History of Psychological testing

• History of psychological testing

  • Abroad
  • In the Philippines
• Psychological testing


  The act of administering a test; a standardized procedure for sampling behavior and describing it with categories or scores
• There have been repeated accounts of the Chinese empire's system of civil service examinations that existed 2,000 years ago
• In Greece, testing was launched in addition to the educational process in order to assess people's mastery of physical as well as intellectual skills
• In the middle ages, European universities relied on formal examinations in awarding degrees and honors
• The earliest interest in classification and training of mentally retarded persons begun with the growing concern for the proper care of people with mental problems
• It was necessary to differentiate between insane and mentally retarded individuals
• Seguin established the first school devoted to the education of mentally retarded children

  1837
• Some of the sense-training and muscle-training techniques Seguin developed were eventually incorporated into performance or nonverbal tests of intelligence
• Esquirol pointed out that there are many degrees of mental retardation and concluded that the individual's use of language provides the most dependable criterion of his or her intellectual level


  1838
• William James, an eminent philosopher, psychologist and physiologist, conducted experiments at Harvard and published in 1890 his Principles of Psychology


  1875
• Wilhelm Wundt founded the first formal laboratory of Psychology at the University of Leipzig, marking the formal beginning of the study of human emotions, behaviors, and cognitions


  1879
• Granville Stanley Hall worked with William James and in 1881 established the first psychological research laboratory at John Hopkins University


  1881
• Sir Francis Galton


  Primarily responsible for launching the testing movement, established anthropometric laboratory in 1882, devoted a great deal of effort toward the application of quantitative methods to understanding differences among people
• James McKeen Cattell coined the term "Mental Tests", thus beginning the specialization in psychology now known as psychological assessment


  1882
• Emil Kraepelin


  Started the mental testing movement and the study of differential psychology in America, used the free association test with psychiatric patients and concluded that all forces studied increases the relative frequency of superficial associations, prepared a long series of tests to measure what he regarded as basic factors in the characteristics of an individual
• Alfred Binet founded the first laboratory of psychodiagnosis


  1895
• Binet in collaboration with Theodore Simon, prepared the first Binet-Simon Scale in order to objectively distinguish among various degrees of subnormality


  1908
• Ebbinghaus administered tests of arithmetic computation, memory span, and sentence completion to school children, the sentence completion was the only one that showed a clear correspondence with the children's scholastic achievement


  1897
• Carl Jung began using word-association methods to uncover unconscious problems


  1905
• Kent-Rosanoff Free association test was published, marking important advances in diagnostic testing

  1910
• Charles Spearman offered the concept of a general intelligence he termed "g"


  1904
• Edward Thorndike offered instead a conceptualization that emphasized importance of separate abilities</b>
• Group testing was developed to meet an urgent need to consider ways in which psychology might assist in the conduct of the war, army psychologists drew on all available test materials and on the unpublished group intelligence test by Arthur S. Otis, major contribution was the introduction of multiple-choice and other "objective" item tests


  1917
• The Committee of Robert Yerkes developed Army Alpha Test (verbal scale) followed by Army Beta test (non-verbal scale)


  1917
• Robert Woodworth developed Psychoneurotic Inventory, the 1st questionnaire designed to reveal abnormal behaviors


  1917
• Psychological Corporation launched the first psychological test development company


  1921
• Herman Rorschach published "Psychodiagnostik", a test making use of inkblots to diagnose psychiatric patients


  1921
• Rise of the achievement batteries initiated by the publication of the first edition of the Stanford Achievement test


  1923
• Goodenough Draw-a-Man technique for measuring intelligence was published

  1926
• Strong Vocational Interest Blank was developed (variations of it is still heavily used today)

  1927
• Sinforoso Padilla organizes the Psychological Clinic at the University of the Philippines


  1932
• Jesus Perpinan sets up the Far Eastern University Psychological Clinic


  1933
• Angel de Blas, OP, sets up the Experimental Psychology Laboratory in the University of Santo Tomas


  1938
• David Wechsler published Wechsler-Bellevue test, the 1st satisfactory individual measure of adult intelligence


  1939
• L.K. Frank coined the term "projective techniques"


  1939
• In the 1930s and 1940s, projective testing boomed
• Wechsler Intelligence Scale for children was published and became serious alternative to Binet scales


  1949
• The Philippine Psychological Corporation is founded, offering psychological services and being the main retailer of psychological tests


  1962
• In the 1970s, psychology becomes the most popular undergraduate major in many colleges and universities in the Philippines