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?
Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
The first thing that I found interesting was about Henry Goddard. I didn’t know were the term moron came from and it was interesting to see where it was first used and where it came from. His mental age system was when someone scored one or two they were are idiot, if they scored between three and seven they were an imbecile, and the third category was moron which is between eight and twelve. I thought it was interesting that he developed the term moron from the Greek language. I also think that it is important to know that is development of this term was a big step in legitimizing the department of psychology. He said that psychologists were the best people to take the role of identifying these types of people.
The second thing that I found interesting was about Leta Hollingworth. I thought it was amazing that she was able to change the view on how people looked at women and also helped with gifted education. Her first hypothesis was the variability hypothesis which was able to change th3e idea that women showed less variation in traits than men and were therefore less suited for highly intellectual tasks. Her second discovery was the periodic function which showed that gender differences were due to the fact that women were allegedly intellectually incapacitated during menstruations.
The third thing that I found interesting was about Lillian Moller Gilbreth. I think that her work in ergonomics was very interesting. Ergonomics is the study of how systems and products can be made most efficient for human use. Her accomplishes in this area were to redesign household tasks. She developed the modern kitchen, pop-up trash cans and side door shelves for refrigerators. She also helped the physically handicapped become productive citizens which I believe is a very great contribution. I think that everyone who works with the handicapped should be thought of and thanked because not many people are up for that kind of task.
One thing that I wasn’t particularly interested in was the part on Munsterberg and Employee Selection. I just couldn’t get into this part of the chapter and found myself spacing off a lot. I have never really been interested in economic psychology, and it seemed to me that that section was basically on economic psychology. I mean it is interesting that he came up with a way of finding who is best for different jobs, but this was just the part that didn’t intrigue me as much as the rest of the chapter.
I think the main thing to take from this chapter to help my understanding of psychologies history is that women were actually becoming a big part of psychology. Also this chapter talks about psychology becoming recognized by people for the science that it was. I think both of those things are very important to understand when learning about the history of psychology.
In the past chapters we have been talking about mainly experimental psychology, and now in this chapter we are moving more towards applied psychology. It discusses how we started out applying psychology to the workplace, the home, and other even the army. The chapters preceding this one didn’t really do that so this one build off of them by basically taking that next step forward in the time line.
I think I would like to learn more about ergonomics because I didn’t really know what that was until I read this chapter. I am interested in learning about what else goes on with it and what has all come from it. When reading this chapter I was curious about the army testing and how they used it today or if they did. I guess I wanted to know how the participants in the army felt about these tests. I also thought about how the women are finally being recognized along with the department of psychology. I thought that was interesting that they are both coming to at the same time. My idea on this chapter was more questions than anything. I was questioning the test that they gave the army, the IQ tests, and the test that would make you a moron, imbecile, or idiot.
Idiot, mental age, Henry Goddard, moron, imbecile, psychology, Leta Hollingworth, variability hypothesis, periodic function, Lillian Moller Gilbreth, ergonomics, Munsterberg, employee selection, economic psychology, applied psychology, experimental psychology, IQ test
The first thing I found interesting in this chapter was the section on The Birth of Intelligence testing. As opposed to Cattell and Galton’s intelligence testing on college students that relied on physical measurements and sensory and perceptual tasks, Hermann Ebbinghaus developed a completion test to assess mental fatigue in school children. Ebbibghaus was eventually able to show that his test distinguished between week and strong student. After coming to this conclusion, Ebbinghas did not continue to develop his research. Instead, Alfred Binet took Ebbinghaus’s idea a bit further. He soon found that psychic properties vary from individual to individual and this is known as individual psychology. In1905, Binet, along with Simon made the first version of an IQ test and then was revised three years later. I found the history of the IQ test interesting because it is something so widely used today. It has been modified multiple times but the concept is the same. I also found it interesting because this relates back Goddard and Elise Island, something we’ve learned about in a previous chapter.
I was also surprised to learn that Goddard published a book called The Kallikak Family: A Study of Feeblemindedness. It was interesting to me to read how Goddard explained the family. There was a “good side” and a “bad side.” Goddard had done so much research to prove that most of this family was feebleminded and the few were “normal”, he completely disregarded the environment in which these people lived in. This topic interested me the most because I was surprised that the family would allow Goddard to publish a book that claimed the over half of the family was feebleminded.
One of the last things that interested me was the Army Testing program. This testing came about because the APA wanted to find a way psychology could be useful in WWI. Yerkes suggested that psychological testing could aid the war effort. It was hoped that these tests would pick out the individuals who were superior and were officer material. By the time the war ended, Yerkes had tested 1,726,966 soldiers. I found this interesting because it seemed that the army was quite quick to rely on these tests. It seems to me that these test we gauge and were trusted because they wanted them to help. Even though two million tests were administrated, the war ended before they were proven effective for the army.
There was nothing that stood to be uninteresting to me. I found the intelligence testing to be very interesting along with how psychology is now being applied. I also found psychology in the business place interesting. Overall, I liked this chapter and found something interesting in all topics.
In this chapter, I thought it was useful to understand how IQ testing came about. I think this is important because IQ test are still used frequently today and are relied on. This chapter built on when we first read about Goddard and how he used the IQ test on immigrants at Elise Island. I would like to lean more Munsterberg and his applied psychology. While reading this chapter, I couldn’t believe that Goddard judged peoples intelligence just by their appearance. I also want to know how he could write a whole book saying how a family is feebleminded. I would like to know what the family thought of Goddard’s finding.
Intelligence testing, Cattell, Galton, Hermann Ebbinghaus, completion test, individual psychology, Goddard, The Kallikak Family: A Study of Feeblemindedness, feeblemindedness, Army testing, Yerkes, applied psychology
The first thing I found interesting in this chapter was the section on The Birth of Intelligence testing. As opposed to Cattell and Galton’s intelligence testing on college students that relied on physical measurements and sensory and perceptual tasks, Hermann Ebbinghaus developed a completion test to assess mental fatigue in school children. Ebbibghaus was eventually able to show that his test distinguished between week and strong student. After coming to this conclusion, Ebbinghas did not continue to develop his research. Instead, Alfred Binet took Ebbinghaus’s idea a bit further. He soon found that psychic properties vary from individual to individual and this is known as individual psychology. In 1905, Binet, along with Simon made the first version of an IQ test and then was revised three years later. I found the history of the IQ test interesting because it is something so widely used today. It has been modified multiple times but the concept is the same. I also found it interesting because this relates back Goddard and Elise Island, something we’ve learned about in a previous chapter.
I was also surprised to learn that Goddard published a book called The Kallikak Family: A Study of Feeblemindedness. It was interesting to me to read how Goddard explained the family. There was a “good side” and a “bad side.” Goddard had done so much research to prove that most of this family was feebleminded and the few were “normal”, he completely disregarded the environment in which these people lived in. This topic interested me the most because I was surprised that the family would allow Goddard to publish a book that claimed the over half of the family was feebleminded.
One of the last things that interested me was the Army Testing program. This testing came about because the APA wanted to find a way psychology could be useful in WWI. Yerkes suggested that psychological testing could aid the war effort. It was hoped that these tests would pick out the individuals who were superior and were officer material. By the time the war ended, Yerkes had tested 1,726,966 soldiers. I found this interesting because it seemed that the army was quite quick to rely on these tests. It seems to me that these test we gauge and were trusted because they wanted them to help. Even though two million tests were administrated, the war ended before they were proven effective for the army.
There was nothing that stood to be uninteresting to me. I found the intelligence testing to be very interesting along with how psychology is now being applied. I also found psychology in the business place interesting. Overall, I liked this chapter and found something interesting in all topics.
In this chapter, I thought it was useful to understand how IQ testing came about. I think this is important because IQ test are still used frequently today and are relied on. This chapter built on when we first read about Goddard and how he used the IQ test on immigrants at Elise Island. I would like to lean more Munsterberg and his applied psychology. While reading this chapter, I couldn’t believe that Goddard judged peoples intelligence just by their appearance. I also want to know how he could write a whole book saying how a family is feebleminded. I would like to know what the family thought of Goddard’s finding.
Intelligence testing, Cattell, Galton, Hermann Ebbinghaus, completion test, individual psychology, Goddard, The Kallikak Family: A Study of Feeblemindedness, feeblemindedness, Army testing, Yerkes.
Chapter 8
The first thing I found interesting was the mental test movement. Galton’s approach to mental testing focused on physical and basic sensory measures, this approach was brought to America by a man of the name of James McKeen Cattell, he created the term “mental testing”. He developed a program in Columbia which failed because there was no correlation with academic performance. However, Cattell played a huge role in professionalizing psychology in America.
The second thing that interested me were the next steps in mental testing was intelligence testing, which focused on cognitive sensory rather than sensory processing. This originated with the Ebbingham completion tests and Binet-Simon tests. Binet test focused on students who were academically challenged, so that special programs could be developed for them. Binets approach to psychology was known as individual psychology, which is the study of individual differences rather than the search for general rules. The Binet tests came to America when it was translated by Henry Goddard. Goddard used the test to classify the academically challenged in terms of mental age and created the term “moron” to identify those with the mental ages between eight and twelve. I certainly didn’t know that the term “moron” was created through psychology. Goddard believed that mental deficiencies were inherited from past generations. Goddard also used his test to help determine if individuals were unfit to come to Ellis Island. His results added to the perception that immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were mentally inferior to those from northern and western Europe.
The third thing I found interesting was the section about applying psychology to business. The first psychologist to apply psychological principles to business was Walter Dill Scott; he wrote books on advertising and how to improve business practices. Hugo Munsterberg created psychological practices on how to select employees. Other psychologist includes Walter Van Dyke Bingham, developed programs for training people in sales and retailing. Lillian Moller Gilbreth she was one of the first to study ergonomics.
These particular sections were interesting to me because I’ve never been exposed to the material I had no knowledge of. I found it really interesting that psychology applied to business in such a big way. I never thought business was related to psychology until I read this section. I’ve started to think that’s there nothing that psychology can’t be related to be cause there’s so many different types of psychology created. I can’t really pick any one thing out that wasn’t interesting because I was intrigued by all the material, simply because I didn’t have any knowledge of almost half the information in the chapter. I think the most useful material from this chapter that will help me understand the history and systems of psychology would be mental testing. Understanding how individual’s intelligence was tested gives a better understanding of how and why it’s used today.
In the past chapters the information was mainly about experimental psychology, and now in this chapter we are moving more towards applied psychology. It discusses how we started out applying psychology to business, the home, and towards ourselves. This chapter just took the next step in the timeline of psychology.
I think I would be interested in learning more about any one of these topics. However, I feel that I was more engaged in the mental testing which further changed into intelligence testing. I am interested to know what made these psychologists focus on mental testing and focus on cognitive and sensory processes.
While reading the section on mental testing I thought about the process used in the school district today. The standardized tests that indicate what grade level an individual is at. The scores would determine if you would need these special programs that the psychologist created many years ago.
Terminology: Galton, mental testing, James McKeen Cattell, intelligence testing, Ebbingham completion tests, and Binet-Simon tests, individual psychology, Henry Goddard, Walter Dill Scott, Hugo Munsterberg, Lillian Moller Gilbreth, ergonomics, experimental psychology, applied psychology
Chapter 9:
While reading this chapter one of the first things that caught my eye was the quote in Cattell's article on inductivism "Psychology cannot attain the certainty and exactness of the physical sciences, unless it rests on a foundation of experiment and measurement." I really thought this quote was so interesting due to the disruption that it's subject had and still has in psychology. Psychology is constantly being criticized due to it's past of previously untestable theories. I hear all the time that I'm part of a soph-science and it's impossible to repeat so many experiments that we shouldn't consider it a valid science. I completely beg to differ. There are so many experiments, studies, and hypothesis being run and thought up right now that are able to be tested and retested. Studies in psychology are criticized every day for their internal and external validity and journals put their pride and reputation into it. However, if a clinical experiment helps a client but cannot be proven or tested, does it really matter? The point of this section and quote were simply very interesting and really showed me how far back this controversy started.
Another thing that I found incredibly interesting was the study done of the Kallikak Family and Goddard's work with "feeblemindedness." I had never really heard of a psychologist or study that was based on feebledmindedness and heredity. The story of Deborah is something that was interesting in the first place, seeing as she was sent to Vineland as a child due to her mother's husband, then seeing her become able to woodwork, sew, and cook, yet not be able to pass for a mental age above nine years old. Also, once I read the bit on Goddard's thoughts about Deborah, my interest became even more so. To think that due to her testing score she would be easily mislead and give in to her wants and desires was sort of crazy to think about. It really makes me think about what Freud would say about this and if he would implement something about the "Id" taking over her life.
Something else that I found very interesting was the section on intelligence testing, specifically the Stanford- Binet. I've always found intelligence testing to be incredibly interesting and have always had a great fascination with how they are created. The Stanford- Binet is a specific one that has been mentioned in probably every psychology class that I've taken, for one purpose or another. The section was great in the sense that it started off going into a good amount of detail about the beginning of intelligence testing and the birth of the IQ. I previously understood that Lewis Terman was the standardizer of the Intelligence Quotient, however it was also very interesting to see what education and circumstances led him to have the psychological experiences that he did. I then really enjoyed reading about how the Stanford-Binet developed and evolved. Seeing how many times Terman and other psychologists were wrong was interesting and then even better when we saw what there final product was, knowing that it's still being developed yet used for testing today.
I really think that the most important thing from this chapter to think about is the whole idea of where the intelligence quotient came from. This is something that is so relevant today and is still used and even talked about in every day conversations. I really think it's something we should fully understand. If we're going to categorize people's intelligence by a test, we should know about the background and how it came to be.
Something that I didn't like while reading this chapter was the section on psychology and business. I really don't like business at all and really think it's very very boring to read about. The title of the section really through me off in the first place, although after reading through it I'd say that my mind wasn't changed. Psychology behind advertising can be very interesting, I'm sure, but I personally don't see it as fascinating.
This built on the last couple chapters. It's really just a continuation on philosophers and psychologists and their contributions to the field of psychology. However, we are now getting further into the meat of psychology and understanding more about relevant theories that are "famous" in the field of psychology and thing that we can relate to.
If I could pick a topic to learn even more about, I would pick intelligence testing. I understand that the Standford Binet is the big one and the most popular, however, I would really like to learn more about other intelligence tests that are used or have previously been used or altered and why they failed.
I sort of went on about my ideas of this chapter in the paragraphs above however another big, but kind of irrelevant idea was what this book was going to teach me. Something that i'm really starting to pick up on is how all of these famous psychologists are related to each other. Not biologically of course, but these scientists are learned from one another, taught one another, or simply attended or taught at the same institutions or universities. It's something to think about for sure.
Terms: Cattell, inductivism, internal and external validity, Goddars, Kallikak family, Vineland, Freud, Id, Intelligence Quotient, Standford-Binet, Lewis Terman
While reading chapter eight, there were a few things that struck my interest pretty hard. I thought this chapter in general was fairly interesting, but there were a few subjects and topics within the chapter that I found particularly interesting.
The first subject that I found interesting was the whole idea of mental testing. Not only was this a great idea, but it sort of got the ball rolling for future mental evaluations and intelligence testing. Mental testing orginally came from Galton's idea to measure individual differences, but then a man by the name of James McKeet Cattell came along, he was a grave supporter of Galton's work and ideologies. But, Binet came from france, and his testing methods surpassed Galton's and Cattell's. Binet published the first version of his test in 1905. His test essentially were to test whether someone had a mental handicap or if they were developing normally. He tested school children and they were grouped by "normal" students or students with an "intelligence disorder." I thought this was an interesting topic because he took intelligence labeling and testing to a whole new leve. By actually labeling kids as basically having a learning disorder and by doing this it gave them the opportunity for alternative learning so they wouldn't get lost in the woodwork. The second thing that I found interesting was right at the beginning of the chapter they were discussing the number of psychology labs and the number of psychologists with a Ph.D. They said that in 1894 the number of psychologists with a Ph.d matched perfectly with the number of labs available, but, in 1900, only six years later, the number of psychologists with a Ph.D outnumbered the amount of labs available 3:1. I found this interesting because in just six years there was a substantial increase in the amount of Ph.D's recieved. It really shows how much the field of psychology was growing and becoming more popular. The third and final thing I'm going to talk about that I found interesting was the testing done at Ellis Island. I thought it was interesting that Goddard came up with the idea to test immigrants before they could enter the country. If they were deemed mentally challenged they couldn't enter the country and had to be sent back to their country of origin. In a sense it was kind of a good idea, only have the "best" enter the country, but on the other hand it was kind of harsh, sending people back because they weren't smart enough according to Goddard. I just thought it was interesting how he came up with the idea and the fact that he actually sent people back to their country.
What I read in this chapter that I think will be most useful in understanding the history of psychology is the whole section on mental testing and Binet's model. I think this is most useful because it was a start to differentiating between the individuals who were a little slower with their mental funtions and the individuals who could function normally. How I think this chapter relates to chapter seven is that this chapter was basically all about the mental testing and the intelligence testing, the last chaper talked about the whole idea of psychology, and the mental testing just branches off of that. It is taking psychology to the next level by weeding out who needs that little bit of extra help.
The topic I would like to learn more about was the testing at Ellis Island. I just thought that was interesting and the whole idea of it was also very interesting and clever as well. Ideas I had while reading this was just that I do remember hearing about the testing at Ellis Island briefly in previous classes and thought it was just as interesting then as I do now.
Terms: Mental Testing, Galton, Cattell, Psychology, Ellis Island, Binet, Intelligence Testing, Psychologists
Reading Blog 9-Chapter 8
I found the information pertaining to Alfred Binet and his intelligence testing to be interesting. We have grown up with IQ tests and it was fun to learn the novelties of something that is so common in our day and age. I was discussing this chapter and the subject of IQ with a friend of mine who is 87, Mary. Mary is a retired teacher and she said that while she was still working, all teachers knew and were aware of all of their students’ scores on the IQ tests and that they altered their teaching style to better suit the needs of the students. Teachers are still aware of the “bright” students along with the students who are struggling in certain areas; however, the IQ test is something that holds little value in our current educational system. Seeing and reading about it come full circle in our chapter was interesting. In addition to that, the book introduces individual psychology to us in this section and compares it to “general” psychology. From individual psychology, Binet coined three terms: idiots, imbecile, and debiles. Idiots were individuals who were severely handicapped and were not able to care for themselves. Imbeciles were higher functioning but still not fully independent. Debiles were children who “were capable of learning, but not in normal school classes.” Today these terms are offensive. The book talked about how instead of using these words, retarded is now used. However, even that is changing and saying retarded is often frowned upon. Here, I wondered if the words used to describe these individuals will always be evolving.
The second thing I found interesting was the section about Henry Goddard and the Immigrants. Goddard actually went to Ellis Island to seek out arriving immigrants that “looked” unintelligent. Goddard hired 2 research assistants, one to pick “defective” immigrants out from the crowd and one to administer the intelligence test. The need for this intelligence testing arose from a cultural feud. The majority of early immigrants (87%) were from northern and western Europe; countries such as Germany and Great Britain. Only 13% came from southern and eastern Europe; countries like Italy and Poland. Eventually, this ratio reversed, making immigrants from southeast Europe the predominant immigrants. This caused the immigrants from northwest Europe to fear that their country was being invaded by people of lesser intelligence. While reading this section, I couldn’t help but think of our current problem with immigration. Many people feel the same way about the amount of Mexican immigrants entering our country. The book said that a total of 555 people were deported in the year 1913 on the grounds of being “feebleminded”. I think most of us would agree that that is immoral. However, the prejudice against Hispanic immigrants still remains in our society.
The last thing I found to be particularly interesting from this section was the close-up about Leta Hollingworth. Leta was the wife of Harry Hollingworth whom we also learned about in this chapter due to his influence on applied psychology. Leta, despite the challenges for women in that time, earned her doctorate degree from Columbia University. After completing her doctorate, she was hired at Columbia as an instructor. There, she started a new class that examined gifted students. This class is said to be one of the first, if not the first, to study and examine the topic. She believed that contrary to the times, gifted children should not be placed into higher grade levels because this limits their interaction with same aged peers. Instead, they should be placed in courses with their gifted peers that focus on the normal curriculum but also incorporate some type of enrichment. This is still seen today in class such as TAG, which was at my school district growing up and stood for talented and gifted. Advocating for gifted students was only one of Leta’s passions. Naturally, she was a feminist. She fought against the stereotypes that women were inferior to men. She published works that debunked the two widely believed myths of variability hypothesis (because of evolution, men are smarter) and periodic function (women are intellectually incapacitated during menstruation). Her life story was very admirable to read about.
The section I found to be least interesting was the section about Munsterberg. It was just rather boring to read but nonetheless, it still held valuable information. Munsterberg worked in the area of industrial (economic as he called it) psychology. I think this is why I had trouble getting through this material because I have never been interested in IO psychology. He focused on trying to fit the work and the workers together, again in hopes of trying to claim psychology as the actual science that it is now widely accepted as—seen in the past few chapters.
This chapter helped me understand how experimental psychology evolved into applied psychology and why applied psychology was so important to psychology’s history. If not for the application of psychology, psychology may not have been recognized as an actual science. Many times, people are using applied psychology in the work place but just do not know it. This chapter highlighted that importance.
Also, the book has mentioned individual psychology and applied psychology a bit in previous chapters but it had never gone into detail. This chapter was useful because it gave me a better understanding of what our author means when he uses those terms.
After reading this chapter, I am interested in looking up current IQ testing that is involved with our arm services along with learning more about Leta Hollingworth and her work with gifted children.
Terms used: Alfred Binet, idiot, imbecile, debile, individual psychology, economic psychology, applied psychology, Leta Hollingworth, gifted students, Munsterberg, variability hypotheses, periodic function, IQ tests, Henry Goddard
The first thing I found interesting about this chapter was the Binet-Simon Scales. These tests were meant to evaluate intelligence and were created by Alfred Binet and his research assistant Theodore Simon. The tests were put together empirically. Students were put into two groups, and intelligent group and an unintelligent group. The students were then given tests. If the tests showed a significant difference between the groups, then it must be a measure of intelligence.
Binet also added age levels to determine how far behind a child might be. This was called a mental level. A child who is eight years old, but reading at the level of most five year old children would have the mental level of five years. Binet believed that children who were two or more years behind their actual age should be put in special classes. Binet also created a way for children to increase their mental age through training.
This section interests me because as I child I remember being given aptitude tests many times. We would be tested on our reading level, on math, etc. These tests have been revised and changed many times, but they are all based off the Binet-Simon scale. I also like the fact that instead of simply testing children, Binet also created techniques for them to improve their mental age if they were unsatisfied.
The second section I found interesting was the one on the Kallikaks. This was a family that was studied by Henry Goddard. Goddard started his research on this family when he met one of the children in a psych ward. Deborah had a mental age of nine years and could not read very well or solve math problems. Goddard started to trace her family history and found several interesting things. The family was divided into two parts. One half of the family seemed of normal intelligence, and the other had frequent occurrences of delinquents. It turned out that a distant relative had sex with a random girl in a bar and got her pregnant. She was thought to be a delinquent, and many of her heirs were delinquents as well. This distant relative eventually settled down with a normal girl and had many children. All the heirs on this side of the family seemed normal and successful. This seemed to prove that delinquency is hereditary.
The problem with this was that Goddard was the one who decided who was delinquent or not. If someone on the good side of the family made a bad decision, it was left at that. If someone from the bad side made a bad decision, it was because they were a delinquent. There seems to have been a lot of bias during this research, which brings the results into question.
I liked this section because it shows just how subjective research can be. If it is not done correctly, than you can have errors that invalidate your work. It is important for the researcher to be unbiased. For this to have been done correctly, Goddard should not have known which side of the family people where from when he evaluated their actions for delinquency.
Another section I enjoyed was the one on Goddard and the immigrants. This section talks about the intelligence testing Goddard and his associates used at Ellis Island. Goddard would test incoming immigrants to decide if they were mentally defective or not. Many times Goddard would have to use an interpreter because the immigrants were unable to speak English. Because of this intelligence testing, thousands of immigrants were sent back to their countries of origin.
This section interests me because I think this was a horrible mistake. In order for most immigrants to get to the United States, they would have been traveling on a boat for weeks. They would not have had a lot of space on the ship, they would be eating old food, and living among people who were sick. This is not the right time to test these people for intelligence. They must have been very confused and scared. I believe that it must have been pure luck whether someone was able to pass or not. If you were in better control of yourself at this moment in time, then you might have passed. Goddard and his associates would also pick people who looked confused or ill to study, because these seemed like less intelligent people. These are the people who would do worse on the test because of the multiple emotions they dealing with at the time.
One section I did not find interesting was the one on Walter Van Dyke Bingham. Bingham was an industrial psychologist. He graduated from Chicago, and then traveled to Europe to study. He also went on to spend time at Harvard and Columbia. For nine years, Bingham was in charge of the Division of Applied Psychology at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. Bingham then focused on applying psychology to business. He produced a standard application form, interview questions, and recommended tests that should be given to applicants.
This section does not interest me because I am not really business minded. I think it is interesting that we didn't have a standard application or interview questions before, and that these things came from applied psychology, but all in all this section didn't capture my interest. This is most likely because he didn't conduct new experiments or make any ground breaking discoveries.
The thing I think that will be most useful in this chapter to understanding psychology will be all the information on intelligence testing. This was a whole movement in psychology and it had lasting impact on our nation. Intelligence testing was used to decide who could enter our country and who could not.
This chapter builds onto previous chapters by talking about what was happening to psychology at this time. In the last chapter psychology was just getting its footing, now it is being applied to society and is gathering respect as a field of study.
I would like to learn more about Goddard and his tests. It interests me that he found a family he considered delinquent and studied them. I also am interested in his testing of immigrants. I wonder if he had biases toward certain nationalities and tested them on purpose.
While reading this chapter I was disgusted a lot by Goddard. I didn't like that he tested immigrants, or that he looked at a particular family and decided which ones were delinquents. I thought a lot about what I have learned in Research Methods and how his testing was flawed. I also thought about how he could improve his methods to get rid of bias.
terms:
Binet-Simon scale, Alfred Binet, Theodore Simon, empirically tested, mental level, Kallikaks, Henry Goddard, delinquency, intelligence testing, mentally defective, Walter Van Dyke Bingham
The first thing I found interesting was the section on James Cattell and that he used himself as the only subject during specific experiments in which he studied the effects of various drugs on the behavior and consciousness states after taking the drug and even saying the doses we ingested “were perhaps the largest doses ever taken without suicidal intent”. I found this amusing and interesting for many reasons, one being obviously with this type of experiment you yourself shouldn’t be a subject and it’s not really ethical in today’s world; but again that brings me to my opinion of we had people doing unethical experiments like this long ago and it all played out like that for a reason. Something else that interested me was Cattells mental tests, when he correlated his testing results with academic performance and founded that there was no correlation that would be really devastating. After all in the previous chapters we had learned about short term memory testing, time testing, reaction-time, pressure points, sensation areas, all of that and to have your; basically entire academic teachings be thought of as now wrong because mathematically they don’t correlate would have been mind boggling. In the same sense though, this would have opened up an entire new set of questions for the field of psychology.
The second topic that interested me was the section referring to Henry Goddard, I remembered learning about him some time ago, although I didn’t remember this until I read the section on ‘Goddard and the Immigrants’ which basically just stated how he went to Ellis Island in which the immigrants were transported to and then tested to see if they were suited to enter the country. Well Goddard’s claim was to many “high-grade” defectives were being allowed in. So by observation Goddard and two assistants would pick people out who simply looked defective; claiming that their technique would be 90% accurate. Many immigrants were deported because of Goddard’s data collected on them for being feebleminded and it raises the question to me have we as a society learned anything from this form of testing. I’d say yes and no, still do this day I’ve heard people calling immigrants “dumb” because they can’t communicate effectively and I think we forget that just because someone can’t do one thing “up to par” doesn’t mean that their unintelligent; perhaps were the feebleminded ones for thinking that in the first place.
The last major thing I found to interest me was the section on once again a little grey box about a woman names Leta Hollingworth, she pretty much tore apart the variability hypothesis and really brought about a program for opportunities in an academic setting for ‘gifted children’. I also found it interesting being in a time in which woman were inferior to men was part of the feminist movement; while still maintaining a family life. In one of her studies she found that there were no gender differences and no traceable differences for woman on periodic function; which states woman are inferior because of our monthly cycle.
One thing that I found a bit boring, but still informational was the section on Munsterberg and Employee selection, I understand more after taking certain classes why this is actually a beneficial area to the economy and work force, but it’s not something I would want to do every day as a job. However, I do understand how it’s important in the field of psychology and in life because to many times I have heard my elders repeatedly tell me that I should love what I do not how much I make.
I feel like this chapter ultimately helped or is helping me understand the importance of intelligence testing and the field of psychology. The entire movement of intelligence testing during this time period changed the way our nation functioned, and still does today. It just reminds me of the fact that were so focused on how well or the letter grade a student receives on a test, but does that really determine how intelligent someone is. People learn different and see things differently, so how can we determine what’s an intelligent answer versus a non-intelligent one. Obviously that question has room for debate on both sides, but I think these chapters just made me really see where our testing and scale charts evolved from over time.
I’d say this chapter didn’t necessarily ‘build’ off of the other chapters because those focused on experimental psychology where this chapter focused on applied psychology which focuses on how we can apply psychology and what we already know about it to the work place, home environments and even some aspects of military. Although other chapters were important on the grounds of getting an allover knowledge for how psychology came about, I feel like this chapter started off the vital information of the field.
Although I didn’t particularly like him, I think learning more about Goddard and going into to depth and understand in today’s sense of what he was trying to accomplish with his immigrant testing and The Kallikaks study. Obviously he was wrong but in some ways did his beliefs or ‘findings’ help establish what we know today. We know now that environment plays a huge role and we also know that yes some characteristics we obtain are due to genes.
Some ideas I had were what if Cattell had never tested his mental test with correlations to academic performance? What would have been Goddards findings or conclusions in The Kallikaks study had he not been a child who came from a wealthy background.
Terms: applied psychology, experimental psychology, Cattell, Mental Tests, short term memory testing, time testing, reaction-time, pressure points, sensation areas, intelligence testing, Goddard, Goddard and the Immigrants, Henry Goddard, The Kallikaks, Munsterberg, periodic function.
The first thing I found interesting in chapter 8 was Goddard and Ellis island. I found myself thinking how crazy Ellis island had to have been in the early 1900's. As many as ten thousand people a day were trying to immigrate to our country. I thought it was interesting that even though Goddard's systems showed some flaws, the island decided to let him expand on it and basically gave him the ultimate say on whether someone was mentally fit enough to enter the country. I think it is insane to give one person that much power with little evidence to back up there system. I think that Ellis island was looking for any fast way that they could sort through the island. I believe Goddard provided them with that answer so they may have looked past some of the flaws. In a sense, Goddard was taking over the responsibility of this task. The officials at Ellis island were probably more than willing to give up this task. He may or may not of made some mistakes in judgement but the tests did not seem like an adequate measure of intelligence at the time.
The next thing I found interesting was the section on Terman and his ideas about a meritocratic country. I like the fact that his goals were aimed at the betterment of society. He aimed to insure that people in leadership positions were fit to be there. I think this is a really important concept. I would argue that today we place less emphasis on IQ and traits and more on money and the ability to raise it. I like the fact that he even wanted to help less gifted individuals. He basically wanted everyone to use there unique abilities to aid society in whatever way that meant. I do not like the idea of labeling people because they might not of reached the point of wanting to be educated. All people can do great things and the label may sway the individual to fit into that role. I also do not like the fact of using IQ tests to be a ultimate decision. Some people have great people skills that an IQ test may not pick up. Also, some people just struggle with the idea of a pen and paper test.
The third thing that I thought was interesting was Yerkes and his work with the army in world war one. I tend to think that psychology can help us made better decisions in all areas of life. I was happy to read that it was being put to use to help us in such a massive thing such as war. I think it was a great idea to test people coming into the army to see what would suit them best. This cut down a lot on what could have been wasted time in the future where soldiers may be transferred a lot. I also like that he created two versions so they it was not biased toward more educated people. I think it speaks to Yerkes's character when he says he did not want to take on the daunting project but did because he felt the duty to do so. His team of psychologists did a great time on such a huge tasks. I think these alpha and beta tests saved us a lot of money and wasted time by maximizing everyone's skills.
There really was not a section that I did not find interesting. I really like studying how to apply psychology to the real world. I think sometimes we get so caught up in labs and experiments that we forget to see how it applies to real life. What good is psychology if you do not apply it to real world concepts in order to better people and society. It is important to keep looking for new ways for psychology to be applied to better different areas and fields.
I think this chapter gave me a better understanding of how psychology does apply to the real world. It shows the problems that were helped solved using psychology and mental testing. Some of our problems today could probably be steered in the right direction with the help of some form of psychology. It is important to learn from these past situations so we can so how it can help us in the future.
This chapter built on the others by taking some of the concepts we learned about and seeing how they were used to solve problems in the early century. It shows us that we can apply newly learned concepts to solve new problems.
I would really like to learn more about Ellis island and the processes they used. I would like to try to imagine how hectic it was in the early 1900's. It would be interesting to see more numbers of who went through the island and where they came from. A lot of us could probably trace an ancestor back to being at Ellis island.
Most of my thoughts about this chapter had to do with IQ tests. I think they can be very beneficial but we should not use them as the only means of intelligence. We should be careful not to overlook certain things and label children as gifted or unfit so that they do not try to fulfill these roles.
terms: Goddard, Yerkes, meritocratic, Terman, IQ tests, Ellis island, intelligence, mentally fit and unfit, gifted, roles, labeling, alpha and beta tests, army
The first thing I found interesting in chapter eight was how Alfred Binet built on Hermann Ebbinghaus's experiments and ideas, and formed new ideas. Binet's Binet/Simon Scale was very interesting, for it focused more on children and more subjects than just Ebbinghaus himself. The Binet/Simon Scale tested children from age 3 to 13, which was Binet's idea of solving the diagnosis problem. The test determined the mental level of the children, and the range in which they were preforming at. Binet believed a child who was functioning 2 years behind their actual age should be placed in special classes. I find this interesting because this had a huge impact on the schooling system many of us are familiar with now. Programs have developed from this idea, the "No Child Left Behind" program being one that I am familiar with because it was used in my school system back home.
To coincide with the idea of having special classes for those with special needs, I also found Leta Hollingworth's studies on gifted children to be interesting as well. I also found inspiring that she took it upon herself to directly attack the beliefs that men were superior to women in a intellectual sense. Going back to the gifted children, Hollingworth believed that children should be in an environment that met the needs of the gifted children and should be spending time with their gifted peers. Essentially, Hollingworth is responsible for the many gifted and talents programs my school had to offer. I am directly affected by Hollingworth's ideas, for I spent many years in these programs, learning and working at a higher level for multiple subjects. I also found Hollingworth's stand for feminism to be interesting as well. It was very interesting to read about her challenging the beliefs of variability hypothesis and periodic function. Hollingworth discovered the variability hypothesis was based on no empirical data, so she set out to disprove it, gathering data on 2000 newborns . Hollingworth found the amount of variability between boys and girls in physical size was the same for both genders. Second, Hollingworth studied 23 women, comparing their performance with a group of men. Hollingworth found no differences tracable to periodic function. I find these tests very interesting because they made a point against beliefs that had been taught for so long, and also made a head way for women in the future.
The third thing I found interesting was the beginning usage of the word moron. The word had derived from the Greek work "foolish". Henry Goddard believed that was word was needed in order for the public to understand that there is a special group of children. I find this interesting because this word is now has a derogatory connotation now.
The thing I found least interesting was the Army Alpha and the Army Beta. I had just learned about these
tests in my Applied Psych last week so it was a repeat of previously learned knowledge. Although I did find it interesting that they formed two different tests, it was very tempting to skip over this section to read about new information. However, the controversy over these tests and their results is interesting and I hope to learn more information about them later.
Overall this chapter is useful in understanding the history of psychology because it involved studies that were used to "disprove" previous beliefs. In psychology we are always finding data and interpreting this data. When we receive new data, we use this information to form hypotheses and ideas of why this occurred. Leta Hollingworth is a great example of this, and shows that we are still doing experiments to find a better understanding of previous beliefs and hypotheses. Also, this section deals a lot with the mental ability of humans, whether that's children or adults. The mental ability, or why and how people think the way they do, is a major component to psychology in general. Learning about the beginnings of those tests is important in understanding how humans think.
One thing I found that this chapter builds on is that Binet used the ideas of Ebbinghaus to form his scale and studies. If we had not read about Ebbinghaus in the previous chapters, we may not have had a full understanding of the nonsense syllables studies and the outcome and influence they had on Binet.
One thing I would like to learn more about is Leta Hollingworth and her studies. They were very interesting and inspiring to me so I would want to learn more about how she conducted the studies and the effects these outcomes had on the overall public and their ideas on gender differences.
While reading this chapter, I found myself thinking a lot about the special and gifted children. I found it interesting that these topics date so far back and I found myself wondering when the impact of these beliefs began. Obviously they are a huge impact now within the school system and the press society puts on academics, but I wonder if these impacts began forming quickly after these studies or did it take time for these studies to impact the school system.
Terms Used: Alfred Binet, Binet/Simon Scale, mental level, Leta Hollingworth, variability hypothesis, periodic function, moron, Henry Goddard, Army Alpha, Army Beta, nonsense syllables
After reading chapter 8 there were somethings that I did enjoying readign about, and somethigs that I did not enjoy reading. I liked the section about Cattell, and why he wsa important psychology. I liked the fact that he built off the ideas of Galton. That seems to be the theme of the book, psychology, and life. He was the first to implemtent a mental test, and really started a revolution. I also liked Binet, and his contributions to psychology. Like Cattell bulit off Galton, Binet built off of Cattell's ideas. Binet expanded on Cattell's ideas, and expanded on the mental testing. Binet's big difference was making the test more qualified, and it soon became an intelligence test. He was also the founder of this thing called indivdual psychology which aloud testing to become more idivudualized to each person allowing them to excel. The third thing that I liked about the chapter was Goddard and his expantion on the intelligence testing. I specifically liked the section on the Kallikaks. This was interesting to read about because Goddard now is presenting the idea that mental intelligence is genetic. Secondly I enjoyed the section on immigrants. Liked you had talked about before in class, this section is about Goddard and him applying his intelligence test to immigrants coming to America. The one thing that I did not like about the chapter was Dewey. I believe that the section was about this new applied psychology that he was trying to create. This section did not hold my interest mainly because it was boring, and it was not as good as the other sections that the chapter talked about. I will also go on to takl about what I thought was the most impotant thing in the understadning of psychology, how it relates to later chapters, what I would like to know more about, and lastly, what some of my curiousities were while reading the chapter.
The first thing that grabbed my interest while reading the chapter was Cattell and his mental testing that he developed. His work seemed to stem off of Galton's. Galton had trouble applying a mental test to children. Galton's goal was to test fatigue in school children, but failed in doing so. His reason for failure was that he was not using the proper techniques to assess them. The two point thresehold method was testing sensory effects, and not cognitive strain. So, Cattell, comes in and tries to figure out Galton's problem. From reading the chapter Cattell seemed to be a boy genious. Gradutating with honors at his fathers University as the age of 20. After graduating with his gradute degree he was giving the job as head of the psych department at the tender age of 31. Cattell's first research, and main research was on his students at Penn. Cattell applied his mental tests to his students in hopes that there would be a direct correalation to the results of the tests, and the students academic performance. The results that came back were not what Cattell wanting to see. Turns out there was not correlation between the students test results and their academic performance. This did not make sense to Cattell, but made perfect sense to me. The tests that he was giving measured things such as height, weight, wingspan. Nothing to do with a persons mental performace. The man that tries to get to the bottom of both Galton's and Cattell's problem was Binet.
The second thing thing that I enjoyed about this section was Binet and his implementation of his completion test. Like Cattell Binet was trying to develop a mental test that would be a great predictor of academic performance. Binet used a different method and did most of his research on school children rather than the Unversity students that Cattell was working on. Binet was trying to figure out why some school children were becoming mentally fatigued at school during a five hour span. Binet, knew that Galton was wrong about the two point thereshold theory because it was a sensory test, and not a test of cognitive ability. Binet set out to a way that you coul test out someones's mental capacity. During his research he worked a lot on his two daughters. He found out that there was not much of a difference between his daughters scores and the scores of his adult patients. Futhering his believe that Galton was wrong with his sensory testing. Binet wanted to focus more on one person at a time. He did this by coming up with individual psychology. This allowed him to compare individuals to a standard. Of course there needed to be a way to measure individuals. This was the main problem coming from Galton and Cattell. Binet decided to give names to people who were not up to pair after their testing. Idiots were people who were considered severely handicapped. Imbeciles was the name that was given to individuals who were more capapble, but still not independent people. Lastly, debiles was given to people that were weak, and lesser than what a normal student was. Binet coined the term mental level. The best example that the book gave was someone who was two years behind their mental level was considered debiles. These were children that needed special schooling.
The third thing that I liked about the chapter was Goddard. Goddard basically applied Binet's ideas to America. A big example of this was the term that Goddard coined, mental age. He used this term instead of mental level to descibe the scoring level of a person. The change was that someone was not a debiles anymore, but an idiot. Huge upgrade. Also Goddard came up with the term moron, which reffered to people that were not intelligent, but society could not see the difference. The one thing that I really liked reading about was the kallikaks. Goddard was researching deborah kallikak at an institute for the mental challenge called Vineland. Debroah was more unintelligent than the rest of her peers. Deborah could not read over the age of 9, but was good at things such as sowing, woodwork, and other things. Goddard then turned to her family to see if there was any reasons why she was mentally challenged. Turns out that Deborahs great great grandfather slept with a mentally challenged person and the line of mentally ill people followed. In the book this side of the family was classified as the bad side. The second half of the story goes on to say that her great great grandfahter went on to marry another women and start a new family. The bad side lady kept his last name of Kallikak anyway. The thing Goddard found out is that the bad side of the family had many people in it that were mentally ill, while the bad side had fewer people that were mentally ill. This lead Goddard to believe that mental intelligence was genetic. He was later questioned for his research for many reasons. Goddard never took into effect that the enviornment played a role in the was the Kallikak's developed mentally. Also, the fact that the bad side had much more infant mortalities that the good side. Goddards case soon became one based on privillege vs poverty. Another thing that I enjoyed about Goddard was the immigrant section of the chapter. We had talked about Goddard and his reputation at Ellis island when the immigrants came over. Goddard applied his intelliengce test to the immigrants that were coming to the US. The US wanted immigrants that were smart, and not ones that were mentally ill. The perfect man for the job was Goddard, but the way the he picked the mentally ill was questionable. Goddard picked people who looked as if they were mentally ill and gave the test to them. This did not work because you can not judge a persons intelligence on their looks alone.
The section of the chapter that I did not find to interesting was the Dewey section. I did not like this section because it was not entertaining to me. It seemed like the book was trying to finsih up a section about him from a later chapter. Dewey was an applied psychologist that contributed his expertise to areas such as education, business, medicine, and the law. The only reason that I could find Dewey significant was because intelligence testing has to do with all of those areas. Those areas needed a way to test ones intelligence. An example that I could think of is that the law needed a way to test to see if someone was mentally ill of not. Another example that I could think of is that businesses need a way to see if someone is a good future employee by testing their mental ability. Now that I think of it apllied psychology is important to this chapter because without it there would be no need for mental testing in the world.
The thing that I think was most useful in the understanding of psychology was the section Goddard. He was very important to psychology because of his development of intelligence testing in America, and his application. I think that his mistakes in beliveing that intelligence was gentic futhered the psychology feild. Also his mistake in the immigrant testing helped psychology everywhere because it told us that one can not be judged on their intelligence based of looks. Goddard was wrong in many ways, but his mistakes helped the psychology field, and lead to things like the IQ test.
The way that this chapter built off the last chapter is the same as the chapters before this one. All of these chapters have these psychologists that expand off the ideas of the other psychologists before them. In this chapter alone there where three men that advandced the ideas of the other to develop intelligence testing. The rate at which people are advancing others thoughts is happening faster and faster as the chapters go on. I think this is because the times are becoming more advanced, and people are hearing other peoples ideas much faster. This allows other psychologist to analyze them much faster, and then quickly come up with counter arguements. This rate will continue to increase as we read on through the book.
The topic that I would like to know more about would probably be Goddard. In my last couple topical blogs I talked about the men behind the theories. Thsi really interests me because I belive it gives me an understanding of why they came up with their respective theories. So I would like to research more into Goddard and why he wanted to research intelligence, and why he thought it was important to psychology.
Ideas that I had while reading the chapter had to do mainly with the naming of the mentally ill. I know that the word retarded is a harsh one the we use today, but that is in no comparision of how they use to label the mentally challenged. Words like idiot, moron, debiles, and imbeciles all seem like they are offensive. I am glad that there are better names to label people who are mentally challenged today. Also on a side note, the picture of Deborah Kallikak will haunt my dreams tonight.
Terms:Dewey, applied psychology, Galton, Cattell, two point thresehold, mental test, intelligence testing, completion test, Binet, individual psychology, mental level, Goddard, mental age, Kallikaks, Deborah, moron, Idiots(debiles, imbeciles), immigrants, IQ testing
Chapter eight revolved around the new use of psychology. I found this chapter overall interesting, and it also felt like a fresh topic for this textbook. The three things that I found most interesting were Galton and Cattell’s idea’s on intelligence being inherited, the classification on intelligence over time, and Alfred Binet’s development of special education. I was really surprised to learn about the effect of psychology on education and that I have not learned about it in my past education classes. The first area of Galton and Cattell and intelligence was interesting in many ways. The first idea for mental testing had to be a very controversial topic. The increase of laboratories and professionals with a Ph. D level of education makes me think that there are some upcoming discoveries and interesting studies in the future. Another thing that I was thinking is that they were partially correct, intelligence is somewhat due to inheritance and genes. Although, the experiment with the freshman from Columbia showed no relationship surprised me. It really makes you think about the idea of nurture and nature. The idea of intelligence and how it developed over time is a great example of how fast things can change. The quote from the text, “The more one could measure, the more one will know,” is a perfect fit for this time. The validity of their measure, however, is at question. They first believed that those who are under an intelligence level of competence should be eliminated. The more I study in college, the more I realize Hitler was not the only one who wanted to eliminate an entire race. He is just the only one well known for it, and perhaps if people knew that it was more common they would have a more educated outlook. I just found it interesting that at first we wanted to shun them and categorize them with names and after short time passed we developed a special education for them to become effective. And by them, I am referring to those under the intelligence level of the average. The term, moron, coined by Goddard is still common today. I found the study of the children in vineland and Kallikaks to be very interesting as well. I would like to learn more about this study as well. Learning about the one young women’s story makes me curious about others experience. This was also my first experience learning more about Ellis Island. Goddand literally stood outside the coast and looked at people to deicide if they were effective or defective. He also confirmed a 90% accuracy while doing so. This is a major part of psychology that is beneficial to know about to understand the subject. It supprised me that only 1-2% were not accepted. This also lead me into questioning the other psychologists in that era, what did they think of this? Obviously not enough to stop it! I also thought it was interesting that it took so long for someone to want to study the gifted. Terman began the longest longitudinal study over the gifted, and meritocracy. I would like to learn more about this study as well. I was also surprised that he put morals before IQ on the scale of what is most important. I found many things interesting in this chapter. Most of our lives are shaped by IQ if you think about it in an indirect way. They ended the chapter with a lesson: importance of application. This I truly think sums up the chapter.
Key Terms: Goddard, Moron, Galton, Cattell,vineland, Kalliakaks, Ellis Island, Terman, Gifted, meritocracy, Intelligence,
After reading this week’s chapter there were a few things I found interesting. The first thing was the list of Cattell’s mental tests. I found them interesting because they all seem kind of silly. I thought it was cool to see how little they knew back then. They are discovering things that we know today as common knowledge and knowledge that is superfluous. The next thing that I found interesting was the Binet-Simon Scales. I found it interesting how they categorized mental disabilities so long ago. They had three different categories: idiots, imbeciles, and debiles. It just amazes me how naive people were back then about the mentally ill. If we treated them today anywhere near the way we treated them back then it would cause a riot. I also found Goddard’s book on The Kallikaks interesting. The terminology of feeblemindedness and the idea of eugenics just blows my mind. Hitler wanted eugenics to build a better race so I can’t believe that other people thought the same thing. The subject I found least interesting was ergonomics. Business doesn’t interest me that much and the psychology behind it that makes it most efficient just isn’t what I want to do with psychology.
The most useful thing in this chapter is the intelligence testing. We use those tests still to this day for college entrance so I feel that it was a very influential part of psychology. This chapter built on the other chapters by applying things learned in previous chapters and applying them to real life. I would like to learn more about the development of the system for the mentally ill. I am in abnormal psychology right now too and I am learning about treatments we used to perform on the mentally ill and they were drastic. It just interests me the history of the care for mentally ill because it is so crazy compared to what we would allow today. While I was reading this chapter I was thinking about the accuracy of intelligence tests. I was thinking about the ACT’s and SAT’s and if they accurately measure what we know.
Terms: Cattell’s mental tests, Binet-Simon Scales, idiots, imbeciles, debiles, The Kallikaks, feeblemindedness, ergonomics, eugenics
The first topic I found interesting was James Cattell. Although we touched base on this psychologist briefly in chapter 4, I did not remember much of what I learned so it was very interesting learning more about this man since he accomplished so much. Cattell was raised in an academic environment, completed his doctorate in psychology, continued on to learn medicine in Cambridge, but after being exposed to Galtonian ideas he gained a big interest in laboratory experimenting. A few things he experimented with were reaction time, effects of drugs on behavior/consciousness, and lastly mental testing. I found it very interesting how Galton spent so much time researching mental testing and when he tried to tie in a mathematical correlation to prove it effects one’s academic performance which reflected mental ability. When I was reading this I was wondering what Cattell’s hypothesis may have been for this subject/what types of people he thought would score best on mental tests and have the highest correlations of performance academically.
The next subject I found interesting, and that I would like to learn more about was Binet’s research on individual psychology and tests he developed to determine people’s mental processes and ability/disabilities. The reason I liked this section so much was because it was fascinating to me how he categorized those who had disabilities as idiots, imbeciles, and debiles (weak ones). I wondered if these terms were already coined and if he just put new meanings to them or if he made up the words and today they are used as slang because of it. The way he categorized these made me also wonder if people ever questioned the rulings of the tests, or if they were offended. He measured ones mental level by testing them on 58 tests and determining how far ahead or behind they were from a normal age and if they were more than two years behind they were put into special classes.
The last topic I found interesting was on Leta Hollingworth because once again being a woman, I am greatly inspired by feminists and I think Leta came up with amazing research disproving sexist men from her day. Leta disproved first the variability hypothesis which was mentioned earlier on in the book by studying 2000 newborns, comparing their sizes, and coming to the conclusion that even though boys are born slightly larger than girls, the amount of variability in physical size was the same for both sexes. Next she disproved the periodic function by measuring 23 women’s speed, accuracy of perception, controlled association, steadiness, speed of voluntary movement, fatigability, and rate of learning while they were menstruating and found no gender difference. The claim she made relating to women being unfit for work while menstruating, yet they aren’t relieved from the labors of cooks, scrub women, mothers, nursemaids, housekeepers, or dancers was so true and it made me laugh. While reading this section I wondered how her husband felt about all of this, if he was supportive of her, or if he was scared about her going against social norms. Also with the whole section on gifted children I couldn’t decide whether or not she was right about placing advanced children in grades above would actually have a negative effect since they wouldn’t spend as much time with age related peers. I wondered what her pro’s and con’s list would be and some ideas I came up with were maybe it would cause them to mature too fast and they would lose their childhood.
The section I found the least interesting to read about related psychology to business. I am not interested in business at all and I thought the section on Munsterberg and employee selection and industrial efficiency was very long and boring. I understand some of this is important, especially stuff on advertising and selling products but since I have no interest in this field I could not relate whatsoever.
I think that the most important thing we learned in this chapter was about IQ and mental testing because it is still used today in a variety of areas. This proves to be especially important while educating children and this history behind it shows how we have advanced psychologically, and scientifically, and most importantly ethically. We have learned how to correctly label gifted/slow students, and we have found effective ways to teach them.
This chapter related back to previous chapters in many ways. The names of several psychologists came up including Galton, Cattell, Goddard, and several others. Also many universities that we learned about were included in this chapter and new psychologists we learned about were identified to have attended those as well. Lastly the issues on gender inequality were brought up again and theories like the variability hypothesis, periodic function, along with intelligence testing, Ellis Island, and experimental psychology.
Terms: Cattell, mental test, IQ, mental level, individual psychology, idiot, imbecile, debile, variability hypothesis, periodic function, Leta Hollingworth, Binet, Munsterberg.
One interesting topic from chapter 8 was James Cattell, who earned his doctorate like many before him in Germany. While there he was most interested in Galton’s study of mental testing and individual defenses, he would later bring these ideas to America. In his earlier educational days, Cattell was influenced by philologist Francis Marsh, who studied the nature and history of language. As a Baconian inductivist, Marsh knew the importance of collecting data in able to reach a solid conclusion. Cattell would later apply this Baconian technique of collecting data with his own research. He also measured a person’s reaction time when identifying different letters; he came to the conclusion that the difficult letters that took the longest to recognize should be changed so everyone could understand them. I found it interesting that Cattell studied how drugs affect behavior and consciousness. By using himself as a guinea pig, he experimented with levels of caffeine, morphine, opiates, and hash. He stated, “Perhaps the largest doses ever taken without suicidal intent.” It makes me wonder how he was able to prevent himself from becoming dependent on any of the drugs, which might have been legal at the time. After messing with his mind, Cattell continued his reaction time research. Collecting data he focused on factors such as attention, practice, and fatigue. In 1889, Cattell took the position as professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. After establishing a laboratory there he began using fundamental measurements with his reaction time research. However, Cattell was not interested in physical measurements such as height and weight; instead he was interested in measuring mental capabilities, in what he called a mental test. In 1915, Cattell was fired from Columbia University for being too assertive and opinionated. He was also brave enough to speak his mind against the government’s policy on forcing individuals into combat, particularly WWI.
The second interesting topic was Henry H. Goddard, he studied genetic psychology at Clark University. After he began teaching, he was invited to the Vineland Training School. It was an institution in New Jersey for children who were said to be feeble-minded or rather mentally challenged. He set up a laboratory and tested the children. I find it interesting that Goddard translated the Binet-Simon tests into English and applied it the children at Vineland. Mental age was determined by a child’s mental abilities. The term idiot was used for those who scored a mental age of one or two years old. The term imbecile was used for the mental age between three and seven. Goddard thought the term feeble-minded described all spectrums and mental handicaps; instead he used the term moron, which meant foolish. This was used for children with a mental age of eight to twelve. Although I do not care for the derogatory terms, psychology would be taken more seriously, because psychologists would be responsible for determining if a member of society was considered “normal” or feeble-minded. With his knowledge of genetics, Goddard believed intelligence was an inherited trait, and feeble-mindedness happened because of a single recessive gene.
The third interesting topic was Leta Hollingworth. Once again during a time when women were still expected to stay home and not taken seriously, Hollingworth overcame many obstacles to earn a doctorate degree from Columbia University. Her biographer would later term her as the “mother of gifted education.” However, she would still have to overcome more obstacles when the Board of Education would not let her teach just because she was a married woman. Since Hollingworth was not able to teach, she decided to take graduate courses. In 1916, Hollingworth earned a PhD from Columbia’s Teacher’s College, where she worked under Thorndike. Afterward she was hired by the same university as an instructor. Eventually, Hollingworth created a new course called Education 254, where she was interested in the “fortunate variants, the generally and specifically gifted.” In other words, it was a study for gifted children. Hollingworth wrote the first text book for a gifted education titled, Gifted Children: Their Nature and Nurture.” Hollingworth was also an advocate for a woman’s right to vote. With strong feminist beliefs, Hollingworth challenged the variability hypothesis and periodic function. It was interesting to know that she was able to disclaim the variability hypothesis on account of no true empirical data to back it up. After studying 2000 newborns, she discovered the only physical difference was boy babies could be a bit bigger in size at birth. Variability was essentially the same between males and females. It was also interesting to know she studied the subject of periodic function for her doctoral dissertation, she found that there are no physical or mental gender differences between men and women.
This chapter relates to the previous ones by showing how important laboratory research has become with applying psychology in America through collecting data, testing, and measuring different variables.
Hugo Munsterberg is the topic I would like to learn more about, he was very influential in applying psychology. He was also interested in improving the working conditions for many over-worked and underpaid members of society.
Terms: James Cattell, mental test, Henry H. Goddard, moron, Leta Hollingworth, variability hypothesis, periodic function
Bre Gibbs
One thing that I found interesting in the chapter was that it was not until the 20th century and not until there was dramatic technological change, that Americans were becoming accustomed to the idea that science should be in their lives. Many people, even in the 19th century new that technology meant progress and progress meant bettering people’s lives.
Another thing I found interesting in the book is how similar psychologist today and then had to go about trying to find funding. I think it is very similar that psychologist needs to prove to Universities and laboratories that the research they want to do will benefit people and have a successful outcome to get funding. I also think many psychologists today have to do other forms of work besides just working in a lab to help supplement their income. I think still today many psychologists teach courses and write articles and books to supplement their income.
Another thing I found interesting was the mental testing that Cattell did early in his studies. I think it was interesting that he did studies on how long it took to distinguish between letters. I also think it is a little crazy that he wanted to change letters that were hard to distinguish and make them different. I wish someone now in our time, say that the English language is too hard to learn and change it. I also think its interesting that even so long ago people knew that various drugs had effects on behavior like caffeine, morphine, hashish, and opium. The craziest and most interesting part about this is Cattell tested the effects on himself. This might be the reason why he didn’t get his renewed fellowship and John Hopkins. I Might have to look into this for my topical blog and find out why John Dewey got the fellowship over Cattell at John Hopkins.
Another thing I found interesting was the studies done on five year olds to see if the 5 hour morning of school was making children fatigued and irritable. I can’t believe how many trials and errors they had to find a test for this. I think the sensory threshold test was a little extreme and I can’t believe Ebbinghaus came up with. I think coming up with a completion test was smart to test the children.
One thing I thought was very useful in understanding the history of psychology was the saying in the book, “the more one could measure, the more one would know.” This idea was shared by Cattell and Galton. I think this idea is still used today in psychology.
I think this chapter ties into the previous chapters because they talk about many of the psychologist who were briefly mentioned in other chapters. Cattell was talked about in chapter four and six and now he was talked about a lot in chapter eight.
Some ideas I had while reading this chapter was whether or not Cattell lost his fellowship at John Hopkins because he was using drugs as a “behavioral” experiment. I bet later, John Hopkins regretted not giving Cattell his fellowship since he went on to become one of the first people to be appointed professor of psychology and coined the term mental testing.
Terms: Cattell, John Hopkins, mental testing, Ebbinghaus, completion test, sensory threshold testing
I found this chapter to be very interesting because perception is one of my favorite topics in psychology. The first thing I really enjoyed reading about what about the introduction of gestalt. While I don't typically enjoy reading about the history of a lot of these theories, I thought it was fascinating that the theory of gestalt was influenced by the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. Since I've learned quite a bit about these philosopehrs in my philosophy courses, it's neat to see the two subjects come together. I can see just how those philosophers and their respective ideologies would contribute to the Max Wertheimer's theory of gestalt.
The Gestaltqualitat (form-quality) was the most intersting part of the gestalt theory because it helps the reader understand the importance of relativity in our perceptions and understandings of the world around us.
I also enjoyed reading about the gestalt organizing principles that help us organize our perceptions of the world. These principles of perceptual organization include figure-ground segregation, proximity, similarity, ad continuation. Although these perceptual devices are all around us and help shape our perceptions of visual and abstract stimuli, we are for the most part unaware of the enormous role they play on a day to day basis. It's amazing to unearth something so extraordinary that in fact is a very ordinary part of our mental processes.
The third thing I enjoyed reading about was the Von Restorff effect. This theory explains that stimuli which stand out from their surroundings are more likely to be noticed and remembered. While this chapter mainly focuses on optical illusions and the visual part of psychology, this effect may play a large role in a number of things-- it likely affects all 5 of our senses and probably even has a role in shaping our metacognition.
This last thing I found interesting made me think for quite a while. I wonder to what degree our perceptual processes affect our higher order functioning. It's much more difficult to measure and examine abstract ideas like beliefs. But beliefs certainly have roots in perception. I would just be fascinating in learning about the perceptual strategies we use in belief formation and other higher order functions that surpass sensory stimulations.
The part of the chapter I didn't enjoy reading was about these psychologists' lives. While I understand their upbringing has an important effect on the theories they establish and support, some of the facts don't necessarily help the reader understand the theory. For example, the section on the founding of gestalt psychology could have more or less been eliminated, as it was essentially a compilation of names and dates that are bound to be forgotten as soon as they're read. I feel the same way about the section "Koffka and Kohler: The Co-founders."
This chapter builds on the last chapters in terms of chronology. We are moving deeper into the 20th century in psychology, when psychology started finally getting the attention it deserves. It's easy to see the naturalistic historical point of view, building off of the previous era's ideas to progress the field even more.
For further research, I would like to do more research in either the Zeigarnik or the con Restorff effects. Perhaps there is a fusion of these two ideas, and if so, I'd be interested in learning more about that.
Terms: perception, gestalt, Kant, Husserl, Max Wertheimer, gestaltqualitat, principles of perceptual organization, figure ground, proximity, similarity, continuation, Von Restorff effect, historicism, naturalism, Zeigarnik effect
I liked this chapter because I have always found intelligence testing to be a fascinating subject. I would have liked to see the chapter talk about Spearman's concept of "g" because I immediately thought of him when I read that Binet was reluctant to reduce his intelligence findings to a single factor of mental age. Binet wanted to stress the fact that there was not just one form of intelligence, but because his measurement of intelligence was termed "mental age," people tend to see it as a singular measurement for all intelligence. This same misconception by the layperson has happened to Spearman's "g." His concept of intelligence was very well illustrated in a diagram that I saw, which showed many specific abilities (s) that all overlapped with general abilities (g). I believe that the important part of both researchers' theories is that they both imply that you have to have some form of underlying general ability and also some form of specialized abilities that work together to make your intelligence.
One very important thing that I learned in this chapter is that the Cattell that they mention is not the same Cattell that I studied before. This chapter talks about James McKeen Cattell, who brought Galton's work to America. I was getting him confused with Raymond Cattell, the researcher who came up with crystallized and fluid intelligences as well as the Big Five personality traits. I didn't realize that these were two different people until I got to the end of the section of the book that talks about him and noticed that it did not say anything about the Big Five or crystallized/fluid intelligences. At that point I looked them both up on the internet and it was all clear.
I think that it is ridiculous that JM Cattell was fired just for saying that conscientious objectors should not have to fight in the war. However, he was one of the first people to object to war from a psychological point of view, and society does not like when somebody upsets the status quo. Fortunately, he opened up the discussion which now allows people to be against war.
I like the fact that even though Cattell did not understand how to do factor analysis, he still had somebody conduct it on his research. However, in order to efficiently use such statistical methods, the person analyzing the statistical significance of the correlations between an intelligence test and academic performance ought to be the same person who is designing the questions. This allows for insight. When crunching the numbers a person can see why certain questions correlate badly, which can show that person how the specific question might be tweaked to correlate better with academic performance. This is why Cattell should have learned statistics. Having said that, I understand that they didn't have statistical analysis software like SPSS back then, and it was much more difficult.
I will easily remember that the three terms that Binet used for people who were below a certain mental age were idiot, imbecile, and debile (moron), and that they were in that order from most severe to least severe. It is unfortunate that the world takes scientific and academic terms and uses them derogatorily, because not only is it harmful to the people who are targeted and the people who were originally classified as idiots, but it also means that the academic and scientific community constantly has to come up with new words that are "politically correct" to avoid offending anybody. If people didn't abuse these words to offend people in the first place, we would never have to worry about offending anybody or finding a politically correct term.
I liked the fact that the book pointed out that immigrant families who have been here for generations tend to want to stop more immigration. It tells us so much about humans.
I really like the way that the Stanford-Binet test came to be, because it is the result of so many people's hard work. It originated as the Binet-Simon scale, written by Binet and his assistant Simon, then Goddard translated it from French and brought it over to America, and finally Terman standardized the test. This shows how teamwork can be very beneficial; people kept adding new contributions to the same test. I think that Terman's contribution is the most important one, because he introduced standardized tests. This is important because a big part of psychology as a science is having a controlled environment so you know that the results are due to a single variable. Even though I still think that our current standardized test system is not testing specifically for the same one variable, it is much better than having tests being conducted in different environments and with different time limits.
I think that it was important for the Army to begin testing their recruits, even if the tests weren't to the same caliber that we see today. The Alpha test seemed ideal, however they also seemed to just add the Beta test as a bandage to fix the problem that some recruits don't speak English. However, at that point they should have had all of the recruits take the Beta test for the sake of standardized testing. I really liked the figures in this section that illustrated the Army tests because I feel like I kind of understand the way that the tests were administered and the things that the Army was looking for.
Terms:
Intelligence, Spearman, "g," Binet, Mental Age, Specific Abilities, General Abilities, James McKeen Cattell, Raymond Cattell, Crystallized, Fluid, Big Five, Factor Analysis, Statistical Significance, Correlations, Academic Performance, Idiot, Imbecile, Debile, Moron, Politically Correct, Stanford-Binet, Binet-Simon Scale, Goddard, Terman, Standardized, Controlled Environment, Single Variable, Alpha Test, Beta Test.
Chapter eight was an interesting chapter that talked about the more recent psychology concepts that were being applied to the field. There was a lot of interesting information in this chapter. Some I had some knowledge about from previous chapters, others were completely knew to me. This chapter talked a lot about the concepts of mental testing and how these testing systems evolved over time.
One section I found really interesting was the topic of Mental testing. James Mckeen Cattell was a really interesting person when thinking about mental testing. He used the process of measuring physical and mental processes correlated with the time it took to complete a task. He began acquiring data from all incoming freshman students at the University of Columbia. Before being the head of the psychology program at Columbia he was a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. One interesting thing about the University of Pennsylvania was that they appointed him the professor of psychology when at that time most professors were only in philosophy. This showed the direction things were going in at that time and how psychology was on the rise. While at the University of Columbia things got interesting. After a graduate student (Wissler) completed the correlations, Cattel found that none of the tests he had been observing had any relationships with academic performance, which means he wasted all of his time on research that had no importance. Although Cattel's research did not go well he did have plenty of success as the editor of the journal Science, which with his help became the most important scientific journal in America.
The next section I found interesting was the section about Alfred Binet. Binet, unlike Cattel was responding to an educational dilemma which began his research. Binet spent much of his time studying his two daughters. He used some of Galton's sensory tests on them. I thought it was interesting how Binet concluded from testing his daughters that Galton's tests were not effective ways of measuring the differences in mental ability. He found that in order to determine differences in mental processes it would be important to measure the higher mental processes.
The next section I found interesting in this chapter was about Goddard and the Immigrants. This section talked about how Goddard used the Binet tests to measure mental abilities to determine whether or not to let the immigrants into America. Goddard claimed he could test the immigrants with an accuracy percentage of 90 percent. I found it interesting that right away previous immigrants disagreed with the system because they did not think they could have passed the test when they first arrived. The numbers found by Goddard's tests found that 80 percent of the immigrants were "morons" which is a ridiculous amount. I think it is hard to believe that someone could really think that many people were such low functioning people. I found it interesting that later in Goddard's career he reversed most of his previous ideas, and claimed that the feebleminded people could function in society, especially if provided with education.
This chapter builds on other chapters because we have already learned some background information on a lot of the important people from this chapter. We learned about some of the more brief information in previous chapters and this chapter brought all of these people together by tying them in to mental testing and other more modern psychological methods.
I would like to learn more about applied psychology because I think that by looking up more information I will be able to have a more clear picture about what it is and how it is used throughout the field of psychology.
Terms: mental testing, Cattell, Wissler, Binet, Galton, Goddard, Binet tests, moron, and feebleminded.
After reading chapter 8 the first thing that I found interesting was how E.W. Scripture started to show people that the findings from psychology laboratories could actually improve people’s everyday life. What was interesting in this was that Scripture applied his reaction time studies could be related to things in life such as sports and all types of athletic works. I found this interesting because it was a step in having applied psychology outside of the laboratory by American psychologists. Most psychologists were from Germany and other European countries at the time so this was a good approach to get the people in the United States excited about psychological research by showing them they could use it in everyday life.
The second thing that I found interesting in this chapter was James McKeen Cattell and his mental testing of college students at Columbia. The reason for this testing was based off of Galton to find if there were a correlation between measurements of mental testing and academic achievement. The reason for this testing was to be able to identify the superior intellectuals and have them be able to reproduce to further the human race. Cattell on the other hand used some of Galton’s measurements for the test but dropped the physical ones such as weight, height, etc. I found this interesting because even though all these tests seemed to be accepted by Galton, when they were done by Clark Wissler and then attempted to show a correlation between the measurements and academic achievement it showed no correlation. The research was eventually scrapped and this shows to me that you cannot use physical measurements to show how intellectual an individual is, which is interesting to see this transition through that approach.
The final thing that I found interesting in this chapter was Alfred Binet and his approach at intelligence testing. Binet was trying to find kind of the opposite of Galton/Cattell by using children and not measuring their sensory measures but to try and measure their mental ability. Another thing that Binet disagreed on against Galton/Cattell was the thought that intelligence was a fixed thing from child to adult stages in life. The things I found interesting about the above were how Binet didn’t simplify intelligence into a single unit, but acknowledged that there were multiple things in life that made up a unitary concept of intelligence. The other thing I found interesting here was how Binet actualy tried to help people with below average intelligence scores and, since IQ wasn’t set from child to adult stages, train the child into improving their intelligence levels with mental orthopedics.
The thing that I didn’t like about this chapter was how Henry H. Goddard was helping to prepare the rest of society through training to be able to identify the imbeciles and to make it so they didn’t reproduce more imbeciles into our society because this was bad. The reason I didn’t like this was because of a modern look at this. People don’t like to see people with mental disabilities running around the streets, yet we don’t want to fund places for these people to go so they don’t do harm to themselves or others. It’s kind of frustrating and confusing at the same time.
What I think will be most useful to me in understanding psychology would be the concept of how psychology is now being related to everyday life. I think it will be a good outlook to see some research and say, “how does this apply to what I do every day?” It just seems like a good way to keep the material interesting and useful to me. The way I think this chapter will build on the ones before it in the book would be by how it is showing applied psychology and how it is moving to America. Now, we will start reading more and more about the psychologists in the United States and their contributions to the study.
A topic that I would like to learn more about would be how certain psychological research can be tied to sports. I think this would be interesting to me because it would be a new perspective on athletics that isn’t just face value. An idea that I had while reading this chapter was how we can use research to apply things to an individual such as children. This then led me to think of, (I think it was Skinner?) having that book on a perfect society with the children in the boxes and how a society could be more productive if we had way different means of operating.
Terms: E.W. Scripture, psychology, laboratories, reaction time, applied psychology, American psychologists, United States, psychological research, Germany, European, James McKeen Cattell, mental testing, Columbia, Galton, Clark Wissler, Alfred Binet, sensory measures, mental ability, intelligence, IQ, mental orthopedics, Henry H. Goddard, imbeciles, Skinner.
I thought it was very interesting to learn about Henry Goddard and his mental age scale. The terms he used, idiot for ages 1-2, imbecile for ages 3-7, and moron for ages 8-12, are all considered very offensive terms currently. I think it is very sad that these words were all once scientifically valid classifications for the mentally disabled – is that a politically correct term still? – but have evolved into words meant to demean and hurt feelings. We have seen this development in recent years with the words “retard” and and “mental.” I do not think that we will ever come up with a term for people of lower ability levels that will not eventually be turned into a name meant to belittle another person.
I also found Robert Yerkes and his tests for the American military to be quite interesting. I thought it was surprising that he thought to make a test for the literate (Army Alpha) and a test for the illiterate (Army Beta). This surprised me because so much of the testing done today relies at least in part on the test takers’ ability to read and comprehend material. I thought it was interesting that this, although it did not prove to be all that successful or correct because WWI ended before results could be seen, was the beginning of intelligence tests as a big business item.
I found Walter Dill Scott to be very interesting as well. He used psychological evidence to support business and advertising decisions, writing multiple books about the subject. I think this was a big step for psychology because it was the first well known publication of real world applications of the new psychology. Although it seems like a small and unimportant blurp in psychology’s history, I believe Scott’s books were the beginning of psychology as more than a theoretical science but an applied science.
I found much of the chapter on intelligence testing difficult to concentrate on because I have learned about and discussed the subject in depth in many classes in the past.
Terms: Henry Goddard, mental age, idiot, imbecile, moron, Robert Yerkes, Army Alpha, Army Beta, Walter Dill Scott
The first thing I found interesting in this chapter was the section on Army testing and the uses of the Army Alpha and Army Beta testing. I found myself realizing that it made perfect sense to make a group test. Testing each applicant individually would be a total waste of time and could prove to be detrimental to administering the test on time. I was confused as to why there was even a need for a Beta test, however. If people failed the Alpha test then they most likely lack the proper training and education to be successful in the army. Granted, the illiterate people who take the Beta test might be well suited to be soldiers, but several different occasions where reading is required my come up in any given situation. I just feel like the only necessary test was the Army Alpha test.
The second thing I found interesting in this chapter was Hugo Munsterberg. I have always been interested in Munsterberg. I like him because I have an interest in Forensic Psychology and because of the way he was treated by his colleagues. Because he was German at a time that was inconvenient to be German, he was one of the most hated men in America. I do not know why, but I have always liked how he overcame this and was still a prominent figure in psychology. However, I think the main reason that I like, and will always remember, Munsterberg is because of the way in which he died. As he approached the podium and began his opening remarks during a lecture, he suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage and collapsed in front of a full classroom. The hemorrhage killed him instantly, leaving him dead at the very podium where he failed to even finish a single sentence of his lecture.
The third thing I found interesting in this chapter was the section on Henry Goddard and the Immigrants. We have talked about this before in class, but it was still interesting to read. It was still interesting that Goddard was able to naively pick and choose individuals whom he deemed to be defective. Goddard did not include think of the idea that the immigrants were intimidated and awed by Ellis Island, and that their scores were unjustifiable.
The thing I found least interesting was the section on Industrial Psychology. It has always been an area of psychology that has been uninteresting to me. The section of the chapter, no matter how small, was not horrible. This section just did not have anything of merit for me.
The thing that will be the most useful to understanding the history of psychology is how, at this point in time, experimental psychology developed into applied psychology. This chapter relates to the previous chapters in that it shows the science of Psychology as a timeline. Like the chapters before it, this chapter continues to show how psychology as we know it today has been molded throughout time.
I would like to learn more about intelligence testing in general. Having taken an in depth intelligence test, I can say that they are very interesting. Knowing what these tests measure and how they are used would be very interesting to me.
Terms: Army Alpha, Army Beta, Munsterberg, Goddard, Intelligence testing, applied psychology
One part of this chapter I really liked was the part about Lewis M. Terman and is study on IQ. The reason I found this part interesting was because Terman doesn't seem to be as big of a bigot as some of the other psychologists who studied mental testing. Goddard thought those who were not intelligent (morons) needed to stop reproducing thus providing a world of intelligent people. For those "morons" who already existed a place would be provided for them to go to since they weren't competent enough to succeed in the outside world. Terman believed that those who were less intelligent than others should just be put into different classes based on their IQ. He believed America needed to be a meritocracy. He said that this system would "go far toward insuring that every pupil, whether mentally superior, average, or inferior, shall have a chance to make the most of whatever abilities nature has given to him." While reading this I thought to myself thank goodness someone gets it! People do not need to stop reproducing just because their offspring don't score as high on a mental test. They don't need to be put in different homes because they aren't as intelligent as others, unless they absolutely cannot live on their own. There are many different reasons someone may score differently on a mental test i.e. their environment, test taking skills and the amount of schooling they've had etc. Some people are better than others at different things and I am glad that Terman finally saw that. Also while reading the section on Terman I found it interesting that he had no attrition issue. Most longitudinal studies have this problem because it is hard to keep in touch and people lose interest.
The close-up on Leta Hollingworth is something I found interesting as well. Her studies on variability hypothesis and periodic function is what I found the most interesting. She found that neither one of these studies had empirical evidence. Leta and her friends Helen Montague studied newborns for the variability hypothesis. They found that although the boys were larger than the girls, variability in physical size was the same for boys and girls. Period Function is the belief I found most interesting of the two. People really believed that while women were on their period they were incapable of doing much of anything which in turn made it difficult for women to have jobs. That is ridiculous. It is almost as ridiculous as Goddard's Ellis Island job. During her study of twenty-three women compared to a group of men she found no gender differences. She also found no differences that connected to periodic function. I can see as to how someone could come up with this idea, however, I also see it as giving men another reason to think they are better than women. Just another excuse.
The Army Alpha and the Army Beta test that Robert M. Yerkes came up with is something else I found interesting. I have heard of these tests before but not in so much detail as the book gives. I looked through the examples of the tests and was a little confused. I can only imagine how confused these soldiers were since they didn't even know why they were being given the test. I also found it interesting that although these tests didn't provide any significant help for the war they were a stepping stone for psychology. Many psychologists, even some officers saw potential in the testing program. This showed that mental tests could be used on a large group of people.
One thing I didn't like about this chapter was psychology and business. Psychology can be applied to business in many different ways. However, because I am not entirely interested in making people by a product or in hiring employees and determining who would best fit the job this isn't exactly something interesting. While reading about Leta I wondered why no one ever pointed out the flaws of men during this era? What would have happened if she had done a study that showed women were more capable of doing something better than the men who were doing a certain job? Men have their days to so why doesn't someone tell them you aren't yourself today so you aren't capable of doing you job? Another thought crossed my mind while reading Goddard's view on mental tests, America was founded by immigrants what would Goddard have done if he was the one who wasn't allowed in because his appearance made him seem unintelligent? Would he have thought that obscene? This chapter relates to the others in that it deals with intelligence levels of others instead of just the education. However, knowing someones IQ helps place them in certain classes in school.
Terms: Mental Tests, Terman, Goddard, Psychology, Leta Hollingworth, Intelligence, IQ, Variability, Army Beta, Army Alpha, Psychologists, Variability Hypothesis, Periodic Function, Empirical Evidence, Helen Montague, Robert Yerkes, Morons, Meritocracy, Attrition,
BR
While reading chapter eight I found a variety of topics to be interesting. The first portion that I thought was interesting was that about Goddard and his ideas about intelligence. I didn’t realize moron stemmed from him using it to describe a group of people based on their intelligence. I also didn’t know that this term was a big deal in legitimizing the department of psychology. I also found it interesting how he translated and brought Binet’s test to the U.S.. If he wouldn’t have done so I wonder if Terman would still have the access to standardize it.
The paragraphs about Lewis M. Terman and his influence on intelligence testing was interesting to me. I had never heard of him nor did I know he had anything to do with the Stanford-Binet testing until reading this chapter. He thought the prime component to intelligence was heredity. I thought it was neat how Terman managed to accomplish the first revision and the first real standardization of the Binet-Simon tests. I like how he researched and figured out that not all children are alike and that Binet’s tests weren’t correctly coinciding with the age group they were testing. An example of this from the text was that average five-year-olds usually tested at a mental age greater that five, but average ten-year-olds tested at a mental age less than ten. Terman saw this problem and so he attached new tests, revised others and took a few out to come up a better standardized test. Lewis published the Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon test, and it later become known as the Stanford-Binet test. It’s interesting how in all my other psychology classes I’ve never heard of Terman and yet he is the one that really brought out the Stanford-Binet test. More, importantly Lewis is the one who added the concept-IQ to the test as well. I never knew he had so much influence on intelligence testing until this chapter and I never thought about how mental capacity could be represented in a single number as stated in the book until this chapter as well. That is an interesting way to think about the IQ cause it really is a single number that some people are crazy proud about, whereas others could be embarrassed about.
The close-up section of the chapter-about Leta Hollingworth-was interesting to me as well. I found this interesting because number one, despite the odds she managed to receive a doctorate and become the “mother of gifted education.” Chapter six’s reading played a role in this section with marriage vs. career, because Hollingworth couldn’t teach in the New York schools because she was married and their was a policy against it. I found it inspiring how she didn’t let this keep her down, instead she went on to take graduate courses and accomplished getting her Ph.D.. I liked how she worked with gifted children and thought they needed curriculum that was up to their intelligence standards but that the gifted children should still be in the same classroom as their peers. Leta thought if they were removed from their age-related peers it could be damaging. I would agree on that aspect, because the children might not develop well socially if they accelerate to fast and are put in classes with a different age group. Another interesting aspect she studied was that of gender and how wrong society was in saying that women were inherently unequal to men. Leta tested a group of both sexes on a variety of mental and physical capabilities, and the results showed no gender differences; for the women no differences that led back to periodic function. I like how she was bothered by the views and women and she decided to prove the theories about gender to be wrong and that she beat the odds of most women who didn’t go to school or work or have a worthy job.
I think Goddard and Terman are the most useful sections in this chapter in understanding psychology. I think this because they both contributed to intelligence and the ability to be able to study it as well as measure it in individuals. Goddard took some risks in how he studied intelligence and who he studied. His tests on the immigrants led to learning that one’s looks don’t tell you how intelligent they are and his studies on the Kallikaks led to show that environments one lives in need to be taken into account when testing for intelligence. Terman gave us the IQ test which is still being used today and is useful in the field of psychology.
How this chapter built off previous ones was because it incorporated the findings in the ones before it and just furthered the research and studies to expand. For example, Dewey was mentioned in this chapter and his ideas were a lot like Terman’s in the same views of education and democracy. Many other names that were mentioned in previous chapters were included in this one as well; Angell, Cattell, Galton, Thorndike. The earlier chapters laid down more groundwork to work up to the expansion of the fields of psychology that were present in this chapter.
I would like to learn more about Hugo Munsterberg. He had influence on the field of applied psychology. I am currently taking applied psych and Hugo had many great ideas in how to use psychology in the real world and with the workforce. It would be interesting to learn some of his studies he did with employees and employers to help benefit their jobs and give them better working environments as well as how to capitalize the most.
Terms: Goddard, moron, Terman, Stanford-Binet, Binet, IQ, mental age, Leta Hollingworth, gifted children, periodic function, Kallikaks, Hugo Munsterberg, applied psychology
First thing that I liked about this chapter was reading about Alfred Binet and his creation of intelligence testing that is used today. I remember learning about Binet in intro, social, and industrial psychology. He is a very interesting man with an idea to quantify intelligence, which is a daring goal. Binet was given the task to decide who was fit for normal school and who wasn’t, and he had to come up with a way to test large numbers of children at once. I thought that this would have been very morally difficult because he had to have been aware that he would be labeling people with numbers. Even though his intent was to weed out those who “belonged” in special education classes and make it easier, it would soon cause great social problems that we can see today in our education system. This part of the book was something that I liked and something that I disliked at the same time because of the implications of dividing people up by their apparent mental ability. I guarantee that many people were put into the wrong group as they still are today.
Once again, my second topic that I enjoyed reading and also despised was about Goddard and the immigrants. Goddard is the American psychologist who brought the intelligence testing and applied it to the “inadequate” new immigrants that were coming to the United States. This test was to make a test for immigrants to take. The purpose was to keep the general population quality up (could be interpreted in many ways). This single test would determine the future of many immigrants and possibly destroy the lives of those moving in, and the families of people already in the United States. From what I read, the tests didn’t seem to be incredibly accurate and had too many extraneous variables that could affect people’s scores on the test. It was hard to believe that Goddard thought that upwards of 40% of incoming immigrants were feebleminded and that he thought that people’s intelligence was really that low and that he was above all of them.
My third part that I read was actually more of the pictures of the army test alpha and army test beta. I remember learning from Industrial psychology how most of these worked and how accurate or inaccurate each test was. What I found interesting about these tests is how simple they look, yet how useful they were to determine who could and couldn’t serve in certain positions in the army. A lot of these tests were created to be visual tests rather than written to compensate for those whose primary language wasn’t English.
The thing I want to learn more about is the controversy over Intelligence because it is something that I feel very strongly about. I didn’t score well on standardized tests due to some learning disabilities. I was assigned a number and that was to describe how smart I was so that others could decide what I was capable of. I hate it and did everything I could to prove people wrong and I think I have been successful by making it to college and doing very well in college. It’s a big power to be able to define someone as a number and it can be easily abused.
Terms: Alfred Binet, intelligence, Industrial Psychology, Social Psychology, Intro to Psychology, Goddard, Immigrants, Army.
I thought it was interesting that Galton believed intelligence was inherited and that many people believe this. I personally cannot understand how anything but your environment can influence your intelligence. Technically, if your parents are uneducated, they are most likely not going to be able to properly educate you at home. But, it may be possible that you learn more at school and read more than other kids because you want to be smart. My parents are intelligent to me, but I think even if they were unintelligent I would be able to learn. Furthermore, I have a different mind and soul than that of my parents, although they may be closely related, and I feel like that would mean I have a different kind of potential to become intelligent, as does anyone. I also thought it was interesting that just because there is evidence of identical twins being raised apart and testing out with similar IQ’s, we let that influence the theory of heredity being a factor in intelligence. I feel like the twins could probably just soak up the same amount of information due to having similar brains and tendencies, including the tendency of wanting to learn. I liked reading more about Goddard and the tests he did on immigrants. However, I disliked most of Goddard’s ideas; he seems kind of loony. When he talked about Deborah Kallikak, he said that if she left Vineland, she would be exposed to an evil world and not be “mentally responsible” enough to handle that. I feel like she would be able to learn more by leaving instead of testing at the same level every time. I am wondering whether he ever tried putting her out on her own and then testing her again. Perhaps he would have seen something different as a result.
I think reading about both mental intelligence and the intelligence controversy will help in understanding more in this field. By knowing more of the terminology and background of the types of testing done in this time, we are more likely to understand the results of these tests and how they apply to testing today. And, by doing that, we can also more understand their reasoning in doing some of these tests and how they have improved up until now, both scientifically and ethically. We have read about mental testing in previous chapters but very little. This chapter, mostly focusing on the topic, elaborated more on testing and reasons for conducting these tests.
I would like to learn more about the intelligence controversy. In one of my recent blogs, I wrote about my own opinions on the idea of intelligence. I feel like it can be measured in so many different ways. Furthermore, who is to set the standards and criteria for intelligence, and who is intelligent enough to do so? There are so many questions that run through my mind while reading about it that I feel it would be worth answering them.
Terms: Galton, inherited, environment, intelligence, unintelligence, evidence, identical twins, IQ’s, factor, tests, ideas, Deborah Kallikak, result, intelligence controversy, ethically
The most interesting thing about this chapter was the Binet-Simon scales created by Alfred Binet and his assistant, Theodore Simon. I thought it was a significant step for society because Binet had developed a theory of mental age and the research was able to be duplicated by Henry Goddard. The table on page 256 of the text was confusing to me at first because I thought that the scale represented normal milestones in the development of children at the time, but then read that Binet meant that scale to be used for assessing the mental age of feeble-minded children. In spite of the negative connotations of labeling, I do believe that the categories of mental disability as presented by Binet are important because it does allow our modern society to create programs to enable the developmentally challenged people to become part of society and not locked away from society like a criminal, as Goddard would have. While Binet believed that the human mind could be nurtured and educated, Goddard believed that the capabilities of the mind were purely genetic and (when labeled as moronic or lower) could not advance beyond specific classifications.
This scale was later used by Goddard to make psychology an accepted field of study. Goddard thought that people at the level of “moron” could successfully integrate into society virtually undetected, and a qualified psychologist would be needed to identify the people with limited capabilities.
Henry Goddard is quite an interesting person to study, because he was so convinced the superiority of himself and of the elite class that he advocated to eliminate (through eugenics) the sub-standard (moronic) breeding stock of humans. His ideas of sterilizing and incarcerating anyone classified as being feebleminded was a bit scary, especially since immorality was sometimes considered the result of being feeble-minded. Goddard believed that removing the degenerates from society could result in more powerful, brilliant and productive society of humans. I think that compassion was not a useful human quality to Goddard and he would have liked to breed that out, as well. Goddard’s work with immigration was especially disturbing to me because he was obviously a brilliant man, but he was discounting the psychological effects that travelling by ship in “steerage” compartments (in what were probably abhorrent conditions) could have on a person’s ability to pass a mental test. At that point in Goddard’s life he was not understanding or considering the effects of poverty, poor diet and language barriers. I was happy to read that Goddard did later reverse some of his positions concerning intellect, and he did come to realize that environment, education and training could play a significant role in human intellectual development.
I was equally interested in Lewis Terman’s longitudinal study of gifted children, but I was concerned about the bias toward prosperous families. His study proved that younger children in the class would usually have a higher IQ than the older children which should have been expected. After all, the IQ is based upon a quotient of intellectual capacity one has, where 100 is perfectly average and anything under that would be less than normal. An IQ of over 100 indicates that one is beyond his own years, and obviously a younger student studying with older students would be more likely to learn concepts beyond his own years – just as the Hole in the Wall studies were able to prove. I could see that there was still a bias toward elite children and poor children were not taken into account probably because the researchers thought it might be a waste of time or maybe they were concerned that their eugenic theories might be debunked.
I think that learning about the very attitudes of the researchers in the past can help us to understand the resulting standards for psychology today. Psychology developed from an elitist attitude and was quick to discount high intellectual abilities in minorities and women as unusual. There were other theories which may have developed sooner had there not been such bias, and biases may have slowed development of psychology as a science.
I was not crazy about the classification of “gifted” children in education. I was one of those children labeled as gifted and I was offered many opportunities to experience learning in a unique and variable way. The students in my gifted class were taken from the school every Wednesday and we went to one of the local colleges in Tampa, Florida, and were treated to various educational and fun activities. I admit it was great fun, but I have always looked back on that as something I did not really need. After all, I was already engaged in learning at school. I did not feel held back in the classroom and I enjoyed helping other kids learn things which I had already learned, and that served to reinforce my own learning.
Back then, and even today, I always felt that the disengaged students should be the ones taken from the classroom and taught things which might be more interesting to them. I believe that the extra attention could serve to re-engage the wanderers in the classroom and make learning a more meaningful experience. While I do respect the efforts of Leta Stetter Hollingworth on behalf of women, I believe her efforts in education would have been more meaningful if they had been spent on the disengaged children and studying alternate ways to teach those kids in smaller, interactive groups. The disengaged children were the ones considered unintelligent and unruly, and they were the children who needed the extra attention and alternative teaching methods.
This chapter illustrates how the study of psychology was becoming more recognized as being useful and applicable to the real world. Psychology was no longer just philosophical theory, but it was being applied to education, military and government institutions. Certainly, some of the attempted research applications were questionable, as in the case of Binet and his hypnosis research, so the science was not infallible; but through trial and error the science was advanced and that is why we are here today studying in the field of psychology.
I would like to understand the work of Leta Hollingworth better, because from what I read she did great things to advance the causes of women. She also was a champion in the area of education for gifted students. I want to learn more about her other contributions to psychology.
I have never given much thought to the “classifications” of students, but this chapter brought to my mind how arbitrary labeling and classification can be. I work as a tutor with other college students and I am often amazed at the speed in which they are able to “catch up”. Many of these students are high school graduates who are struggling in college because, as they often say, they “fooled around too much in school and did not do the work”. Yet, they graduated, and many of them have nothing further than the equivalent of (what I would consider) a ninth grade education.
I have noticed that with minimal tutoring, most of these struggling students can catch up and many times excel in their college classes. With just a little bit of instruction and effort they become confident and able to complete assignments without a lot of explanation from me. As I read through the chapter, I thought of the students whom I have tutored and I believe that they always did have the abilities to succeed in the classroom, but maybe some of their high school teachers had lowered their expectations of them and the students did what was expected…and they still were graduated. Unexpectedly, they ended up in college, and now many are being tutored in high school level curriculum so they can be brought up to speed for their college level courses. I would like to see more attention given to the disengaged students in high school so they will be more prepared for college.
Terminology:
Binet-Simon scales, Alfred Binet, Theodore Simon, Henry Goddard, mental age, moron, eugenics, Lewis Terman, longitudinal study, (IQ) intelligence quotient, gifted children, Leta Stetter Hollingworth, classifications of intelligence
The first thing I decided to talk about was Henry H. Goddard. It was interesting to learn how he came about the Binet’s Test and brought it to America. After earning his doctorate degree and accepting a job at a Vineland Training School for the Feeble-Minded he quickly learned that his basic sensory tasks he had learned were “easier said than done”. That is when he went on the look for new methods and during his tour for the feeble-minded institute he came across Binet’s work. Unimpressed with the method at first, nevertheless, he brought it back to America where he translated it to English and began administering it to the children of Vineland. After roughly four-hundred test were taken and recorded Goddard decided to refine the system, still based off Binet’s concept, and renamed it the mental age. Scoring those according to their mental age, those scoring between the ages of one and two were known as idiots, three and even as imbeciles. The third category became known as morons, for those that needed special help and could be set aside from the rest. This made morons the center of attention for many of society’s ills, even if they passed as looking like that of the average person. Goddard with the help of Vineland distributed 20,000 copies of the test within four years. However, that didn’t stop Goddard, he believed that regardless of new genetics findings, intelligence was inherited and showed a fixed quantity. Just the terms and language he was able to use to describe his patients is slightly amusing to me. Something that would be frowned upon in today’s psychological studies.
This brings me to my other interest of the chapter, the study on The Kallikaks. In this study Goddard made his case that feeblemindedness had a genetic basis. He took twenty-two year old Deborah Kallikak a child from Vineland that had never reached a mental age passed nine in any of the Binet-Simon scale, as his case subject. So Goddard traced her family heritage back six years and found the source of Deborah feeblemindedness. A soldier that had a brief affair with two young ladies, one from a tavern and the other a respectable girl (he married) and during which time each bared children. In Goddard’s case the tavern girl had what he called “bad” Kallikaks, testing for feeblemindedness and the other “good” Kallikaks, producing doctors, lawyers, and educators with only 3 to be somewhat degenerate. Like all early studies there were flaws in Goddards, he failed to (or refused to) take into account the environment of the two groups and this bias also interfered with his interpretation on the data. The information he attained was secondhand and sketchy, with events that could have been from one family or the other. The way this study can be seen as a way of how preconception can influence not just the collection but the analyzing of data, Goddard assuming the tavern girl was feebleminded, is one of the biggest upsets I’ve read about thus far. Especially since this bias started in the beginning of the study and not half way through.
A few ideas I had while read through this chapter acquired when I was reading about Scripture and the pressure for application. The fact that Scripture decided to add pictures and drawing in his book to help hold the readers interest while trying to explain to them experimental psychology. I could actually visualize pictures, and that helps me to understand things better being a visual learner. The next thing was when how psychologist had to change their values from a pursuit of knowledge for its own sake to applying it for the convince of the public to use. It was cool to read about, what I’m assuming, is the first step toward applying psychological study’s to the real word. I would like to learn more about this area and what effect it had on society along with what study’s were actually placed in the public’s hands first and most recently. Along with any weird or hair brained ideas to improve everyday life.
Terms: Henry H. Goddard, Binet’s Test, Vineland Training School for the Feeble-Minded, mental age, idiots, moron, imbeciles, The Kallikaks, Deborah Kallikak, Binet-Simon, “bad”, “good”, preconception