Gould

• The key theme is measuring differences.
• Background

  Intelligence is the ability to deal with cognitive complexity, such as solving complex tasks that require mental manipulation e.g identifying similarities or differences, drawing inferences and grasping new concepts.
• Background

  A key issue/ question raised about intelligence is:

  Is intelligence innate or learned?
• Background

  Biological explanations of intelligence propose that individuals possess an innate, general cognitive ability that is rooted in evolutionary adaptation and inheritance.
• Background

  If intelligence is learned, we are testing something that is a product of a person's experience.
• Background

  IQ stands for intelligence quotation.
• Background

  The term 'IQ' is the usual test score given in an intelligence test.

  The individual's mental age (MA- their score on the test) is divided by their chronological age, then multiplied by 100 to remove any decimals.
• Background

  The Simon-Binet test was devised in 1905, and is regarded as the firstv intelligence test.

  (In 1904, Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon were commissioned by the French government to devise a test which could identify children who would not benefit from ordinary schooling and should receive special education because of their inferior intelligence.)
• Background

  In 1910, Lewis Terman at Stanford University began to adapt the Simon-Binet test for use in the USA. The test then became known as the Stanford-Binet test and has been revised several times since too.
• Background

  In 1944, David Wechsler developed the most widely used test of Adult Intelligence, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS). This has been revised several times.
• Background

  • Robert Yerkes (a Harvard Psychologist) wanted to improve psychology's status as it was viewed as a soft science during the early 1900s.
  • Yerkes wanted to demonstrate that Psychology could be as objective and quantifiable as the other scientific disciplines, such as physics.
  • Yerkes wanted to combine his ideas of inherited intelligence and the recent development of psychometric testing.
  • He believed that if he could show that intelligence tests were reliable and valid, then this quantifiable measure would prove psychology as a credible science.
• Background

  • With the outbreak of WW1, Colonel Yerkes saw an opportunity to use recruits from the American army as a source of sufficient data to show intelligence testing was scientific.
• Background

  Eugenics is a set of beliefs that try to improve (by controlled breeding) the hereditary/ genetic quality of the human population.

  Those in favour of the eugenics argument (eugenicists) believe that the less intelligent should be identified and prevented from having children.
• Aim

  Gould aimed to examine early intelligence testing- specifically that conducted by Yerkes on army recruits in the USA during WW1.
• Aim

  Gould aimed to identify the following issues in psychology:

  • The problematic nature of psychometric testing
  • The problematic nature of measures of intelligence
  • How the objectivity of intelligence testing can by influenced by psychological theories on inherited nature of intelligence and any existing prejudice in society
  • The subsequent ethical and political implications of intelligence research- specifically how biased data can be used to discriminate between people in suitability for an occupation or even admission to a country.
• Aim

  Gould aimed to identify the following issues in psychology:

  • The subsequent ethical and political implications of intelligence research- specifically how biased data can be used to discriminate between people in suitability for an occupation or even admission to a country.
• Aim

  Gould aimed to identify the following issues in psychology:

  • How the objectivity of intelligence testing can by influenced by psychological theories on inherited nature of intelligence and any existing prejudice in society
• Aim

  Gould aimed to identify the following issues in psychology:

  • The problematic nature of measures of intelligence
• Aim

  Gould aimed to identify the following issues in psychology:

  • The problematic nature of psychometric testing
• Research Method

  Gould's research is a review article that looks at the history of Yerkes' intelligence testing of recruits for the US army in WW1, and his attempt to establish psychology as a scientific discipline.
• Research Method

  Gould identified many problems with Yerkes' mass intelligence testing, stating that there were several cultural biases and problems in test administration.
• Sample

  • 1.75 million male US army recruits during WW1 (so specific age range).
  • Included white Americans, 'Negroes' and European Immigrants.
• Procedure

  In May 1917, Yerkes and several of his colleagues, who shared his view on the hereditary nature of intelligence, developed 3 mental ability tests.

  These claimed to measure native intellectual ability.
• Procedure

  Native Intellectual Ability- genetic intelligence unaffected by either socialisation or educational experience.
• Procedure

  The first two written tests (Army Alpha and Beta) could be administered to large groups and took less than one hour to complete.
• The Army Alpha test

  • A written test
  • Given to literate recruits
  • Contained 8 parts
  • Consisted of questions which are common in modern IQ tests (filling in missing numbers, understanding analogies etc)
• The Army Alpha test

  Examples of questions given:

  • Washington is to Adam as first is to...
  • Crisco is a: patient medicine, disinfectant, toothpaste, food product?
• The Army Beta test

  • A pictorial test
  • For illiterate recruits/ those who failed the Alpha test
  • Contained 7 parts including pictorial completion tasks, maze tests, counting the number of cubes, finding the next in a series of symbols, translating numerals into symbols using a code to work from
• The Army Beta test

  • Picture completion tasks= recruits had to say what was missing from the picture
• Individual Spoken Examination

  This was given if recruits failed both the Army Alpha and Beta tests.
• Marking of the tests & data analysis was done by E.G. Boring.
• Marking of the tests & data analysis

  Each recruit was given a grade from A to E, with a plus or minus sign.
• Marking of the tests & data analysis

  A D indicated a person rarely suited for tasks requiring special skill, planning, resourcefulness, or sustained alertness. Such men could not be expected to 'read and understand orders'.
• Marking of the tests & data analysis

  E.G. Boring selected 160,000 files and produced data that echoed throughout the 1920s with a hard hereditarian ring.

  The task of going through cases was daunting.
• Marking of the tests & data analysis

  E.G. Boring, with the aid of one assistant, reduced the very large sample to 160,000.
• Marking of the tests & data analysis

  The scales of the three different tests had to be converted to a common standard so that racial and national averages could be constructed from samples of men who had taken the tests in different proportions (for example, few black men took the Alpha test).
• Key Findings

  1. The average mental age of white American adult males was 13, just above the level of 'moronity'. This indicated that the country was a 'nation of morons'. Eugenicists took this to show that the poor, Negros and feeble-minded had been interbreeding and lowering the overall intelligence of the population.
• Key Findings

  2. European immigrants could be graded by their country of origin.

  Most men were 'morons' but Yerkes claimed that darker people from Southern Europe and the Slavs of Eastern Europe were less intelligent than the fair people of Western and Northern Europe.
• Key Findings

  3. The group with the lowest mental age were Black Americans (with an average mental age of 10.4).

  However, the lighter the skin colour, the higher the IQ score.
• The impact of Yerkes' findings

  • Impacted officer screening
  • Requests from Commercial concerns, educational establishments, other individuals
  • Socio-political, supporting Eugenicists' beliefs