’s it. This test proved that 2 million people could receive and complete a test effectively.
Goddard and the Kallikak’s view on feeblemindedness were also very interesting. This concept was on the basis of if a mother or father was not gifted with intelligence than their offspring would in return not be smart. This theory has been long proven wrong, but it was very interesting that in the past they even had the same views that we do today in perceiving individuals and overall judging how they’ll turn out. This concept is a hard one to swallow as it is very sad to think about people in my own life who have been labeled wrongfully. I would like to learn more about if there has been similar alpha and beta tests in today’s world.
I liked reading about Hermann Ebbinghaus and the development of a completion test. The completion test was used to show the effects of mental fatigue in schoolchildren. His work was coming around at a good time because authorities in Germany thought long hours of school in the morning was causing this amount of fatigue and nervous irritability. I liked his approach of taking words out of sentences and having the children figure out how to complete the sentences.
I liked the section on Binet and individual differences. It’s interesting because he observed his daughters and compared their scores of sensory tests with adults. He found their scores weren’t much different. Through his research we find that adults scored higher on tasks that involved mental processing that went beyond sensory capacity, but his daughters scored well on perceptual tasks. Results showed that sensory measures were inadequate to determine age differences in mental ability.
I liked reading about the three categories children were placed into for mental disability. It’s interesting to see how they don’t use the word retard because that word is used in such a slanderous way nowadays. We through the word idiot around just as much and we don’t use it for the actual definition it’s supposed to mean which were people who are severely handicapped and not capable of caring for themselves.
There wasn’t really anything I disliked about this chapter. I liked how they used each psychologist in reference to other sections of other psychologists’ work.
This chapter related to the previous chapter because it always refers back to a psychologist we just learned about. For example, the beginning of chapter 8 talks about E.W. Scripture and how his pressures of application in everyday life were recognized by John Dewey from chapter 7. It then shows how after that, William Lowe Bryan made a plea for the importance of applying the results of theory-based psychological research to improve everyday life-just like Scripture. I feel like each psychologist just adds to or gets ideas from other psychologists mentioned in previous chapters.
I think the most useful information in this chapter in regards to the history of psychology was about how just because one psychologist’s work gave certain results, they can be proven wrong. For example, Galton’s sensory measures couldn’t adequately assess mental ability in ages because of the work done by Binet. I don’t think Binet thought he was going to stumble upon an error in Galton’s results, but he did.
I would like to learn more about psychologist’s who observe their children or family members like Binet because it’s interesting to see how they can conclude on major research findings at home. I know Skinner did the same thing with his Skinner box and it’s cool to see researchers/psychologists use their kids for observations or new inventions, as long as they are used in the right way.
The idea I had was if Binet was also discriminate to people of other races when doing mental ability testing like Galton did.
The idea of a "mental test" was interesting to read about. Cattell's test, similar to Galton's test, measured physical and basic sensory capabilities. He assumed that study of these processes would lead to insights about academic performance. It was interesting to learn that his program FAILED to find a correlation between his test and academic performance but it didn't really matter for him because he still kicked ass as an editor and pushed the field of psychology to new heights.
The section on mental fatigue was very interesting to me. So Ebbinghaus thought that so many hours of school in a row could be mentally exhausting to school children and that this could effect their performance. They developed a test based on sensory changes that was ineffective and then came up with a test to distinguish between strong and weak students. But they never finished the study on the effects of mental fatigue on performance! I think that mental fatigue DEFINITELY has an affect on performance even if the class period is only an hour or hour and a half long.
The testing of the army was an interesting part of the chapter. Basically we wanted to separate people who would think about the actions and motives of the military from the idiots who would just do whatever they were told. This could be useful when determining who to send out for specific missions or when trying to find out a traitor or similar. Its a shame that testing took off after this. Testing quickly became the process for screening just about anything and is now the basis for how we are judged by potential employers. It sucks! Testing is not the only and certainly not the best way to determine usefulness in society.
The chapter was pretty interesting this week I don't know of anything that was too uninteresting to read about.
Reading and understanding how testing developed and influenced America and the world during world war I is helpful in understanding why testing is such a common practice today. I have been tested in every psychology course I've taken and in almost all classes I've taken in college. I take tests for work, for school, for the government, for banks, etc etc. We like to have the ease of a quick efficient method for determining worthiness instead of taking the time to assess individuals thoroughly.
Every chapter preaches the evolution of ideas that were proposed in chapters past. It seems like the names keep changing between time periods and concepts. Cattell researched with Wundt who then went on to come up with his own ideas on a totally new subject.
I would like to learn more about mental fatigue and its effects on academic performance. My mind can barely stay focused for twenty minutes and I am an adult. I can only imagine the places that young children's minds go in class! Especially if a child feels like they know everything already or are ahead in material!
I thought a lot about how fast Americans were moving during this time period. Why does everything have to speed up and become easier? Just because one person isn't as good with books and facts does that mean we should label them as different from those who are? Here all of the able bodied dumb people can hang out and all the smart wimps can hang out. That doesn't help anyone! Everyone is working with the same strengths! The army is a different animal. We were selecting the dumbest of people so we could sacrifice them for a selfish cause. Crazy thing to consider!
I thought it was interesting reading about Alfred Binet who was one of France's leading psychologists. He began his studies observing his daughters and realized that the psychologists before were wrong on how they approached studying or seeing an amount of intellegence. I didnt know that the term idiot was actually used as a legit term back then. I thought people just made it up and used it to insult people. i thought that was interesting as well. the mental level was developed by him and this was to show how smart you were based on how old you were. An idea I had while reading this was how we took the Iowa test of basic skills and that showed where you were compared to everyone else of your age groups compared to your school as well as your state and country. i think this is a good tool and it's interesting that what he thought of then is also being used right now in general tests for every grade from elementary to yoru senior year in high school. this eventually led to an IQ test.
One interesting topic covered in this chapter was the Binet-Simon Scales. These scales are deemed as the first genuine intelligence tests. Binet’s goal was to create a more reliable way of differentiating “weak” children from the normal school population. Binet and Simon’s developed the tests empirically by identifying two groups of students (i.e. normal and impaired) and giving them a long series of tests that appeared to be conceptually related to intelligence. They eventually incorporated age levels between three and thirteen, which was Binet’s way of solving the diagnosis problem. These tests measured the mental levels of children. Binet believed that children scoring at mental level two years below their actual should be placed in special classes. Binet’s test would become widely used.
Another interesting topic was the impact the Binet-Simon scale had on immigration. After translating the Binet’s test in English and introducing it to America, Henry Goddard was invited to Ellis Island to conduct these tests on incoming immigrants in an effort to make sure “defective” individuals were denied access into America. Once mental testing became a part of the screening process at Ellis Island the percentages of deportations increased. For example, the text states that in 1913, 555 people were deported on the grounds of being “feebleminded”, which tripled the amount of individuals deported in the previous five years. Although no accurate estimate exists, it’s safe to say that a few thousand hopeful immigrants were denied access because they performed poorly on the Binet-Simon tests.
Lewis Terman’s contribution to intelligence testing was another interesting topic in this chapter. Although Goddard was responsible for translating the Binet-Simon scales into English and introducing them to America, Terman is responsible for revising and standardizing them. He determined that some of Binet’s tests were too easy for young children and too hard for older children. This caused Terman to add some new tests, revise others, and eliminate a few. He standardized his test using 2,300 participants, who were mostly children and adolescents, but also included 400 adults. Unlike Binet’s final version that had fifty four test items, Terman’s had ninety. Terman’s test is most commonly known as the Stanford-Binet because of his affiliation with Stanford University. His test quickly dominated the market and still remains perhaps the best known individual test of intelligence.
A topic that I found to be less interesting was Army Alpha and Army Beta testing. I understand the purpose and the concept of these tests during this time, however, I have learned about them in a previous course. Although the text offered more detail than I had previously learned, the new information provided wasn’t all that intriguing to me given I already knew the basic idea behind the tests.
I think understanding the history of intelligence testing is an important aspect in learning the history of psychology. Intelligence testing is responsible for determining a number of things. For example, during this time period poor performance on an intelligence test may have resulted in being deported. Not only does intelligence testing help determine certain things, it also help spread the new psychology. It provided a new area of individual research and continues to be a factor today.
This chapter shows how the beliefs of individuals covered in previous chapters continued to contribute, even to the new psychology. For example, Galton’s (chapter 5) approach was replaced by Alfred Binet in this chapter. This chapter highlights the importance of previous research and findings and how, even if they are flawed, can still contribute offer new findings and research in the field of psychology.
I would like to learn more about the intelligence testing used at Ellis Island. I would be interested in learning how many people were deported due to low scores and if there was any sort of appeals process offered to the individuals who were denied access. I couldn’t help but wonder how I would due on those tests if I was placed in that situation. I would also like to learn more about the business side of psychology considering I have an interest in I/O psychology. I think it would be interesting to learning more about how it originated and who the key contributors were.
Simon and Binet are also two psychologist that are always interesting. I feel as if you have to talk about these two no matter what psychology class you take. Binet-Simon scale is a well known intelligence tests. I find this Simon and Binet’s research in intelligence testing to be interesting as their original idea was so cut and dry between normal ability in intelligence and impairment. Basically, people were in one of 2 groups of intelligence. It’s also interesting to think about how in their revisions they went from a two part/result tests to one with 58 parts. I also like that they split the intelligence tests into age groups. I believe that this division is still used today. That is, Binet’s method of seeing how far behind a child is from the average/ “normal” child is still used in today’s school systems. Children’s intelligence in terms of impairment may be judged on what grade/age their reading level is at. It may also be judged on their grade level in school. The ITBS tests give you results in terms of your percentage of intelligence compared to other children “your age”. It’s interesting that Binet’s idea of ‘mental level’ is still present in today’s education systems. If a mental age is behind a physical age, a child is put in special classes. This is true today and it’s cool to know that this idea goes back to Binet and his intelligence testing research.
To build off the idea of intelligence testing with Simon and Binet, I am interested and shocked by the crude language of our resent history when referring to the intelligence levels of various individuals. In the past (before Binet), there was no standard for intelligence. This lack of standard made it so that there was no formal diagnosis for an individual with special needs. Therefore, there was also no treatment. If someone was mentally slower than the other children, they were usually treated harshly and even exiled. If you were even a little slower than the average, you were subject to ridicule and names like ‘idiot’. There was little understanding and tolerance which is really sad! It fascinating to see how far we’ve come in terms of intelligence testing in the last century alone.
I am currently learning about the Army Alpha Beta Tests in another class. We also talked about the various Army tests in my Industrial Psychology class. As this information was applicable to my studies in another course, I found this idea interesting. I’m not surprised in the least that the Army created tests for civilians who couldn’t read/write to get into the military. It’s like having an intelligence test for something other than book intelligence. I really found it interesting that they designed a specific test for the illiterate (the Beta test). It’s further interesting, that even if you fail one test, you still get a second shot to take it another way. These tests represent the desperation of the military. They seemed to want people so badly that they even would administer the tests one-on-one for the individuals who were illiterate and still failed the Beta (illiterate version) of the test. Also interesting is the large number of people that could be reached by this test. I really liked learning about the Alpha Beta Army.
I didn’t care too much to learn about this chapter is that it’s pretty repetitive. It doesn’t seem to build much on the past chapters as much as it expands on it. I’m just getting a little bored with learning the same thing repeatedly. I didn’t like how this chapter began to lose my attention because I actually did enjoy the content. The chapter was a little dry as it was repeating past information that we all should have gotten from at least one of our psychology classes on our way to this point. Really, this is how the chapter built on the previous ones. It builds by continuing to talk about the familiar content. However, now, it shows how much the content and application of this knowledge and knowledge testing has changed over time. The chapter does a good job of helping to create a time line which is a helpful and important build from the other chapters. This timeline and build will be most useful in moving forward through the material.
I would like to learn more about intelligence testing. Specifically I would like to know more about testing for various mental disabilities. My mom teaches Resource/Special Education for Jr. and Sr. high school students. I am interested to know what determines whether or not these students belong in her class in the first place.
While reading this, I had the idea why did they decide that intelligence testing was necessary? What was the purpose or how did they think it would help society. Was it necessary to put people in categories based on tests?—It seemed like people already had an idea about where these students should go or who they were. I guess I’m really interested in intelligence testing. This is probably why so many of my thoughts and ideas were related to the forming of these tests. I would just like to learn more about their importance, which is why many of my ideas build off of this subject.
Hugo Münsterberg, a German experimental psychologist, helped to expand the experimental psychology field in the United States. Soon after his arrival to Harvard, he lobbied for a new building that housed an impressive laboratory for psychology. He was the man who deduced that eyewitness testimonies are incredibly flawed, which is a much more modern idea.
Robert M. Yerkes helped to create the Army Alpha and Army Beta exams in order to sort through the recruits during the first world war, his team tested almost 1.8 million soldiers. But why sort through all of the? Because almost 30% of the recruits, over 500,000, were illiterate. This sorted the literate from those who were unable to read, or alpha and beta groups.
Lewis Terman expanded on Stern mental testing, by calling it “intelligence” and creating a ratio. The quotient created a more readable number, that was easier to understand. He also created more of a standard to measure people and ages to.
While I found the concept of Alfred Binet’s test interesting, it was kind of drawn out and the technicalities were uninteresting. I think what interested me was Münsterberg’s flexibility and varying focus of psychology.
The first topic I found interesting while reading chapter 8, was the Binet-Simon scales. After failing numerous times with research and being embarrassed throughout his career, Binet came back strong and created the mental level. The mental level was a series of tests for children to indicate on a scale what level they are learning at. For example, if two seven-year olds are taking part in the tests and one scores at the seven-year old level and one scores at a four-year level, then the latter would be placed in special classes. I found this interesting because this was the first instance that instead of just blowing off children with learning disabilities, they were given special help to still help them learn.
The second topic I found to be interesting was the Kallikak family. Goddard studied a young woman named Deborah who was placed at a young age in a ward in Vineland. After investigating into the Kallikak family tree and background, Goddard found that Deborah was a member of the “bad” side of the Kallikak family due to a soldier that had a child with a feeble-minded woman then later produced offspring with a stable, good woman, creating both a “good” and “bad” side to the family. The investigation found that on this bad side of the family, nearly all of the bad Kallikak family were field workers for Goddard, while on the good side, only three were found to be just below normal but not to the point of mentally defective. I found this so interesting and quite humorous actually, because Goddard didn’t even take in account the environmental factors that shaped the way these children grew up.
The third topic I found to be of interest was Lewis Terman’s further study on children and their intellectual level. However, instead of focusing on the lower end of the scale, he focused on the high end with children that had superior intellect. He found that children that were essentially gifted in intellect, lacked in other categories such as social and physical traits. I thought this was interesting because it’s as if a person can’t have one thing superior without lacking in other departments of their mind and body.
The least interesting topic I found in this chapter was ergonomics. Although still important, I did not find it interesting to read about how to make a household more efficient.
This chapter built on to past chapters by giving more insight and detail about mental testing. After previously reading about the brain and research about how it works, tests are now introduced and used to place individuals at a level of where their intellectual ability stands.
In helping to better understand the history of Psychology, this chapter helps to illustrate how psychology came of use in the public and how it is being applied to further progress society.