And, with this last post about Jensen, i will end the Crash Course Intelligence 101, which was about the most prominent scientists who did any kind of research in the field of intelligence studies. Probably i will continue to write about IQ testings methods and new discoveries in the field of intelligence testing. Anyway, due of few courses i just begin or i will begin soon, i will not be so active. But i will try to post at least once per week, with all the facts that i will collect during the previous week.
Good luck and see you soon.
G.
On this blog i will explore genius and geniality concepts, talented child and adults, polymaths, multipotentialite, multipods and other similar denominations. Mostly, i would like to learn about the potential hidden within each of us.
Showing posts with label IQ test origin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IQ test origin. Show all posts
Friday, 27 November 2015
Arthur Jensen
Arthur Jensen (August 24, 1923 - present )it is an American Educational Psychologist, major proponent of the hereditarian position.
Student of: Eysenck, Symonds
Influenced by: Burt
Time Period: Current Efforts
Education
University of California, Berkeley, B.A. in psychology (1945)
San Diego State College, M.A. in psychology (1952)
University of Maryland, Psychiatric Institute, Baltimore, MD, clinical internship (1955-1956)
Columbia University, Ph.D. in clinical psychology under Symonds (1956)
University of London, Institute of Psychiatry, postdoctoral research fellow under Eysenck (1956-1958)
Career
University of California, Berkeley, assistant professor and professor (1958-1992); professor emeritus (1992-present)
Kistler Prize for original contributions to the understanding of the connection between the human genome and human society (2003)
Major Contributions
Major proponent of the hereditarian position
Author of more than 300 articles, book chapters and books
Definition of Intelligence
“A working definition of intelligence, then, is that it is the g factor of an indefinitely large and varied battery of mental tests….We are forced to infer that g is of considerable importance in ‘real life’ by the fact that g constitutes the largest component of total variance in all standard tests of intelligence or IQ, and the very same g is by far the largest component of variance in scholastic achievement (Jensen, 1979, pp. 249-50).”
Ideas & Interests
Arthur Jensen’s emergence as an important figure in the history of human intelligence theory occurred in February of 1969, with the publication of a controversial essay in the Harvard Educational Review. In the article, Jensen presented evidence that racial differences in intelligence test scores may have a genetic origin. This assertion, and Jensen’s concomitant recommendation that white and African-American children might benefit from different types of education, drew strident criticism from many members of the academic community and the public at large (Ciancolo & Sternberg, 2004). Jensen’s interest in this topic began when one of his graduate students noted that the white special education students he was working with appeared to be more genuinely “retarded” than the students from minority groups who had been placed in special education. In fact, it seemed to Jensen’s student that whereas the white children functioned at a low level both inside and outside the classroom, the minority children sometimes appeared “quite indistinguishable in every way from children of normal intelligence, except in their scholastic performance and in their performance on a variety of standard IQ tests (Jensen, 1974, p. 222).” Jensen’s student wanted to know if there were any “culture-free” intelligence tests that might explain the differences he observed in his students. This question spurred several experiments, and the results persuaded Jensen that standard g-loaded intelligence tests are fairly good measures of intellectual ability, and that racial differences in average IQ scores are not due to any “culture unfairness” intrinsic to the tests. Jensen articulated evidence to support these views in his 1969 article. Jensen accepts Spearman’s idea of a general factor in human intelligence, and his own theory divides intelligence into two distinct sets of abilities: Level I abilities account for memory functions and simple associative learning, and Level II abilities comprise abstract reasoning and conceptual thought. Jensen concluded from his research that Level I abilities are equally-distributed among the races, whereas white and Asian students demonstrate advantages in tests of Level II abilities. Since Level II abilities appear to be more important for success in school, white and Asian children are at an advantage (Fancher, 1985). In years since the publication of the 1969 Harvard Educational Review article, Jensen has published a large body of empirical research demonstrating that genetic factors are a substantial source of the variance in individual differences in IQ (Fancher, 1985). Despite the controversial nature of his claims, in 2003 Jensen won the prestigious Kistler Prize for original contributions to the understanding of the connection between the human genome and human society.
Selected Publications
Jensen, A. R. (1969). How much can we boost I.Q. and scholastic achievement? Harvard Educational Review, 33, 1-123.
Jensen, A. R., (1972). Genetics and education. New York: Harper and Row.
Jensen, A. R. (1973). Educability and group differences. New York: Harper and Row.
Jensen, A. R. (1979). Bias in mental testing. New York: Free Press.
Jensen, A. R. (1981). Straight talk about mental tests. New York: Free Press.
Jensen, A. R. (1984). Jensen oversimplified: A reply to Sternberg. Journal of Social and Biological Structures, 7, 125-130.
Jensen, A. R. (1998). The g factor: The science of mental ability. Westport, CN: Praeger.
Jensen, A. R., & Miele, F. (2002). Intelligence, race and genetics: Conversations with Arthur R. Jensen. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
References
Cianciolo, A. T., & Sternberg, R. J. (2004). Intelligence: A brief history. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Fancher, R. (1985). The intelligence men: Makers of the IQ controversy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Jensen, A. R. (1969). How much can we boost I.Q. and scholastic achievement? Harvard Educational Review, 33, 1-123.
Jensen, A. R. (1974). What is the question? What is the evidence? In T. S. Krawiec (Ed.), The psychologists (Vol.2) (pp. 206-234). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jensen, A. R. (1979). Bias in mental testing. New York: Free Press.
Reynolds, C. R. (1994). Jensen, Arthur R. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.). Encyclopedia of human intelligence (pp. 629-631). New York: Macmillan.
Wednesday, 11 November 2015
IQ tests origin and history
As i will come close to an end with the history of the IQ tests most famous personalities, i will start to analyze the IQ tests, to point out their benefits and their limitations. But at the moment i will go in a one week holiday in Eastern Europe, and probably i will not have so many posts.
See you all soon
G.
See you all soon
G.
Cyril L. Burt
Cyril L. Burt (March 3, 1883 - October 10, 1971) was a British Educational Psychologist, investigated differences in intelligence among social classes, gender and race, and the intelligence on separated twins. It was because his research that we discovered later why the children from poorer family gain knowledge slower than ones from middle class and up, and the Ericsson study of 10.000 hours of mastery was indirectly inspired by. He also helped women to fight the gender disparity using a part of his research.
Influences
Student of: McDougall
Influenced by: Galton, Spearman
Students: Eysenck
Influenced: Jensen, Vernon
Time Period: Contemporary Explorations
Education
Oxford Greats Course, Jesus College, Oxford, (1902-1907)
Teachers' Diploma, Jesus College, Oxford (1908)
Studied psychology under Oswald Külpe at the University of Würzburg, Germany (Summer, 1908)
Career
Lecturer in Experimental Psychology, University of Liverpool (1908-1913)
Chief Psychologist, London County Council (1913-1932)
Professor of Educational Psychology, London Day Training Centre (1924-1932)
Charles Spearman Chair of Psychology, University College, London (1932-1950)
First psychologist to be knighted (1946)
Editor and co-editor, British Journal of Statistical Psychology (1947-1963)
Published more than 200 articles after his retirement from teaching (1950-1971)
First British subject to win the (American) Thorndike Prize, (1971)
President of British Psychological Society (1942)
Definition of Intelligence
"…[intelligence] denotes, first of all, a quality that is intellectual and not emotional or moral: in measuring it we try to rule out the effects of the child's zeal, interest, industry, and the like. Secondly, it denotes a general capacity, a capacity that enters into everything the child says or does or thinks; any want of 'intelligence' will therefore be revealed to some degree in almost all that he attempts; a weakness in some limited or specialized ability-for example, in the ability to speak or to read, to learn or to calculate-is of itself by no means a sign of defective intelligence. Thirdly, intelligence is by definition an innate capacity: hence a lack of it is not necessarily proved by a lack of educational knowledge or skill" (Burt, 1957, p. 64-65).
Major Contributions
Founded the field of Educational Psychology in Great Britain by creating and implementing a system for identifying mentally retarded students
Helped to establish the Eleven-Plus testing program in Great Britain
Helped to expand the statistical technique of factor analysis
Advocated for the hereditarian position: He is famous (and notorious) for his conclusions about the intelligence of identical twins reared apart
Investigated differences in intelligence among social classes, gender and race
Published nine books and more than three hundred articles, lectures and book chapters
Ideas & Interests
Sir Cyril Burt remains one of the most complex and intriguing figures in the history of intelligence testing. He was a pioneer of educational psychology in England and was one of the most respected and honored psychologists of his time. However, he had controversial ideas regarding the heritability of intelligence, and there is ample evidence that he used fraudulent data to support his views (Scarr, 1994). Throughout Cyril Burt's lifetime he remained committed to proving that intelligence is primarily and inherited characteristic. His long research career began in 1909 with a study comparing the intelligence of boys enrolled in an elite preparatory academy with the intelligence of boys attending a regular school.* To control for environmental influences, he chose measures (such as mirror drawing) that were unlikely to have been learned during the students' lifetimes. Since the prep school students scored higherr than the other students, he concluded that they had more innate intelligence. Moreover, he noted that the fathers of the prep school boys were more successful than the fathers the other boys. He interpreted this to mean that the prep school boys had benefited from their fathers' superior genetic endowments (Fancher, 1985). Burt did not believe that 100% of intelligence is inherited. In fact, he acknowledged that environmental influences are important. However, he argued that even environmental influences can have genetic causes. In 1922 he wrote:
That children of better social status succeed better with the Binet- Simon scale is not necessarily an objection to that scale; nor is it necessarily a ground for constructing separate norms: for, by birth as well as by home training, children who are superior in social status may be equally superior in genral ability. Conversely, if a child proves defective according to a scale that is otherwise authentic, the mere fact that his family is poor and his dwelling a hovel does not of itself condone his deficiency. His parents' home may be mean precisely because their hereditary intelligence is mean. Whether poverty and its accompaniments affect the child's performances in any direct fashion-whether, for example, in the Binet-Simon tests a child that inherits an abundance of natural ability may be handicapped through a lack of cultural opportunities-is a further and a separate issue (Burt, 1922, p. 192). Later in Burt's life he would be accused of using fraudulent twin data to support the primacy of genetics over envirnoment. Between 1943 and 1966 he published a series of articles on the intelligence of identical twins who had been raised in different homes. Every article confirmed that each set twins' intelligence test scores were extremely similar. After Burt's death critics pointed out several problems with these articles, including: The raw data supporting his results had either disappeared or had never existed, an inability to confirm that his research assistants were indeed real people, extremely unlikely similarities in the correlation coefficients of IQ scores across studies, inconsistencies in the numbers of twins he reported using, and the implausibility of finding 53 sets of identical twins who had been reared apart. Although Burt is famous for his controversial hereditarian views, he took precisely the opposite stance on the issue of juvenile delinquency. Although Burt's family was middleclass, he grew up in a working class area and many of his boyhood friends were from poor families (Fancher, 1985). He was therefore made keenly aware of the environmental conditions which might lead to social and legal problems. While lecturing at Liverpool, he spent some time living in the University Settlement, a housing project on the on the outskirts of a slum. The settlement had been created for the specific purpose of exposing researchers to slum conditions. Burt came away from this experience convinced that juvenile delinquency was not a hereditary blight, but an environmental one. In The Young Delinquent, he lamented that "contagion is all too often mistaken for heredity" (Burt, 1925). In 1926 Burt began advocating for a national testing program that could identify bright children from all socioeconomic levels. He believed that this would establish a meritocracy, giving economically disadvantaged children educational opportunities that they would not otherwise receive. However, since he believed that economically disadvantaged children were also more likely to be genetically disadvantaged, he was convinced that the number of bright lower-class students identified would necessarily be much smaller than the number of bright upper class students. (Fancher, 1985) His proposed testing program was implemented, and a version of it is used in the United Kingdom to this day. Since Burt believed that intelligence is not fixed until children are approximately eleven years old, he suggested that all British students be tested at this age. Results of the "Eleven-Plus" exam would be used to sift students into grammar schools (for the high scorers) or modern schools (for the rest). These school placements were permanent. The Eleven-Plus program proved to be a double-edged sword: Since universities required grammar school training for admission, many lower-class youth received educational opportunities that they might not otherwise have enjoyed. However, most students were placed in the modern schools--ending forever their chances of receiving a university education. (Fancher, 1985). Burt also had environmentalist leanings on the issue of intelligence and race. Like many psychologists of his time, he believed that the European races were intellectually superior to the so-called "savage races". However, he did not attribute this superiority entirely to genetics (Hearnshaw, 1979). In a 1912 Eugenics Review article he stated: "In the case of the individual we found the influence of heredity large and indisputable; in the case of the race, small and controversial." (Burt, 1912) Burt was also interested in gender differences in intelligence. One of his earliest studies investigated the differences in the perceptual and motor skills, reasoning ability, and emotionality of male and female schoolchildren. His research team came to the surprising conclusion that "with few exceptions innate sex differences in mental constitution are astonishingly small--far smaller than common belief and common practice would lead us to expect" (Burt & Moore, 1912). Later in his career he offered evidence from a variety of sources pointing to the superior linguistic capabilities of girls, and suggested that at various periods in their development, girls are intellectually superior to their male counterparts. He noted however, that this superiority is transient, and that the overall cognitive differences between boys and girls are negligible. (Burt, 1922, p. 193). When viewed within the social context extant during this stage of Burt's career, it is reasonable to say that his work helped women to achieve gender parity within the school system. (Hearnshaw, 1979). *His experimental design did not actually allow for a direct comparison of the two groups. His conclusions were based on interpretations of data from within each group.
Selected Publications:
Burt, C. (1909). Experimental tests of general intelligence. British Journal of Psychology, 3, 94-177.
Burt, C. (1921). Mental and scholastic tests. London: P.S. King and Son.
Burt, C. (1935). The subnormal mind. London: Oxford University Press.
Burt C. (1940). The factors of the mind: An introduction to factor analysis in psychology. London: University of London Press.
Burt, C. (1957). The causes and treatments of backwardness (4th ed.). London: University of London Press.
Burt, C. (1975). The gifted child. New York: Wiley.
References:
Burt, C.L. (1912). The inheritance of mental characteristics. Eugenics Review, 4, 168-200.
Burt, C.L. (1925). The young delinquent. London: University of London Press.
Burt, C. (1957). The causes and treatments of backwardness (4th ed.). London: University of London Press.
Burt, C.L., & Moore, R.C. (1912). The mental differences between the sexes. Journal of Experimental Ped., 1, 273-84, 355-88.
Fancher, R.E. (1985). The intelligence men: Makers of the IQ controversy. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Hearnshaw, L.S. (1979). Cyril Burt, Psychologist. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univerisity Press.
Scarr, S. (1994). Burt, Cyril L. In R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Encyclopedia of intelligence (Vol. 1). (pp. 231-234). New York: Macmillan.
www.intelltheory.com
Anne Anastasi
Anne Anastasi (December 19, 1908-May 4, 2001) was an American Differential Psychologist, known as "test guru", did an extensive examination of issues related to test construction, test misuse, misinterpretation and cultural bias.
Influences
Student of: H. L. Hollingworth
Influenced by: Spearman
Time Period: Contemporary Explorations
Education:
Educated at home by her grandmother and a private tutor until age 9
Dropped out of high school after only two months
Two years at the Rhodes Preparatory School in Manhattan (1922-1923)
Entered Barnard College at the age of 15. Graduated at the age of 19 (A.B. in Psychology, 1928)
Columbia University (Ph.D. in Psychology, 1929)
Career:
Barnard College, Instructor in Psychology (1930-1939)
Queens College, Assistant Professor and Chairperson of the Psychology Department, (1939-1947)
Fordham University, Associate Professor of Psychology, (1947-1951); Professor (1951-1979); Professor Emeritus (and awarded Honorary Doctor of Science Degree, 1979)
President of the Eastern Psychological Association (1946-1947)
President of the APA Division 1, General Psychology (1956-1957)
President of the APA Division 5, Evaluation, Measurement and Statistics (1965-1966)
President of the American Psychological Foundation (1965-1967)
Third female president of the American Psychological Association (1972)
Definition of Intelligence
"Intelligence is not a single, unitary ability, but rather a composite of several functions. The term denotes that combination of abilities required for survival and advancement within a particular culture (Anastasi, 1992, p. 613). ”
Major Contributions:
Known as the "test guru"
Extensive examination of issues related to test construction, test misuse, misinterpretation and cultural bias
Argued against the strictly hereditarian position; emphasized the role of experiential, environmental and cultural influences on intelligence test scores
More than 150 publications, including two classic textbooks: Psychological Testing (1st edition 1954; 7th edition, 1996) and Differential Psychology (1st edition 1937; 4th edition, 1981)
Ideas and Interests
Anne Anastasi grew up in New York City, the only child in a small Sicilian family. Her father died when she was an infant, and she was raised by her mother, grandmother and uncle. Anastasi described her grandmother as a domineering woman who maintained stewardship over most issues in family life, including young Anne's education. She believed herself to be a true aristocrat, and categorized all those whom she met as either aristocrats or peasants (Anastasi, 1989) Anastasi's uncle was a man of superior classical education, but he was ill prepared for real-world employment. In contrast, Anastasi's mother was a practical, resourceful woman, and it was she who shouldered the burden of supporting the family (Reznikoff & Procidano, 2001; Sexton & Hogan, 1990). Anastasi believed that the juxtaposition of these three personalities might have been a reason for her later professional interest in the psychology of individual differences (Anastasi, 1989). Anastasi's grandmother disapproved of the boisterous neighborhood children, and insisted that she be educated at home (Anastasi, 1989). When she was nine years old, a private tutor convinced her grandmother to allow her to attend a public elementary school. Anastasi enjoyed her early schooling, but her high school experience was disappointing. The building was overcrowded, rundown and very far from her home. She dropped out after only two months (Anastasi, 1972). At the suggestion of a family friend, she decided to skip high school entirely. She spent two years preparing for the college entrance examinations, and was admitted to Barnard College at the age of fifteen (Anastasi, 1972; Reznikoff & Procidano, 2001; Sexton & Hogan, 1990). Anastasi entered college as a math major. During her sophomore year she enrolled in an elective psychology class taught by H.L. Hollingworth. His enthusiasm and intensity impressed her, as did his sharp criticisms of sloppy research practices (Anastasi, 1989; Sexton & Hogan, 1990). Later the same year, Anastasi read a Charles Spearman article on correlation coefficients, (Spearman, 1904) and realized that she did not need to abandon mathematics to pursue her emerging interest in psychology (Anastasi, 1972, 1989; Reznikoff & Procidano, 2001). She switched majors and completed a bachelor's degree in psychology at the age of nineteen. After graduation from Barnard, she entered Columbia University, requesting that her undergraduate work be accepted in lieu of a master's degree. She completed her doctorate in two years (Anastasi, 1972, 1989). Anne Anastasi's research focused on understanding and measuring the factors underlying the development of individual differences in psychological traits (Anastasi, 1972, 1989). She argued against the strictly hereditarian position, emphasizing the role of experiential and environmental influences on intelligence test scores and psychological development. She stressed that intelligence test scores are not pure measures of innate ability: ...not only does the nature of one's antecedent experiences affect the degree of differentiation of "intelligence" into distinct abilities, but it also affects the particular abilities that emerge, such as verbal, numerical, and spatial abilities. Thus, experiential factors affect not only the level of the individual's intellectual development, but also the very categories in terms of which his abilities may be identified (Anastasi, 1972). Anastasi believed that most claims about "culture-free" and "culture-fair" testing are untrue. She stressed that different cultures have different concepts of what an "intelligent person" is, and that traditional psychometric tests measure only those skills which are valued in academic and work circles within modern, industrialized social contexts. The dominant intelligence test paradigm presupposes that intelligence tests should assess the individual's ability to succeed in this environment. However, the value of these tests is ephemeral; new tests will have to be developed as society advances and new technology demands cultivation of different cognitive skills. Anastasi emphasized that there is an alternative to this testing model. Other assessments could be developed to measure "how well individuals have acquired skills and knowledge valued in [their own] culture." She believed that although both types of tests can be valid as intelligence tests, the way in which intelligence is defined would necessarily be different for each construct (Anastasi, 1981). Anastasi's research increased awareness of what intelligence tests should and should not be used for. She cautioned test users against misinterpreting results, emphasizing that intelligence is changeable over time, and that intelligence (not just intelligence test scores) can improve with experience. Therefore, intelligence test scores should never be used to label a student indelibly (Anastasi, 1992): Tests can serve a predictive function only insofar as they indicate to what extent the individual has acquired the prerequisite skills and knowledge for a designated criterion performance. What persons can accomplish in the future depends not only on their present intellectual status, as assessed by the test, but on their subsequent experience (Anastasi, 1981).According to Anastasi, intelligence tests can do three things:
-They permit a direct assessment of prerequisite intellectual skills demanded by many important tasks in our culture.
-They assess availability of a relevant store of knowledge or content also prerequisite for many educational and occupational tasks.
-They provide an indirect index of the extent to which the individual has developed effective learning strategies, problem-solving techniques and work habits and utilized them in the past. (Anastasi, 1981)
When intelligence test scores are used properly, they are valuable descriptive tools that allow teachers and counselors to determine a student's current level of academic performance. Although an intelligence test score cannot tell us why a student scored as he did, the score can make it easier to meet a student at his level, and to design educational experiences that will improve intelligence. (Anastasi, 1981).
Selected Publications
Anastasi, A. (1981). Differential psychology. (4th ed.). New York: Macmillan.
Anastasi, A. (1983). Psychological testing. In C.E. Walker (Ed.), Handbook of clinical psychology: Theory, research and practice (Vol.1, pp.420-444). Homewood, Ill: Dow-Jones Irwin.
Anastasi, A. (1983). What do intelligence tests measure? In S. B. Anderson & J. S. Helmick (Eds.), On educational testing: Intelligence, performance standards, test anxiety, and latent traits (pp.5-28). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Anastasi, A. (1984). Aptitude and achievement tests: The curious case of the indestructible strawperson. In B. S. Plake (Ed.), Social and technical issues in testing: Implications for test construction and usage (pp. 129-140).Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Anastasi, A. (1985). Psychological testing: Basic concepts and common misconceptions. In A. M. Rogers & C. J. Scheirer (Eds.), The G. Stanley Hall Lecture Series (Vol. 5, pp.87-120). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Anastasi, A. (1986). Intelligence as a quality of behavior. In R. J Sternberg & D. K. Detterman (Eds.), What is intelligence? Contemporary viewpoints on its nature and definition (pp. 19-21). Norwood NJ: Ablex.
Anastasi, A. (1996). Psychological testing (7th ed.). New York: Macmillian.
References
Anastasi, A. (1972). Reminiscences of a differential psychologist. In T. S. Krawiec (Ed.), The psychologists (pp.3-37). London: Oxford University Press.
Anastasi, A. (1981). Diverse effects of training on tests of academic intelligence. In B. F. Green (Ed.), Issues in testing: Coaching, disclosure, and ethnic bias. (pp.5-20). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Anastasi, A. (1989). Anne Anastasi. In G. Lindzey (Ed.), History of psychology in autobiography: Vol. 7. (pp.1-37). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Anastasi, A. (1992). What counselors should know about the use and interpretation of psychological tests. Journal of Counseling and Development, 70 (5), 610-615.
Reznikoff, M., & Procidano, M. (2001). Anne Anastasi. American Psychologist, 56 (10), 816-817.
Sexton, V. S., & Hogan, J. D. (1990). Anne Anastasi. In A. N. O'Connell and N. F. Russo (Eds.), Women in psychology: A bio-bibliographic sourcebook. (pp.13-22). New York: Greenwood Press.
Spearman, C. (1904). "General intelligence" objectively determined and measured. American Journal of psychology, 15, 201-293.
intelltheory.com
Influences
Student of: H. L. Hollingworth
Influenced by: Spearman
Time Period: Contemporary Explorations
Education:
Educated at home by her grandmother and a private tutor until age 9
Dropped out of high school after only two months
Two years at the Rhodes Preparatory School in Manhattan (1922-1923)
Entered Barnard College at the age of 15. Graduated at the age of 19 (A.B. in Psychology, 1928)
Columbia University (Ph.D. in Psychology, 1929)
Career:
Barnard College, Instructor in Psychology (1930-1939)
Queens College, Assistant Professor and Chairperson of the Psychology Department, (1939-1947)
Fordham University, Associate Professor of Psychology, (1947-1951); Professor (1951-1979); Professor Emeritus (and awarded Honorary Doctor of Science Degree, 1979)
President of the Eastern Psychological Association (1946-1947)
President of the APA Division 1, General Psychology (1956-1957)
President of the APA Division 5, Evaluation, Measurement and Statistics (1965-1966)
President of the American Psychological Foundation (1965-1967)
Third female president of the American Psychological Association (1972)
Definition of Intelligence
"Intelligence is not a single, unitary ability, but rather a composite of several functions. The term denotes that combination of abilities required for survival and advancement within a particular culture (Anastasi, 1992, p. 613). ”
Major Contributions:
Known as the "test guru"
Extensive examination of issues related to test construction, test misuse, misinterpretation and cultural bias
Argued against the strictly hereditarian position; emphasized the role of experiential, environmental and cultural influences on intelligence test scores
More than 150 publications, including two classic textbooks: Psychological Testing (1st edition 1954; 7th edition, 1996) and Differential Psychology (1st edition 1937; 4th edition, 1981)
Ideas and Interests
Anne Anastasi grew up in New York City, the only child in a small Sicilian family. Her father died when she was an infant, and she was raised by her mother, grandmother and uncle. Anastasi described her grandmother as a domineering woman who maintained stewardship over most issues in family life, including young Anne's education. She believed herself to be a true aristocrat, and categorized all those whom she met as either aristocrats or peasants (Anastasi, 1989) Anastasi's uncle was a man of superior classical education, but he was ill prepared for real-world employment. In contrast, Anastasi's mother was a practical, resourceful woman, and it was she who shouldered the burden of supporting the family (Reznikoff & Procidano, 2001; Sexton & Hogan, 1990). Anastasi believed that the juxtaposition of these three personalities might have been a reason for her later professional interest in the psychology of individual differences (Anastasi, 1989). Anastasi's grandmother disapproved of the boisterous neighborhood children, and insisted that she be educated at home (Anastasi, 1989). When she was nine years old, a private tutor convinced her grandmother to allow her to attend a public elementary school. Anastasi enjoyed her early schooling, but her high school experience was disappointing. The building was overcrowded, rundown and very far from her home. She dropped out after only two months (Anastasi, 1972). At the suggestion of a family friend, she decided to skip high school entirely. She spent two years preparing for the college entrance examinations, and was admitted to Barnard College at the age of fifteen (Anastasi, 1972; Reznikoff & Procidano, 2001; Sexton & Hogan, 1990). Anastasi entered college as a math major. During her sophomore year she enrolled in an elective psychology class taught by H.L. Hollingworth. His enthusiasm and intensity impressed her, as did his sharp criticisms of sloppy research practices (Anastasi, 1989; Sexton & Hogan, 1990). Later the same year, Anastasi read a Charles Spearman article on correlation coefficients, (Spearman, 1904) and realized that she did not need to abandon mathematics to pursue her emerging interest in psychology (Anastasi, 1972, 1989; Reznikoff & Procidano, 2001). She switched majors and completed a bachelor's degree in psychology at the age of nineteen. After graduation from Barnard, she entered Columbia University, requesting that her undergraduate work be accepted in lieu of a master's degree. She completed her doctorate in two years (Anastasi, 1972, 1989). Anne Anastasi's research focused on understanding and measuring the factors underlying the development of individual differences in psychological traits (Anastasi, 1972, 1989). She argued against the strictly hereditarian position, emphasizing the role of experiential and environmental influences on intelligence test scores and psychological development. She stressed that intelligence test scores are not pure measures of innate ability: ...not only does the nature of one's antecedent experiences affect the degree of differentiation of "intelligence" into distinct abilities, but it also affects the particular abilities that emerge, such as verbal, numerical, and spatial abilities. Thus, experiential factors affect not only the level of the individual's intellectual development, but also the very categories in terms of which his abilities may be identified (Anastasi, 1972). Anastasi believed that most claims about "culture-free" and "culture-fair" testing are untrue. She stressed that different cultures have different concepts of what an "intelligent person" is, and that traditional psychometric tests measure only those skills which are valued in academic and work circles within modern, industrialized social contexts. The dominant intelligence test paradigm presupposes that intelligence tests should assess the individual's ability to succeed in this environment. However, the value of these tests is ephemeral; new tests will have to be developed as society advances and new technology demands cultivation of different cognitive skills. Anastasi emphasized that there is an alternative to this testing model. Other assessments could be developed to measure "how well individuals have acquired skills and knowledge valued in [their own] culture." She believed that although both types of tests can be valid as intelligence tests, the way in which intelligence is defined would necessarily be different for each construct (Anastasi, 1981). Anastasi's research increased awareness of what intelligence tests should and should not be used for. She cautioned test users against misinterpreting results, emphasizing that intelligence is changeable over time, and that intelligence (not just intelligence test scores) can improve with experience. Therefore, intelligence test scores should never be used to label a student indelibly (Anastasi, 1992): Tests can serve a predictive function only insofar as they indicate to what extent the individual has acquired the prerequisite skills and knowledge for a designated criterion performance. What persons can accomplish in the future depends not only on their present intellectual status, as assessed by the test, but on their subsequent experience (Anastasi, 1981).According to Anastasi, intelligence tests can do three things:
-They permit a direct assessment of prerequisite intellectual skills demanded by many important tasks in our culture.
-They assess availability of a relevant store of knowledge or content also prerequisite for many educational and occupational tasks.
-They provide an indirect index of the extent to which the individual has developed effective learning strategies, problem-solving techniques and work habits and utilized them in the past. (Anastasi, 1981)
When intelligence test scores are used properly, they are valuable descriptive tools that allow teachers and counselors to determine a student's current level of academic performance. Although an intelligence test score cannot tell us why a student scored as he did, the score can make it easier to meet a student at his level, and to design educational experiences that will improve intelligence. (Anastasi, 1981).
Selected Publications
Anastasi, A. (1981). Differential psychology. (4th ed.). New York: Macmillan.
Anastasi, A. (1983). Psychological testing. In C.E. Walker (Ed.), Handbook of clinical psychology: Theory, research and practice (Vol.1, pp.420-444). Homewood, Ill: Dow-Jones Irwin.
Anastasi, A. (1983). What do intelligence tests measure? In S. B. Anderson & J. S. Helmick (Eds.), On educational testing: Intelligence, performance standards, test anxiety, and latent traits (pp.5-28). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Anastasi, A. (1984). Aptitude and achievement tests: The curious case of the indestructible strawperson. In B. S. Plake (Ed.), Social and technical issues in testing: Implications for test construction and usage (pp. 129-140).Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Anastasi, A. (1985). Psychological testing: Basic concepts and common misconceptions. In A. M. Rogers & C. J. Scheirer (Eds.), The G. Stanley Hall Lecture Series (Vol. 5, pp.87-120). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Anastasi, A. (1986). Intelligence as a quality of behavior. In R. J Sternberg & D. K. Detterman (Eds.), What is intelligence? Contemporary viewpoints on its nature and definition (pp. 19-21). Norwood NJ: Ablex.
Anastasi, A. (1996). Psychological testing (7th ed.). New York: Macmillian.
References
Anastasi, A. (1972). Reminiscences of a differential psychologist. In T. S. Krawiec (Ed.), The psychologists (pp.3-37). London: Oxford University Press.
Anastasi, A. (1981). Diverse effects of training on tests of academic intelligence. In B. F. Green (Ed.), Issues in testing: Coaching, disclosure, and ethnic bias. (pp.5-20). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Anastasi, A. (1989). Anne Anastasi. In G. Lindzey (Ed.), History of psychology in autobiography: Vol. 7. (pp.1-37). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Anastasi, A. (1992). What counselors should know about the use and interpretation of psychological tests. Journal of Counseling and Development, 70 (5), 610-615.
Reznikoff, M., & Procidano, M. (2001). Anne Anastasi. American Psychologist, 56 (10), 816-817.
Sexton, V. S., & Hogan, J. D. (1990). Anne Anastasi. In A. N. O'Connell and N. F. Russo (Eds.), Women in psychology: A bio-bibliographic sourcebook. (pp.13-22). New York: Greenwood Press.
Spearman, C. (1904). "General intelligence" objectively determined and measured. American Journal of psychology, 15, 201-293.
intelltheory.com
L.L. Thurstone
L. L. Thurstone (1887-1955) was an Psychometrician, best known for the development of new factor analytic techniques to determine the number and nature of latent constructs within a set of observed variables. Also we can notice that he was an assistant to "that" Edison. Bingham was one of his many teachers. He is one that defined what intelligence is in the 20th century.
Student of: Edison, Bingham
Students: Taylor, T. Thurstone
Influenced: Gardner
Time Period: Contemporary Explorations
Education :
Cornell University, Master of Engineering (1912)
University of Chicago , Ph.D. in Psychology, (1914-1917)
Division of Applied Psychology at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, assistantship (1915-1917)
Career:
Assistant to Thomas A. Edison (1912)
Taught descriptive geometry and drafting, College of Engineering, University of Minnesota (1912-1914)
Professor, Carnegie Institute of Technology (1917-1923)
Institute for Government Research, Washington DC (1923)
Professor, University of Chicago (1924-1952)
President of American Psychological Association (1932)
First President of the American Psychometric Society (1936)
Director, Psychometric Laboratory, University of North Carolina (1952-1955)
Numerous awards, including: Best Article, American Psychological Association (1949); Centennial Award, Northwestern University (1951); Honorary Doctorate, University of Göteborg (1954).
Definition of Intelligence
“Intelligence, considered as a mental trait, is the capacity to make impulses focal at their early, unfinished stage of formation. Intelligence is therefore the capacity for abstraction, which is an inhibitory process (Thurstone, 1924/1973 p. 159).”
Major Contributions
Theory of Primary Mental Abilities
Developed the statistical technique of multiple-factor analysis
Ideas and Interests
Louis Leon Thurstone made significant contributions in many areas of psychology, including psychometrics, statistics, and the study of human intelligence. He developed methods for scaling psychological measures, assessing attitudes, and test theory, among many other influential contributions. He is best known for the development of new factor analytic techniques to determine the number and nature of latent constructs within a set of observed variables. The new statistical techniques developed by Thurstone provided the necessary tools for his most enduring contribution to psychology: The Theory of Primary Mental Abilities, a model of human intelligence that challenged Charles Spearman’s then-dominant paradigm of a unitary conception of intelligence. Spearman, using an earlier approach to factor analysis, found that scores on all mental tests (regardless of the domain or how it was tested) tend to load on one major factor. Spearman suggested that these disparate scores are fueled by a common metaphorical “pool” of mental energy. He named this pool the general factor, or g (Spearman, 1904). Thurstone argued that g was a statistical artifact resulting from the mathematical procedures used to study it. Using his new approach to factor analysis, Thurstone found that intelligent behavior does not arise from a general factor, but rather emerges from seven independent factors that he called primary abilities: word fluency, verbal comprehension, spatial visualization, number facility, associative memory, reasoning, and perceptual speed (Thurstone, 1938). Furthermore, when Thurstone analyzed mental test data from samples comprised of people with similar overall IQ scores, he found that they had different profiles of primary mental abilities, further supporting his model and suggesting that his work had more clinical utility than Spearman’s unitary theory. However, when Thurstone administered his tests to an intellectually heterogeneous group of children, he failed to find that the seven primary abilities were entirely separate; rather he found evidence of g. Thurstone managed an elegant mathematical solution that resolved these apparently contradictory results, and the final version of his theory was a compromise that accounted for the presence of both a general factor and the seven specific abilities. This compromise helped lay the groundwork for future researchers who proposed hierarchical theories and theories of multiple intelligences (Ruzgis, 1994).
Selected Publications
Thurstone, L. L. (1924/1973). The Nature of Intelligence. London: Routledge.
Thurstone, L. L. (1934). The vectors of the mind. Address of the president before the American Psychological Association, Chicago meeting, September, 1933. First published in Psychological Review, 41, 1-32.
Thurstone, L. L. (1938). Primary mental abilities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Thurstone, L. L. (1947). Multiple-Factor Analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Thurstone, L. L., & Thurstone, T. G. (1941). Factorial studies of intelligence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
References
Ruzgis, P. (1994). Thustone, L.L. (1887-1955). In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.). Encyclopedia of human intelligence (pp. 1081-1084). New York: Macmillan.
Spearman, C. E. (1904). ‘General intelligence’ objectively determined and measured. American Journal of Psychology, 15, 201-293.
Thurstone, L. L. (1924/1973). The Nature of Intelligence. London: Routledge.
Thurstone, L. L. (1938). Primary mental abilities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
www.intelltheory.com
Student of: Edison, Bingham
Students: Taylor, T. Thurstone
Influenced: Gardner
Time Period: Contemporary Explorations
Education :
Cornell University, Master of Engineering (1912)
University of Chicago , Ph.D. in Psychology, (1914-1917)
Division of Applied Psychology at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, assistantship (1915-1917)
Career:
Assistant to Thomas A. Edison (1912)
Taught descriptive geometry and drafting, College of Engineering, University of Minnesota (1912-1914)
Professor, Carnegie Institute of Technology (1917-1923)
Institute for Government Research, Washington DC (1923)
Professor, University of Chicago (1924-1952)
President of American Psychological Association (1932)
First President of the American Psychometric Society (1936)
Director, Psychometric Laboratory, University of North Carolina (1952-1955)
Numerous awards, including: Best Article, American Psychological Association (1949); Centennial Award, Northwestern University (1951); Honorary Doctorate, University of Göteborg (1954).
Definition of Intelligence
“Intelligence, considered as a mental trait, is the capacity to make impulses focal at their early, unfinished stage of formation. Intelligence is therefore the capacity for abstraction, which is an inhibitory process (Thurstone, 1924/1973 p. 159).”
Major Contributions
Theory of Primary Mental Abilities
Developed the statistical technique of multiple-factor analysis
Ideas and Interests
Louis Leon Thurstone made significant contributions in many areas of psychology, including psychometrics, statistics, and the study of human intelligence. He developed methods for scaling psychological measures, assessing attitudes, and test theory, among many other influential contributions. He is best known for the development of new factor analytic techniques to determine the number and nature of latent constructs within a set of observed variables. The new statistical techniques developed by Thurstone provided the necessary tools for his most enduring contribution to psychology: The Theory of Primary Mental Abilities, a model of human intelligence that challenged Charles Spearman’s then-dominant paradigm of a unitary conception of intelligence. Spearman, using an earlier approach to factor analysis, found that scores on all mental tests (regardless of the domain or how it was tested) tend to load on one major factor. Spearman suggested that these disparate scores are fueled by a common metaphorical “pool” of mental energy. He named this pool the general factor, or g (Spearman, 1904). Thurstone argued that g was a statistical artifact resulting from the mathematical procedures used to study it. Using his new approach to factor analysis, Thurstone found that intelligent behavior does not arise from a general factor, but rather emerges from seven independent factors that he called primary abilities: word fluency, verbal comprehension, spatial visualization, number facility, associative memory, reasoning, and perceptual speed (Thurstone, 1938). Furthermore, when Thurstone analyzed mental test data from samples comprised of people with similar overall IQ scores, he found that they had different profiles of primary mental abilities, further supporting his model and suggesting that his work had more clinical utility than Spearman’s unitary theory. However, when Thurstone administered his tests to an intellectually heterogeneous group of children, he failed to find that the seven primary abilities were entirely separate; rather he found evidence of g. Thurstone managed an elegant mathematical solution that resolved these apparently contradictory results, and the final version of his theory was a compromise that accounted for the presence of both a general factor and the seven specific abilities. This compromise helped lay the groundwork for future researchers who proposed hierarchical theories and theories of multiple intelligences (Ruzgis, 1994).
Selected Publications
Thurstone, L. L. (1924/1973). The Nature of Intelligence. London: Routledge.
Thurstone, L. L. (1934). The vectors of the mind. Address of the president before the American Psychological Association, Chicago meeting, September, 1933. First published in Psychological Review, 41, 1-32.
Thurstone, L. L. (1938). Primary mental abilities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Thurstone, L. L. (1947). Multiple-Factor Analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Thurstone, L. L., & Thurstone, T. G. (1941). Factorial studies of intelligence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
References
Ruzgis, P. (1994). Thustone, L.L. (1887-1955). In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.). Encyclopedia of human intelligence (pp. 1081-1084). New York: Macmillan.
Spearman, C. E. (1904). ‘General intelligence’ objectively determined and measured. American Journal of Psychology, 15, 201-293.
Thurstone, L. L. (1924/1973). The Nature of Intelligence. London: Routledge.
Thurstone, L. L. (1938). Primary mental abilities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
www.intelltheory.com
Tuesday, 10 November 2015
David Wechsler
David Wechsler (1896-1981) was an eminent Psychologist, mostly known for Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC, 1949; WISC-IV®, 2003) and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS, 1955; WAIS-III®, 1997), still heavily used today, few other tests are showing so few limitations and such complexity. Can't help to notice that he was working at Camp Logan, Texas, if you are an X-men fan you know who had the nickname Logan.
Student of: Pearson, Spearman
Influenced by: E. L. Thorndike
Influenced: Kaufman
Time Period: Contemporary Explorations
Education:
City University of New York, A.B. (1916)
Columbia University, M.A. (1917)
University of Paris, experimental psychology research (1919-1922)
Columbia University, Ph.D. in experimental psychology ( 1925)
Career;
Army Psychologist assigned to Camp Logan, Texas (1917)
Sent by the Army to the University of London to work with C. Spearman and K. Pearson (1918)
Clinical Psychologist at the Bureau of Child Guidance, New York City (1922-1925)
Clinical psychology private practice (1925-1932)
Chief Psychologist, Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital (1932-1967)
Published several assessment instruments, including: Wechsler-Bellevue Scale of Intelligence (1939); Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS) (1945/1997); Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) (1949/2003); Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) (1955/1997); Wechsler Primary and Preschool Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI) (1967/2002)
Definition of Intelligence
“Intelligence is the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally and to deal effectively with his environment (Wechsler, 1944, p. 3).”
Major Contributions:
Developed several assessments, including two widely-used intelligence scales:
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC, 1949; WISC-IV®, 2003)
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS, 1955; WAIS-III®, 1997)
Established the use of the deviation IQ, or “DQ” (1939)
Ideas and Interests
David Wechsler is best known for developing several widely-used intelligence tests, including the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (Wechsler, 1949) and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Wechsler, 1955). Updated versions of these tests remain popular in the 21st century (WISC-IV®, 2003; WAIS-III®, 1997) and new tests founded on Wechsler’s work continue to be developed by other researchers (e.g. Wechsler & Naglieri, 2006). Wechsler is also notable for his use of the deviation quotient (DQ), a technical innovation that replaced the use of mental ages in computing IQ scores. This greatly improved the utility of normative comparisons when intelligence tests are used with adult examinees (Edwards, 1994). When the United States entered the First World War, David Wechsler was finishing up his master’s degree in psychology. He joined the Army, and this circumstance brought him into contact with several pioneers in the field of intelligence theory, including Karl Pearson, Charles Spearman, Edward Thorndike and Robert Mearns Yerkes. While awaiting his induction Wechsler volunteered to score the Army Alpha test, one of the two group intelligence tests developed by the Committee on the Psychological Examination of Recruits, and it is here that he met Yerkes and Thorndike. Later Wechsler became an individual psychological examiner, and was charged with administering the Stanford-Binet to recruits who had performed poorly on the group intelligence tests (Fancher, 1985). In 1918 the Army sent him to London to work with Spearman and Pearson. Wechsler eventually concluded that Spearman’s theory of general intelligence (g) was too narrow. Unlike Spearman, Wechsler viewed intelligence as an effect rather than a cause, and asserted that non-intellective factors, such as personality, contribute to the development of each person’s intelligence. His personal definition, “Intelligence is the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally and to deal effectively with his environment” reflects this broader view (Edwards, 1994; Wechsler, 1940). The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Fourth Edition® (WISC-IV®) was published in 2003. It has been normed for use with children aged six through sixteen years and eleven months. It yields a full-scale IQ score and four index scores: Verbal Comprehension (e.g. similarities, vocabulary and comprehension activities), Perceptual Reasoning (e.g. matrix reasoning, block design and picture concepts). Working Memory (e.g. letter-number sequencing and digit-span) and Processing Speed (e.g. symbol search and coding). The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—3rd Edition (WAIS-III®) was published in 1997, and it can be used with adults between the ages of 16 and 89 years. Several other Wechsler tests are also available to qualified psychologists:
-Wechsler Memory Scale®--Third edition- (WMS---III®)(Wechsler, 1945/1997)
-Wechsler Primary and Preschool Scale of Intelligence™ --Third edition (WPPSI™-III) (Wechsler, 1967/2002).
-Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI)(Wechsler, 1999)
-Wechsler Nonverbal Scale of Ability (WNV) (Naglieri & Wechsler, 2006)
Selected Publications
-Wechsler, D. (1939). The measurement of adult intelligence. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins.
-Wechsler, D. (1940). Non-intellective factors in general intelligence. Psychological Bulletin, 37, 444-445.
-Wechsler, D.(1949). Manual for the Wechsler intelligence Scale for children. New York: The Psychological Corporation.
-Wechsler, D. (1955a). The Range of human capacities (2nd ed.). Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins.
-Wechsler, D. (1955b). Manual for the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. New York: The Psychological Corporation.
-Wechsler, D. (1967). Manual for the Wechsler preschool and primary scale of intelligence. New York: Psychological Corporation.
References
Edwards, A. J. (1994). Wechsler, David (1896-1981). In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Encyclopedia of intelligence (Vol. 1, pp. 1134-1136). New York: Macmillan.
Fancher, R. E. (1985). The intelligence men: Makers of the IQ controversy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Wechsler, D. (1940). Non-intellective factors in general intelligence. Psychological Bulletin, 37, 444-445.
Wechsler, D. (1944). The measurement of adult intelligence (3rd ed.). Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins.
Wechsler, D. (1945/1997) Wechsler Memory Scale®--Third edition- (WMS---III). San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.
Wechsler, D. (1967/2002). Wechsler Primary and Preschool Scale of Intelligence™ --Third edition (WPPSI™-III). San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.
Wechsler, D. (1997). Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—3rd Edition (WAIS-3®) San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.
Wechsler, D. (1999). Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI). San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.
Wechsler, D. (2003). Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—4th Edition (WISC-IV®). San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.
Wechsler, D., & Naglieri, J. A. (2006). Wechsler Nonverbal Scale of Ability (WNV). San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.
www.intelltheory.com
Student of: Pearson, Spearman
Influenced by: E. L. Thorndike
Influenced: Kaufman
Time Period: Contemporary Explorations
Education:
City University of New York, A.B. (1916)
Columbia University, M.A. (1917)
University of Paris, experimental psychology research (1919-1922)
Columbia University, Ph.D. in experimental psychology ( 1925)
Career;
Army Psychologist assigned to Camp Logan, Texas (1917)
Sent by the Army to the University of London to work with C. Spearman and K. Pearson (1918)
Clinical Psychologist at the Bureau of Child Guidance, New York City (1922-1925)
Clinical psychology private practice (1925-1932)
Chief Psychologist, Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital (1932-1967)
Published several assessment instruments, including: Wechsler-Bellevue Scale of Intelligence (1939); Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS) (1945/1997); Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) (1949/2003); Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) (1955/1997); Wechsler Primary and Preschool Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI) (1967/2002)
Definition of Intelligence
“Intelligence is the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally and to deal effectively with his environment (Wechsler, 1944, p. 3).”
Major Contributions:
Developed several assessments, including two widely-used intelligence scales:
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC, 1949; WISC-IV®, 2003)
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS, 1955; WAIS-III®, 1997)
Established the use of the deviation IQ, or “DQ” (1939)
Ideas and Interests
David Wechsler is best known for developing several widely-used intelligence tests, including the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (Wechsler, 1949) and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Wechsler, 1955). Updated versions of these tests remain popular in the 21st century (WISC-IV®, 2003; WAIS-III®, 1997) and new tests founded on Wechsler’s work continue to be developed by other researchers (e.g. Wechsler & Naglieri, 2006). Wechsler is also notable for his use of the deviation quotient (DQ), a technical innovation that replaced the use of mental ages in computing IQ scores. This greatly improved the utility of normative comparisons when intelligence tests are used with adult examinees (Edwards, 1994). When the United States entered the First World War, David Wechsler was finishing up his master’s degree in psychology. He joined the Army, and this circumstance brought him into contact with several pioneers in the field of intelligence theory, including Karl Pearson, Charles Spearman, Edward Thorndike and Robert Mearns Yerkes. While awaiting his induction Wechsler volunteered to score the Army Alpha test, one of the two group intelligence tests developed by the Committee on the Psychological Examination of Recruits, and it is here that he met Yerkes and Thorndike. Later Wechsler became an individual psychological examiner, and was charged with administering the Stanford-Binet to recruits who had performed poorly on the group intelligence tests (Fancher, 1985). In 1918 the Army sent him to London to work with Spearman and Pearson. Wechsler eventually concluded that Spearman’s theory of general intelligence (g) was too narrow. Unlike Spearman, Wechsler viewed intelligence as an effect rather than a cause, and asserted that non-intellective factors, such as personality, contribute to the development of each person’s intelligence. His personal definition, “Intelligence is the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally and to deal effectively with his environment” reflects this broader view (Edwards, 1994; Wechsler, 1940). The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Fourth Edition® (WISC-IV®) was published in 2003. It has been normed for use with children aged six through sixteen years and eleven months. It yields a full-scale IQ score and four index scores: Verbal Comprehension (e.g. similarities, vocabulary and comprehension activities), Perceptual Reasoning (e.g. matrix reasoning, block design and picture concepts). Working Memory (e.g. letter-number sequencing and digit-span) and Processing Speed (e.g. symbol search and coding). The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—3rd Edition (WAIS-III®) was published in 1997, and it can be used with adults between the ages of 16 and 89 years. Several other Wechsler tests are also available to qualified psychologists:
-Wechsler Memory Scale®--Third edition- (WMS---III®)(Wechsler, 1945/1997)
-Wechsler Primary and Preschool Scale of Intelligence™ --Third edition (WPPSI™-III) (Wechsler, 1967/2002).
-Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI)(Wechsler, 1999)
-Wechsler Nonverbal Scale of Ability (WNV) (Naglieri & Wechsler, 2006)
Selected Publications
-Wechsler, D. (1939). The measurement of adult intelligence. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins.
-Wechsler, D. (1940). Non-intellective factors in general intelligence. Psychological Bulletin, 37, 444-445.
-Wechsler, D.(1949). Manual for the Wechsler intelligence Scale for children. New York: The Psychological Corporation.
-Wechsler, D. (1955a). The Range of human capacities (2nd ed.). Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins.
-Wechsler, D. (1955b). Manual for the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. New York: The Psychological Corporation.
-Wechsler, D. (1967). Manual for the Wechsler preschool and primary scale of intelligence. New York: Psychological Corporation.
References
Edwards, A. J. (1994). Wechsler, David (1896-1981). In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Encyclopedia of intelligence (Vol. 1, pp. 1134-1136). New York: Macmillan.
Fancher, R. E. (1985). The intelligence men: Makers of the IQ controversy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Wechsler, D. (1940). Non-intellective factors in general intelligence. Psychological Bulletin, 37, 444-445.
Wechsler, D. (1944). The measurement of adult intelligence (3rd ed.). Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins.
Wechsler, D. (1945/1997) Wechsler Memory Scale®--Third edition- (WMS---III). San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.
Wechsler, D. (1967/2002). Wechsler Primary and Preschool Scale of Intelligence™ --Third edition (WPPSI™-III). San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.
Wechsler, D. (1997). Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—3rd Edition (WAIS-3®) San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.
Wechsler, D. (1999). Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI). San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.
Wechsler, D. (2003). Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—4th Edition (WISC-IV®). San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.
Wechsler, D., & Naglieri, J. A. (2006). Wechsler Nonverbal Scale of Ability (WNV). San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.
www.intelltheory.com
Army Test Beta - Sample
Army Beta (answers given at bottom of page)
In the items below, examinees were asked to identify what was missing from each picture.
Answers: 1) Mouth; 2) Eye; 3) Nose; 4) Hand; 5) Chimney; 6) Ear; 7) Filament; 8) Return address; 9) Strings; 10) Corkscrew 11) Trigger; 12) Tail; 13) Claw; 14) Shadow; 15) Ball; 16) Net; 17) Arm; 18) Speaker; 19) Arm in mirror; 20) Diamond
In the items below, examinees were asked to identify what was missing from each picture.
Answers: 1) Mouth; 2) Eye; 3) Nose; 4) Hand; 5) Chimney; 6) Ear; 7) Filament; 8) Return address; 9) Strings; 10) Corkscrew 11) Trigger; 12) Tail; 13) Claw; 14) Shadow; 15) Ball; 16) Net; 17) Arm; 18) Speaker; 19) Arm in mirror; 20) Diamond
Army Test Alpha - sample
Army Alpha (answers given at bottom of page)
1.A company advanced 6 miles and retreated 2 miles.
How far was it then from its first position?
2.A dealer bought some mules for $1,200. He sold them for $1,500, making $50 on each mule.
How many mules were there?
3.Thermometers are useful because:
-They regulate temperature.
-They tell us how warm it is.
-They contain mercury.
4.A machine gun is more deadly than a rifle, because it:
-Was invented more recently.
-Fires more rapidly.
-Can be used with less training.
5.For these next two items, examinees first had to unscramble the words to form a sentence, and then indicate if the sentence was true or false.
-happy is man sick always a
-day it snow does every not
6.The next two items required examinees to determine the next two numbers in each sequence.
3 4 5 6 7 8
18 14 17 13 16 12
7.A portion of the Army Alpha required examinees to solve analogies.
shoe — foot. hat — kitten, head, knife, penny
eye — head. window — key, floor, room, door
8.In these next two examples, examinees were required to complete the sentence by selecting one of the four possible answers.
The apple grows on a shrub, vine, bush, tree
Denim is a dance, food, fabric, drink
9.Other portions of the test required examinees to follow instructions in performing paper-and-pencil tasks.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The first mental tests designed to be used for mass, group testing were developed by psychologists for the U.S. Army in 1917-1918. The group tests were modeled after intelligence tests designed for individual use in one-on-one assessment. In developing the mental tests, the psychologists subscribed to the position that one could be quite intelligent, but illiterate or not proficient in the English language. Based on this reasoning, two major tests were developed, the Army Alpha for literate groups, and the Army Beta for illiterates, low literates or non-English speaking (Yerkes, 1921). Both tests were based on the theoretical position that intelligence was an inherited trait, and the assumption was made that native intelligence was being assessed. Each test was made- up of a number of sub-tests, the contents of which differed depending on whether the test was for literates or illiterates, low literates or non- English speakers.
Results
These results show trends that have persisted up to the present time with national assessments. First, for both the Alpha and Beta tests, scores generally increase as years of education increase. Second, whites exceed blacks at all levels of education. Third, scores for Northern blacks exceed those of Southern blacks. As mentioned earlier, the fact that poorly educated Officers performed well on the Alpha test was interpreted as indicating that the Alpha measured native intelligence. However, careful examination of the types of items that made-up each sub-test suggests that literacy practices may have been higher among the Officers and this may have led to their improved performance on the Alpha test.
The Alpha Test
As indicated, the Alpha test battery for literates included a wide range of tests of knowledge and various cognitive skills. Using the simple model of the human cognitive system, the Alpha test can be reinterpreted not as a test of native intelligence but as a sampling of a wide variety of cognitive abilities by addressing the person's knowledge base by both oral language and written language.
Test 1: Following Oral Directions, involves auding and comprehending simple or complex oral language directions and looking at and marking in the appropriate places on the answer sheet. To a large extent, this is a test of the ability to hold information in working memory and to combine earlier instructions with later ones to determine the correct marking responses. The role of special bodies of knowledge in the performance of information processing activities is clearly illustrated in the remaining tests.
Test 2: Arithmetical Problems, requires both the ability to read and comprehend the stated problem and the knowledge of arithmetic to perform the computations called for. Again, working memory is stressed by having to hold more than one phrase in it that is information bearing, then combining the phrases and performing the required computations. Mathematics knowledge is also required for Test 6.
Test3: Practical Judgment, clearly requires reading and comprehending language. Additionally, however, it requires knowledge of culturally, normative expectations to make the "correct" choice. In terms of the developmental model of literacy, this means that the person's mind would have had to develop in an external context or environment in which the information needed to make the normatively "correct" response would be presented in some form.
Answers: 1) 4 miles; 2) 6 mules; 3) B; 4) B; 5) False (A sick man is always happy); 6) True (It does not snow every day); 7) 9, 10; 8) 15, 11; 9) Head; 10) Room; 11) Tree; 12) Fabric
1.A company advanced 6 miles and retreated 2 miles.
How far was it then from its first position?
2.A dealer bought some mules for $1,200. He sold them for $1,500, making $50 on each mule.
How many mules were there?
3.Thermometers are useful because:
-They regulate temperature.
-They tell us how warm it is.
-They contain mercury.
4.A machine gun is more deadly than a rifle, because it:
-Was invented more recently.
-Fires more rapidly.
-Can be used with less training.
5.For these next two items, examinees first had to unscramble the words to form a sentence, and then indicate if the sentence was true or false.
-happy is man sick always a
-day it snow does every not
6.The next two items required examinees to determine the next two numbers in each sequence.
3 4 5 6 7 8
18 14 17 13 16 12
7.A portion of the Army Alpha required examinees to solve analogies.
shoe — foot. hat — kitten, head, knife, penny
eye — head. window — key, floor, room, door
8.In these next two examples, examinees were required to complete the sentence by selecting one of the four possible answers.
The apple grows on a shrub, vine, bush, tree
Denim is a dance, food, fabric, drink
9.Other portions of the test required examinees to follow instructions in performing paper-and-pencil tasks.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The first mental tests designed to be used for mass, group testing were developed by psychologists for the U.S. Army in 1917-1918. The group tests were modeled after intelligence tests designed for individual use in one-on-one assessment. In developing the mental tests, the psychologists subscribed to the position that one could be quite intelligent, but illiterate or not proficient in the English language. Based on this reasoning, two major tests were developed, the Army Alpha for literate groups, and the Army Beta for illiterates, low literates or non-English speaking (Yerkes, 1921). Both tests were based on the theoretical position that intelligence was an inherited trait, and the assumption was made that native intelligence was being assessed. Each test was made- up of a number of sub-tests, the contents of which differed depending on whether the test was for literates or illiterates, low literates or non- English speakers.
Results
These results show trends that have persisted up to the present time with national assessments. First, for both the Alpha and Beta tests, scores generally increase as years of education increase. Second, whites exceed blacks at all levels of education. Third, scores for Northern blacks exceed those of Southern blacks. As mentioned earlier, the fact that poorly educated Officers performed well on the Alpha test was interpreted as indicating that the Alpha measured native intelligence. However, careful examination of the types of items that made-up each sub-test suggests that literacy practices may have been higher among the Officers and this may have led to their improved performance on the Alpha test.
The Alpha Test
As indicated, the Alpha test battery for literates included a wide range of tests of knowledge and various cognitive skills. Using the simple model of the human cognitive system, the Alpha test can be reinterpreted not as a test of native intelligence but as a sampling of a wide variety of cognitive abilities by addressing the person's knowledge base by both oral language and written language.
Test 1: Following Oral Directions, involves auding and comprehending simple or complex oral language directions and looking at and marking in the appropriate places on the answer sheet. To a large extent, this is a test of the ability to hold information in working memory and to combine earlier instructions with later ones to determine the correct marking responses. The role of special bodies of knowledge in the performance of information processing activities is clearly illustrated in the remaining tests.
Test 2: Arithmetical Problems, requires both the ability to read and comprehend the stated problem and the knowledge of arithmetic to perform the computations called for. Again, working memory is stressed by having to hold more than one phrase in it that is information bearing, then combining the phrases and performing the required computations. Mathematics knowledge is also required for Test 6.
Test3: Practical Judgment, clearly requires reading and comprehending language. Additionally, however, it requires knowledge of culturally, normative expectations to make the "correct" choice. In terms of the developmental model of literacy, this means that the person's mind would have had to develop in an external context or environment in which the information needed to make the normatively "correct" response would be presented in some form.
Answers: 1) 4 miles; 2) 6 mules; 3) B; 4) B; 5) False (A sick man is always happy); 6) True (It does not snow every day); 7) 9, 10; 8) 15, 11; 9) Head; 10) Room; 11) Tree; 12) Fabric
William McDougall
William McDougall (1871-1938) is a British-born American Psychologist
Influenced by: Galton
Students: Burt
Time Period: The Great Schools' Influence
Education:
Cambridge University
Oxford University
Gottingen
Career:
University of London
Oxford University
Harvard University
Duke University
Ideas and Interests
William McDougall is considered by some to have been the foremost psychologist of all English-speaking countries. He has contributed significantly to more branches and departments of psychology than anyone else writing in English. He is the exponent of hormic psychology, the central idea being that there is an end or purpose which goads us to action, without any real knowledge of its nature, and often without benefit or even thought of pleasure. Human progress can only be determined in terms of "horme" or "drive". He theorized that human behavior is determined by both instinctive and intentional strivings. His chief difficulties lay in proving, or even explaining, interactionism in a physical world; his belief in free will; and his commitment to the theory of the transmission of acquired characteristics.
Publications:
Introduction to Social Psychology
Body and Mind
Outline of Psychology
Outline of Abnormal Psychology
Influenced by: Galton
Students: Burt
Time Period: The Great Schools' Influence
Education:
Cambridge University
Oxford University
Gottingen
Career:
University of London
Oxford University
Harvard University
Duke University
Ideas and Interests
William McDougall is considered by some to have been the foremost psychologist of all English-speaking countries. He has contributed significantly to more branches and departments of psychology than anyone else writing in English. He is the exponent of hormic psychology, the central idea being that there is an end or purpose which goads us to action, without any real knowledge of its nature, and often without benefit or even thought of pleasure. Human progress can only be determined in terms of "horme" or "drive". He theorized that human behavior is determined by both instinctive and intentional strivings. His chief difficulties lay in proving, or even explaining, interactionism in a physical world; his belief in free will; and his commitment to the theory of the transmission of acquired characteristics.
Publications:
Introduction to Social Psychology
Body and Mind
Outline of Psychology
Outline of Abnormal Psychology
Robert Mearns Yerkes
Robert Mearns Yerkes (1876-1956) was an American Comparative Psychologist, influenced Wechsler, mostly know as head of committee that designed WWI Army Alpha and Beta tests, was the one who started to study primates, one of the sources of inspiration for book series Planet of the Apes.
Influenced: Wechsler
Time Period: The Great Schools' Influence
Education:
Ursinus College, Pennsylvania (1892-1897)
Harvard University, A. B. (1898); Ph.D. (1902)
While on leave from his teaching job at Harvard, Yerkes studied neuro-surgical techniques with Harvey Cushing at the Hunterian Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. He also spent several weeks with E.B. Titchener at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA.
Career:
Harvard University, Instructor and Assistant Professor in Comparative Psychology (1902-1917)
Boston Psychopathic Hospital, Director of Psychological Services and Research (1913-1917)
Helped create the Yerkes-Bridges Point Scale of Intelligence (1915)
President, American Psychological Association (1917)
Chairman, National Research Council Psychology Committee (WWI)
Chairman, Committee on the Psychological Examination of Recruits (The committee that designed the WWI Army Alpha and Beta testing program)
Continued to serve on the National Research Council (1919-1924)
Yale University, Professor of Psychobiology (1924-1944)
Founded and directed the Yale Laboratories of Primate Biology (1929-1941)
Definition of Intelligence:
"…the term intelligence designates a complexly interrelated assemblage of functions, no one of which is completely or accurately known in man…(Yerkes, 1929, p. 524)”
Major Contributions
Founded the first non-human primate research laboratory in the United States, and acted as its director from 1929 until 1941. The Yale Laboratories of Primate Biology was eventually renamed the Yerkes National Primate Research Center
Chaired the committee that created the WWI Army Alpha and Beta intelligence tests
Ideas and Interests
Robert Yerkes is most famous for his comparative psychology work with apes and chimpanzees. He was heavily influenced by Darwinism, and his writing emphasized that the cognitive differences between infrahuman primates and humans is often simply a matter of degree: …The study of other primates may prove the most direct and economical route to profitable knowledge of ourselves, because, in them, basic mechanisms are less obscured by cultural influence. Certainly it is unwise to assume that human biology can be advanced only by the study of man himself. This could be true only if he existed as a unique organism, lacking genetic relations to other types of creatures (Yerkes, 1943, p. 3). Yerkes rejected social Darwinism; that is, he dismissed the popular ideological belief that natural selection would gradually lead humanity to a sort of utopian ideal. He embraced the eugenicist view and argued, albeit gently, that humankind could benefit from intentional, selective interbreeding. Although he never advocated a political agenda, he hoped that the chimpanzee colonies established at the Yale Laboratories would popularize the idea that genetic research could improve society: We realize that with varying wisdom man has learned to shape nature to his needs and desires. Only with his own nature has he refrained from tampering. Yet the course of civilization and any sudden change for better or worse in the human type obviously depend upon consciously or unconsciously directed modifications. Probably there is no more unprofitable assumption than that of the unalterability of human nature…It has always been a feature of our plan for the use of the chimpanzee as an experimental animal to shape it intelligently to specification instead of trying to preserve its natural characteristics. We have believed it important to convert the animal to as nearly ideal a subject for biological research as is practicable. And with this intent has been associated the hope that the possibility of re-creating man himself in the image of a generally acceptable ideal. … the effort to create an ideally suitable laboratory chimpanzee may prove useful to those who are seeking an ideal for mankind. One is led to think at once of generally recognized human shortcomings, such as extreme selfishness, dishonesty, slothfulness, cruelty, and to wonder whether by developing an ape notable for its dependability, trustworthiness, consideration of others, measure of self-control, and cooperativeness, and by exhibiting it extensively and impressively, attention might not be focused on the problem of improving human nature and the possibilities of its solution. Possibly such an exhibit, carried to mankind pictorially and verbally, might shame a portion of our kind into resolving to do something about it instead of continuing to be carelessly fatalistic. …The really important things for us at present are recognition and active acceptance of the principles of modifiability, controllability, and consequent improvability, of human nature (Yerkes, 1943, p. 9-11). Yerkes’s eugenicist goals were not carried to fruition, but he did leave an important cultural and psychological legacy. Immediately after the United States entered the First World War, Yerkes urged the American Psychological Association to contribute psychological expertise to the war effort. The APA responded by deploying twelve committees. Yerkes chaired both the National Research Council Psychology Committee and the Committee on the Psychological Examination of Recruits. This second committee was charged with developing group intelligence test that could identify recruits with low intelligence and allow the Army to recognize men who were particularly well-suited for special assignments and officers' training schools (McGuire, 1994).
Members of the Committee on the Psychological Examination of Recruits: The committee met for the first time in May of 1917. Among others, it included Henry Goddard, Lewis Terman, and Walter Bingham. By mid-July they had constructed five alternate forms of the verbal test, henceforth to be known as the Army Alpha, and had designed the Army Beta, a nonverbal test for illiterate and non-English speaking recruits (Dahlstrom, 1985). The final forms of the Army Alpha and Beta tests were published in January of 1919, and by the end of the war they had been administered to approximately two million men (Larson, 1994; McGuire, 1994). For many reasons, the launch of the Army Alpha and Beta testing program was a pivotal moment in the history of psychology. First, it provided psychometricians with the first group intelligence tests. Second, the publicity it generated popularized intelligence testing in the public and private sectors. Third, the program provided vast amounts of data to serve as fuel for future controversies over apparent racial differences in intelligence test scores and the supposed decline of America's "national intelligence" (Fancher, 1985).
Selected Publications:
Yerkes, R. M. (1930). Autobiography of Robert Mearns Yerkes. In C. Murchison (Ed.), History of psychology in autobiography (Vol. 2, pp. 381-407). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press.
Yerkes, R. M. (1916/1979). The mental life of monkeys and apes: a study of ideational behavior. Delmar, NY: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints.
Yerkes, R. M. (Ed.) (1921) Psychological examining in the United States Army. Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, 15, 1-890.
Yerkes, R. M., & Yerkes, A. W. (1929). The great apes: a study of anthropoid life. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Yerkes, R. M., Bridges, J. W., & Hardwick, R. S. (1915). A point scale for measuring mental ability. Baltimore: Warwick & York.
Yerkes, R. M. (1941). Man-power and military effectiveness: the case for human engineering. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 5, 205-209.
Yerkes, R. M. (1943, 1971). Chimpanzees: A laboratory colony. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation.
References:
www.intelltheory.com
Dahlstrom, W. G. (1985). The development of psychological testing. In G. A. Kimble and K. Schlesinger (Eds.), Topics in the history of psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 63-114).
Fancher, R. E. (1985). The intelligence men: Makers of the IQ controversy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Larson, G. (1994) Armed services vocational aptitude battery. In R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Encyclopedia of intelligence (Vol. 1, pp. 121-124.) New York: Macmillan.
Krawiec, T. S. (Ed.). (1974). Yerkes, R.M. In The psychologists, (Vol 2). London: Oxford University Press.
Legassé, P. (Ed.). (2001). Yerkes, Robert Mearns. The Columbia Encyclopedia ( 6th ed.) [Online Version]. New York: Columbia University Press. Retrieved June 5, 2002.
McGuire, F. (1994). Army alpha and beta tests of intelligence. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Encyclopedia of intelligence (Vol 1, pp. 125-129.) New York: Macmillan.
Wolman, B. B. (1968). Historical roots of contemporary psychology. New York: Harper & Row.
Yerkes, R. M. (1932). Psychobiologist. In Carl Murchison (Ed.), The history of psychology in autobiography. (Vol. 2, pp. 381-407). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press. Full text for this chapter is available online from the Classics in the History of Psychology website.
Influenced: Wechsler
Time Period: The Great Schools' Influence
Education:
Ursinus College, Pennsylvania (1892-1897)
Harvard University, A. B. (1898); Ph.D. (1902)
While on leave from his teaching job at Harvard, Yerkes studied neuro-surgical techniques with Harvey Cushing at the Hunterian Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. He also spent several weeks with E.B. Titchener at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA.
Career:
Harvard University, Instructor and Assistant Professor in Comparative Psychology (1902-1917)
Boston Psychopathic Hospital, Director of Psychological Services and Research (1913-1917)
Helped create the Yerkes-Bridges Point Scale of Intelligence (1915)
President, American Psychological Association (1917)
Chairman, National Research Council Psychology Committee (WWI)
Chairman, Committee on the Psychological Examination of Recruits (The committee that designed the WWI Army Alpha and Beta testing program)
Continued to serve on the National Research Council (1919-1924)
Yale University, Professor of Psychobiology (1924-1944)
Founded and directed the Yale Laboratories of Primate Biology (1929-1941)
Definition of Intelligence:
"…the term intelligence designates a complexly interrelated assemblage of functions, no one of which is completely or accurately known in man…(Yerkes, 1929, p. 524)”
Major Contributions
Founded the first non-human primate research laboratory in the United States, and acted as its director from 1929 until 1941. The Yale Laboratories of Primate Biology was eventually renamed the Yerkes National Primate Research Center
Chaired the committee that created the WWI Army Alpha and Beta intelligence tests
Ideas and Interests
Robert Yerkes is most famous for his comparative psychology work with apes and chimpanzees. He was heavily influenced by Darwinism, and his writing emphasized that the cognitive differences between infrahuman primates and humans is often simply a matter of degree: …The study of other primates may prove the most direct and economical route to profitable knowledge of ourselves, because, in them, basic mechanisms are less obscured by cultural influence. Certainly it is unwise to assume that human biology can be advanced only by the study of man himself. This could be true only if he existed as a unique organism, lacking genetic relations to other types of creatures (Yerkes, 1943, p. 3). Yerkes rejected social Darwinism; that is, he dismissed the popular ideological belief that natural selection would gradually lead humanity to a sort of utopian ideal. He embraced the eugenicist view and argued, albeit gently, that humankind could benefit from intentional, selective interbreeding. Although he never advocated a political agenda, he hoped that the chimpanzee colonies established at the Yale Laboratories would popularize the idea that genetic research could improve society: We realize that with varying wisdom man has learned to shape nature to his needs and desires. Only with his own nature has he refrained from tampering. Yet the course of civilization and any sudden change for better or worse in the human type obviously depend upon consciously or unconsciously directed modifications. Probably there is no more unprofitable assumption than that of the unalterability of human nature…It has always been a feature of our plan for the use of the chimpanzee as an experimental animal to shape it intelligently to specification instead of trying to preserve its natural characteristics. We have believed it important to convert the animal to as nearly ideal a subject for biological research as is practicable. And with this intent has been associated the hope that the possibility of re-creating man himself in the image of a generally acceptable ideal. … the effort to create an ideally suitable laboratory chimpanzee may prove useful to those who are seeking an ideal for mankind. One is led to think at once of generally recognized human shortcomings, such as extreme selfishness, dishonesty, slothfulness, cruelty, and to wonder whether by developing an ape notable for its dependability, trustworthiness, consideration of others, measure of self-control, and cooperativeness, and by exhibiting it extensively and impressively, attention might not be focused on the problem of improving human nature and the possibilities of its solution. Possibly such an exhibit, carried to mankind pictorially and verbally, might shame a portion of our kind into resolving to do something about it instead of continuing to be carelessly fatalistic. …The really important things for us at present are recognition and active acceptance of the principles of modifiability, controllability, and consequent improvability, of human nature (Yerkes, 1943, p. 9-11). Yerkes’s eugenicist goals were not carried to fruition, but he did leave an important cultural and psychological legacy. Immediately after the United States entered the First World War, Yerkes urged the American Psychological Association to contribute psychological expertise to the war effort. The APA responded by deploying twelve committees. Yerkes chaired both the National Research Council Psychology Committee and the Committee on the Psychological Examination of Recruits. This second committee was charged with developing group intelligence test that could identify recruits with low intelligence and allow the Army to recognize men who were particularly well-suited for special assignments and officers' training schools (McGuire, 1994).
Members of the Committee on the Psychological Examination of Recruits: The committee met for the first time in May of 1917. Among others, it included Henry Goddard, Lewis Terman, and Walter Bingham. By mid-July they had constructed five alternate forms of the verbal test, henceforth to be known as the Army Alpha, and had designed the Army Beta, a nonverbal test for illiterate and non-English speaking recruits (Dahlstrom, 1985). The final forms of the Army Alpha and Beta tests were published in January of 1919, and by the end of the war they had been administered to approximately two million men (Larson, 1994; McGuire, 1994). For many reasons, the launch of the Army Alpha and Beta testing program was a pivotal moment in the history of psychology. First, it provided psychometricians with the first group intelligence tests. Second, the publicity it generated popularized intelligence testing in the public and private sectors. Third, the program provided vast amounts of data to serve as fuel for future controversies over apparent racial differences in intelligence test scores and the supposed decline of America's "national intelligence" (Fancher, 1985).
Selected Publications:
Yerkes, R. M. (1930). Autobiography of Robert Mearns Yerkes. In C. Murchison (Ed.), History of psychology in autobiography (Vol. 2, pp. 381-407). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press.
Yerkes, R. M. (1916/1979). The mental life of monkeys and apes: a study of ideational behavior. Delmar, NY: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints.
Yerkes, R. M. (Ed.) (1921) Psychological examining in the United States Army. Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, 15, 1-890.
Yerkes, R. M., & Yerkes, A. W. (1929). The great apes: a study of anthropoid life. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Yerkes, R. M., Bridges, J. W., & Hardwick, R. S. (1915). A point scale for measuring mental ability. Baltimore: Warwick & York.
Yerkes, R. M. (1941). Man-power and military effectiveness: the case for human engineering. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 5, 205-209.
Yerkes, R. M. (1943, 1971). Chimpanzees: A laboratory colony. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation.
References:
www.intelltheory.com
Dahlstrom, W. G. (1985). The development of psychological testing. In G. A. Kimble and K. Schlesinger (Eds.), Topics in the history of psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 63-114).
Fancher, R. E. (1985). The intelligence men: Makers of the IQ controversy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Larson, G. (1994) Armed services vocational aptitude battery. In R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Encyclopedia of intelligence (Vol. 1, pp. 121-124.) New York: Macmillan.
Krawiec, T. S. (Ed.). (1974). Yerkes, R.M. In The psychologists, (Vol 2). London: Oxford University Press.
Legassé, P. (Ed.). (2001). Yerkes, Robert Mearns. The Columbia Encyclopedia ( 6th ed.) [Online Version]. New York: Columbia University Press. Retrieved June 5, 2002.
McGuire, F. (1994). Army alpha and beta tests of intelligence. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Encyclopedia of intelligence (Vol 1, pp. 125-129.) New York: Macmillan.
Wolman, B. B. (1968). Historical roots of contemporary psychology. New York: Harper & Row.
Yerkes, R. M. (1932). Psychobiologist. In Carl Murchison (Ed.), The history of psychology in autobiography. (Vol. 2, pp. 381-407). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press. Full text for this chapter is available online from the Classics in the History of Psychology website.
Edward Bradford Titchener
Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927) was an Psychologist who studied with Wundt, and teached Guilford.
Time Period: The Great Schools' Influence
Education:
Oxford University (B.A., 1890)
University of Leipzig, Psychology (Ph.D., 1892)
Career:
Psychology Professor, Cornell University (1892-1927)
Head, Psychology Department, Cornell University (1892-1897)
Editor, Studies from the Department of Psychology of Cornell University (1894-1927)
American Editor, Mind (1894-1917)
Editor, American Journal of Psychology (1895-1927)
Major Contribution:
Brought the 'new psychology', the experimental psychology of Wundt (and others) to the United States, effecting the transition from mental philosophy to psychology as it is currently practiced.
Through in-depth, careful, and systematic exploration of the introspective and structuralist position, Titchener eventually revealed its significant limitations, ultimately enabling the freeing the development of psychology from structuralist boundaries. Titchener, however, never abandoned the introspective, structuralist approach.
Ideas and Interests
Edward Bradford Titchener was generally regarded as Wundt's apostle in America. He studied systematic psychology, but not to the exclusion of other branches as well. The acknowledged leader of structuralism, Titchener was rated as the most distinguished psychologist in the United States, its most representative experimentalist, and an inspiring teacher who guided many of his pupils in the direction of scientific procedure. The school of structuralism was born at Cornell and had life in Titchener and his doctoral students. Titchener refused to consider applied psychology a valid enterprise and had no interest in studying animals, children, abnormal behavior, or individual differences. Titchener attempted to systematize the Wundtian point of view, producing laboratory research using only Wundt's method of introspection. For Titchener, psychology was the study of experience from the point of view of the experiencing individual. All elements must exist in the consciousness; hence, habit, action, instinct, and any Freudian mechanism received either marginal treatment from him, or none at all. Titchener characterized mental processes as having quality, intensity, duration, clearness, and extensity. Within the general framework of structuralism, Titchener provided one special theory that became well known because it kept reappearing in different form in the work of other psychologists and linguists. It is the core-context theory of meaning. According to this theory, a new mental process (the core) acquired its meaning from the context of other mental processes within which it occurs. In its simplest form, the context may be just one other mental element, and besides, a person does not have to be aware of the context to assign meaning (unconcious context).
"What a man! To me he has always seemed the nearest approach to genius of anyone with whom I have been closely associated." (E. G. Boring on E. B. Titchener Pictorial History of Psychology and Psychiatry).
Publications
Elementary Psychology; 4 volumes (1901-1905)
A Text Book of Psychology (1910)
Systematic Psychology: Prolegomena (1929)
Time Period: The Great Schools' Influence
Education:
Oxford University (B.A., 1890)
University of Leipzig, Psychology (Ph.D., 1892)
Career:
Psychology Professor, Cornell University (1892-1927)
Head, Psychology Department, Cornell University (1892-1897)
Editor, Studies from the Department of Psychology of Cornell University (1894-1927)
American Editor, Mind (1894-1917)
Editor, American Journal of Psychology (1895-1927)
Major Contribution:
Brought the 'new psychology', the experimental psychology of Wundt (and others) to the United States, effecting the transition from mental philosophy to psychology as it is currently practiced.
Through in-depth, careful, and systematic exploration of the introspective and structuralist position, Titchener eventually revealed its significant limitations, ultimately enabling the freeing the development of psychology from structuralist boundaries. Titchener, however, never abandoned the introspective, structuralist approach.
Ideas and Interests
Edward Bradford Titchener was generally regarded as Wundt's apostle in America. He studied systematic psychology, but not to the exclusion of other branches as well. The acknowledged leader of structuralism, Titchener was rated as the most distinguished psychologist in the United States, its most representative experimentalist, and an inspiring teacher who guided many of his pupils in the direction of scientific procedure. The school of structuralism was born at Cornell and had life in Titchener and his doctoral students. Titchener refused to consider applied psychology a valid enterprise and had no interest in studying animals, children, abnormal behavior, or individual differences. Titchener attempted to systematize the Wundtian point of view, producing laboratory research using only Wundt's method of introspection. For Titchener, psychology was the study of experience from the point of view of the experiencing individual. All elements must exist in the consciousness; hence, habit, action, instinct, and any Freudian mechanism received either marginal treatment from him, or none at all. Titchener characterized mental processes as having quality, intensity, duration, clearness, and extensity. Within the general framework of structuralism, Titchener provided one special theory that became well known because it kept reappearing in different form in the work of other psychologists and linguists. It is the core-context theory of meaning. According to this theory, a new mental process (the core) acquired its meaning from the context of other mental processes within which it occurs. In its simplest form, the context may be just one other mental element, and besides, a person does not have to be aware of the context to assign meaning (unconcious context).
"What a man! To me he has always seemed the nearest approach to genius of anyone with whom I have been closely associated." (E. G. Boring on E. B. Titchener Pictorial History of Psychology and Psychiatry).
Publications
Elementary Psychology; 4 volumes (1901-1905)
A Text Book of Psychology (1910)
Systematic Psychology: Prolegomena (1929)
Monday, 9 November 2015
Wilhelm Wundt
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) is an German Philosopher & Psychologist
Students: J. M. Cattell, Titchener, Spearman
Time Period: The Great Schools
Education:
Tubingen University (1851)
University of Heidelberg (M.D., 1856)
Career:
Privatdozent in the Physiological (1857-1864)
Professor of Inductive Philosophy at Zurich University (1874)
Professor of Inductive Philosophy at Leipzig University (1875-1917)
Established the world's first experimental laboratory in psychology, the Institut fur Experimentelle Psychologie (1879)
Major Contributions
Often referred to as the "Father of Experimental Psychology" and the "Founder of Modern Psychology"
Ideas and Interests
Wundt established the first laboratory in the world dedicated to experimental psychology. This laboratory became a focus for those with a serious interest in psychology, first for German philosophers and psychology students, then for American and British students as well. All subsequent psychological laboratories were closely modeled in their early years on the Wundt model. Wundt's revolutionary approach to psychological experimentation moved psychological study from the domain of philosophy and the natural sciences and began to utilize physiological experimental techniques in the laboratory. To Wundt, the essence of all total adjustments of the organism was a psychophysical process, an organic response mediated by both the physiological and the psychological. He pioneered the concept of stating mental events in relation to objectively knowable and measurable stimuli and reactions. Wundt perceived psychology as part of an elaborate philosophy where mind is seen as an activity, not a substance. The basic mental activity was designated by Wundt as 'apperception'. Physiological psychology was concerned with the process of excitations from stimulation of the sense organs, through sensory neurons to the lower and higher brain centers, and from these centers to the muscles. Parallel with this process ran the events of mental life, known through introspection. Introspection became, for Wundt, the primary tool of experimental psychology. In Wundt's 1893 edition of Physiological Psychology, he published the 'tridimensional theory of feeling': feelings were classified as pleasant or unpleasant, tense or relaxed, excited or depressed. A given feeling might be at the same time a combination of one of each of the categories. Wundt's method of introspection did not remain a fundamental tool of psychological experimentation past the early 1920's. His greatest contribution was to show that psychology could be a valid experimental science. His influence in promoting psychology as a science was enormous. Despite poor eyesight, Wundt, it has been estimated, published 53,000 pages, enough to stock a complete library. As noted above, a primary preoccupation of many early psychologists, such as Wundt and Fechner, was with the measurement of powers of sensory discrimination, resulting in the theory and methodology of psychophysics, the science of quantitative relations between physical magnitudes and sensations. This interest with measurements led Wundt to develop what would be the foundation for Binet's scale of intelligence. Binet had developed a scale where specific tasks were directly correlated to different levels of abilities or a mental age. However, Binet was not suggesting that each task would correspond exactly and reliably to a particular mental level. As the scale developed, Binet found it necessary to use a number of tasks at each level to determine mental age. At this point, the task of determining a person's mental age was reminiscent of one of the psychophysical methods developed by Wundt to determine the level of a person's sensitivity to faint stimuli or to small physical differences in stimuli.
Publications
Vorlesungen uber die Menschen und Tier-Seele (1863, English translation, Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology, 1896)
Grundzuge der physiologeschen Psychologie (1874, English translation, Principles of Physiological Psychology, 1904).
Philosophische Studien, the first journal of psychology (1871)
Volkerpsychologie (social psychology), (10 vols, 1911-1920)
James McKeen Cattell
James McKeen Cattell (1860-1944) was an Psychologist, Publisher, and Editor
Student of: Galton, Wundt, Hall
Influenced: E. L. Thorndike, H. L. Hollingworth, P. Cattell, Wissler
Time Period: The Great Schools
Education:
Lafayette, BA in 1880 & MA in 1883.
Studied in Europe with Wundt in Leipzig and Lotze at Gottingen 1880.
Johns Hopkins University, 1882-1883
Leipzig as Wundt's assistant, Ph.D. in 1886
Career:
Researcher and Lecturer in Experimental Psychology, St. John's College, Cambridge
Lecturer in Psychology, Bryn Mawr, 1887
Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 1888
Department Head of Psychology, Anthropology, and Philosophy, Columbia University, 1891-1905
President of the American Psychological Association, 1895
Presider, Ninth International Congress of Psychology, New Haven, Connecticut, 1929
Major Contributions
James McKeen Cattell is an important figure in psychology and the study of human intelligence for several reasons. While at Leipzig, working under Wundt, he was the first American to publish a dissertation, Psychometric Investigation. After his return from Europe, perhaps no other person contributed more to the strengthening of American psychology in the late 1890s and early 1900s. He was involved with the formation of many major publications, including co-founder and co-editor of The Psychological Review (1894-1903), editor and publisher of the Journal of Science (1894-1944 ), founder of the Psychological Corporation (1921), and founder of the Science Press (1923), among many others. He was similarly involved with major professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association, the American Association of University Professors, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. One of Cattell's goals was to have psychology viewed as a science on par with the physical and life sciences. As he noted in his presidential address to the American Psychological Association, In the struggle for existence that obtains among the sciences psychology is continually gaining ground.... The academic growth of psychology in American during the past few years is almost without precedent.... Psychology is a required subject in the undergraduate curriculum ..., and among university courses psychology now rivals the other leading sciences in the number of students attracted and in the amount of original work accomplished. (1896, p. 1). In that address, Cattell provides additional evidence of the growth of psychology as a science, including a favorable comparison of the major academic journals (e.g., all three general science journals at the time published psychological studies, and the field boasted two specialty journals compared to three for mathematics, two for chemistry, geology, and botany, and one for physics), the historical basis of psychology ("we may take pride in the beginnings of psychology whose foundations were more securely laid by Aristotle than those of any other science" [pp. 2-3]), and the strength of psychology in other countries. Cattell believed that the continued growth of psychology was dependent on the field's acceptance of quantitative methods similar to those used in other sciences. This belief was somewhat controversial: Although psychological laboratories were flourishing in the United States, the philosophical underpinnings of psychology led some to question the validity and, indeed, the necessity of psychological measurements. But Cattell felt that experimental approaches to psychology, especially those involving "psycho-physical" measurement, were critical to the rise and continued success of academic psychology: I venture to maintain that the introduction of experimental measurement into psychology has added directly and indirectly new subject-matter and methods, has set a higher standard of accuracy and objectivity, has made some part of the subject an applied science with useful applications, and enlarged the field and improved the methods of teaching psychology. In conclusion, I wish to urge that experiment in psychology has made its relations with the other sciences more intimate and productive of common good. (pp. 13-14). Cattell's approach to psycho-physical measurement (often referred to as anthropometric testing) was influenced by his brief work with Francis Galton in England before Cattell returned to the United States from his European studies. Cattell describes his laboratory's measurement work in his 1890 article in Mind (which includes an appendix by Galton) and his 1896 article with Livingston Farrand (Sternberg [1990] includes a brief summary of the 1890 article). Although it is widely believed that Cattell's goal was to measure intelligence or a similar construct with these tests, his goals appear to have been related for the most part to his goal of strengthening psychology's scientific credentials: We do not at present wish to draw any definite conclusions from the results of the tests so far made. It is of some scientific interest to know that students entering college have heads on the average 19.3 cm long, ... that they have an average reaction-time of 0.174 sec., that they can remember seven numerals heard once, and so on with other records and measurements. These are mere facts, but they are quantitative facts and the basis of science. Our own future work and that of others must proceed in two directions.... [a] To what extent are the several traits of body, of the senses and of mind interdependent? ... What can we learn from the tests of elementary traits regarding the higher intellectual and emotional life? [b] On the other hand we must use our measurements to study the development of the individual and of the race, to disentangle the complex factos of heredity and environment. (Cattell & Farrand, 1896, p. 648). As Cattell's thinking about these psychophysical measures developed, he appears to have viewed the data as evidence of a unitary intellect. This view was somewhat controversial, especially in light of the dissertation research of Clark Wissler, one of Cattell's laboratory assistants. Wissler found little evidence of general intellectual ability, since the correlations of the various psychphysical tests with each other and with external criteria (e.g., grades) were low. Controversy exists about both the quality of Wissler's research and both Wissler's and Cattell's reactions to it, but Wissler's work is often considered, in the words of Sternberg (1990), the "coup de grace" for anthropometric testing (p. 72).
Cattell's use of statistical methods and quantification of data helped in the development of American psychology as an experimental science. He was one of the first psychologists in America to stress the importance of quantification, ranking, and ratings. An outgrowth of this work, his experimentation with psychophysical testing, was influential in the popularization of mental testing within the psychological laboratory. However, anthropometric testing in general became controversial with the publication of Wissler's work.
Publications:
Cattell, J. M. (1890). Mental tests and measurements. Mind, 15, 373-380.
Measurements of the accuracy of recollection. Science (1895).
Statistics of American psychologists. American Journal of Psychology (1903).
The conceptions and methods of psychology. Popular Science Monthly (1904).
The school and the family. Popular Science Monthly (1909).
Psychology in America. Science (1929).
Baldwin, J. M., Cattell, J. M., & Jastrow, J. (1898). Physical and mental tests. Psychological Review, 5, 172-179.
Cattell, J. M. (1896). Address of the president before the American Psychological Association, 1895. Psychological Review, 3 (2), 1-15 (in PDF format; large file size: 3.4 MB. Will open in new window).
Cattell, J. M. (1896). Physical and mental measurements of the students of Columbia University. Psychological Review, 3 (6), 618-648 (in PDF format; large file size: 5.6 MB. Will open in new window).
References:
Biographical Dictionary of North American and European Educationists (1997) Woburn Press, London
Cattell, J. M. (1896). Address of the president before the American Psychological Association, 1895. The Psychological Review, 3(2), 1-15.
Cattell, J. M., & Farrand, L. (1896). Physical and mental measurements of the students of Columbia University. The Psychological Review, 3(6), 618-648.
Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia (1995) Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc.
Sternberg, R. J. (1990). Metaphors of mind: Conceptions of the nature of intelligence. New York: Cambridge University Press.
www.intelltheory.com
Granville Stanley Hall
Granville Stanley Hall (1844-1924) is an American Psychologist, Philosopher, Educationist. One of the teachers of Goddard, Terman and Cattell
Student of: James
Students: Goddard, Terman, J. M. Cattell
Time Period: The Great Schools' Influence
Education:
Williams College, BA,1867, MA,1870.
Studied at Union Theological Seminary, 1867-8
Harvard University, PhD 1878
Career:
Antioch College, taught literature and philosophy
Harvard University, taught English 1876-7, PhD, 1878.
Special lecturer and granted a thousand dollars to open a psychological laboratory, Johns Hopkins University 1882.
Professor of Psychology and Pedagogics, Johns Hopkins University, 1883-8
First president and professor of Psychology, Clark University, 1889-1919
Founded Child Study Association of America, 1888
First president, American Psychological Association, 1889
Major Contributions:
Although Hall had little direct personal impact on the study of intelligence, he strongly influenced a generation of American psychologists.
Publications:
The Content of Children's Minds, (1883)
The Study of Children, (1883)
Adolescence, Its Psychology and its Relation to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education, (1904).
Youth: Its Education, Regimen and Hygiene (1906)
Educational Problems (2 vols, 1911)
Founders of Modern Psychology (1912)
Student of: James
Students: Goddard, Terman, J. M. Cattell
Time Period: The Great Schools' Influence
Education:
Williams College, BA,1867, MA,1870.
Studied at Union Theological Seminary, 1867-8
Harvard University, PhD 1878
Career:
Antioch College, taught literature and philosophy
Harvard University, taught English 1876-7, PhD, 1878.
Special lecturer and granted a thousand dollars to open a psychological laboratory, Johns Hopkins University 1882.
Professor of Psychology and Pedagogics, Johns Hopkins University, 1883-8
First president and professor of Psychology, Clark University, 1889-1919
Founded Child Study Association of America, 1888
First president, American Psychological Association, 1889
Major Contributions:
Although Hall had little direct personal impact on the study of intelligence, he strongly influenced a generation of American psychologists.
Publications:
The Content of Children's Minds, (1883)
The Study of Children, (1883)
Adolescence, Its Psychology and its Relation to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education, (1904).
Youth: Its Education, Regimen and Hygiene (1906)
Educational Problems (2 vols, 1911)
Founders of Modern Psychology (1912)
William James
William James (1842-1910) Psychologist and Philosopher. Is the one who teaches Thorndike and Hall.
Students: E. L. Thorndike, Hall
Time Period: The Great Schools
Education:
Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard, studied anatomy, chemistry and physiology, 1863.
MD Harvard Medical School 1869.
Career:
1872 Teacher at Harvard.
1879 Opened the first psychology laboratory in the United States.
1885 Professor of Philosophy, Harvard
1889 Professor of Psychology, Harvard
Major Contributions:
Gifford Lectures on 'National Religion' delivered at Edinburgh University, 1901-2
'Pragmatism' given at the Lowell Institute, Boston in 1906.
Greatly honored in his time, known by many as a profound and original thinker and considered to be by many in his time the most widely known of American scholars.
Publications
Principles of Psychology, 1890. Establish psychology as a separate science.
Collected Essays and Reviews (1892);
The Will to Believe and Other Essays (1897);
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907);
The Meaning of Truth (1909).
Sunday, 8 November 2015
Comments
First of all, i want to point out about the multipotentialite meeting in UK, organised in the summer of 2016. More info here.
Second, i will explain a bit about the structure of my posts, they are just a bit of a much bigger project, aiming to study how the IQ test appeared and developed, and maybe, if it is possible, to find some alternative method of testing for other kind of geniality, not only the ones of intellectual origin. It is still work in progress. Also, as a future business/charity, which will test, support, advice, train, help with mentor-ship, this are my first steps. We want to start with testing, trying to improve Stanford-Binet scale and other test following this one. This is one of the reason of my financial independence enterprise, meant to give me 100% free time through passive income streams, in order to follow this idea of helping other multipotentialite/polymath/struggling geniuses to not spend years of their life trying to search what is wrong, instead of focusing on their advantages and abilities.
See you soon.
G.
Second, i will explain a bit about the structure of my posts, they are just a bit of a much bigger project, aiming to study how the IQ test appeared and developed, and maybe, if it is possible, to find some alternative method of testing for other kind of geniality, not only the ones of intellectual origin. It is still work in progress. Also, as a future business/charity, which will test, support, advice, train, help with mentor-ship, this are my first steps. We want to start with testing, trying to improve Stanford-Binet scale and other test following this one. This is one of the reason of my financial independence enterprise, meant to give me 100% free time through passive income streams, in order to follow this idea of helping other multipotentialite/polymath/struggling geniuses to not spend years of their life trying to search what is wrong, instead of focusing on their advantages and abilities.
See you soon.
G.
Bonus post - Dean Keith Simonton
Dean Keith Simonton (January 27, 1948-present )is an American Psychologist, influenced by Cox, Darwin and Galton. Studied the connection between genius and creativity, also very extensive research about leadership, high achievers,eminence, innovation, outstanding results, excellence and geniality.
Influenced by: Cox, Darwin, Galton
Time Period: Current Efforts
Education:
Occidental College (B.A. in Psychology, Magna Cum Laude, 1970)
Harvard University (M.A. in Social Psychology, 1973; Ph.D. in Social Psychology, 1975)
Career:
Assistant Professor, University of Arkansas (1974-1976)
Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis (1976-1980)
Associate Professor, University of California, Davis (1980-1985)
Visiting Research Psychologist, Institute for Personality Assessment and Research, UC Berkeley (1985)
Professor, University of California, Davis (1985-present; became Distinguished Professor in 2004)
Numerous awards, including the Robert S. Daniel Award for Four Year College/University Teaching (American Psychological Association, 2006); the Theoretical Innovation Prize (APA, 2004), the William James Book Award (APA, 2000), George A. Miller Outstanding Article Award (APA, 1997), Rudolf Arnheim Award for Outstanding Achievement in Psychology and the Arts (APA, 1996), Sir Francis Galton Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Study of Creativity (International Association of Empirical Aesthetics, 1996), Award for Excellence in Research (Mensa Education and Research Foundation, 1986, 2009)
Definition of Intelligence:
"My view of intelligence is basically a Darwinian one. It's based on sort of the old Functionalist notion that goes way back to Francis Galton, that says that there are a certain set of cognitive capacities that enable an individual to adapt and thrive in any given environment they find themselves in, and those cognitive capacities include things like memory and retrieval, and problem solving and so forth. There's a cluster of cognitive abilities that lead to successful adaptation to a wide range of environments (Simonton, personal communication, July 5, 2003)."
Major Contributions:
Empirically examines the nature and origins of genius as it manifests in creativity, leadership, talent and aesthetics
Extended and advanced the historiometric approach of measuring the intelligence of historical persons
Author of more than 300 books, book chapters and research articles
Ideas and Interests:
Dean Keith Simonton's substantial contributions to the study of human intelligence arose in part from his youthful enthusiasm for the classical arts, sciences, and humanities. At an early age he developed a keen interest in the nature and origins of genius in these domains, and his prolific research career is a testament to his personal passion for all that is culturally significant, great and beautiful, as well as his insatiable curiosity about the eminent individuals involved in the creation of such things. Dr. Simonton's more than 300 books, book chapters and research articles explore genius, creativity, leadership, talent and aesthetics; specifically, the "cognitive, personal, developmental, social, and cultural factors behind eminence, giftedness, and talent in science, art, politics and war" as well as the psychology of science and distinguished scientists (retrieved from http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/simonton/). Having firmly established himself in the tradition of Sir Francis Galton, Dr. Simonton's preferred research approach is historiometric; that is, he uses the tools of history, biography and psychometrics to extrapolate general principles about human behavior from the lives and works of the eminent individuals he studies (Simonton, 1984; 1999b) . Some of his findings related to intelligence include: Although at least a moderately high IQ is important for the achievement of eminence, statistical analyses demonstrate that intelligence accounts for only about 4-5 percent of the variance in measures of cultural eminence. Developmental, motivational and personality factors seem to matter a great deal more. Thus, very intelligent people do not necessarily accomplish great things (Simonton, 1999a; Simonton, personal communication, July 5, 2003).
The relationship between IQ and persuasive influence over other members of one's group may drop off beyond an IQ of approximately 120. Individuals who are very smart may be less comprehensible to other group members, and this might have a negative impact on their ability to influence those around them. Even if the exceptionally bright individuals are able to target their use of language to the needs of their audience, the complexity of their ideas may be less accessible to listeners with IQs more than one standard deviation lower than their own (Simonton, 1985; 1999a). As evidence, Simonton's historiometric research demonstrates that more intelligent individuals have had a harder time getting elected to the American presidency (Simonton, 1999a) Intelligence level impacts everyday creativity, such as that involved in problem-solving, but individuals with very high intelligence do not necessarily demonstrate the type of creativity that will make an impression on society at large (Simonton, 1999a).
Selected Publications
Simonton, D. K. (1984). Genius, creativity and leadership: Historiometric inquiries. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Simonton, D. K. (1988). Scientific genius: A psychology of science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simonton, D. K. (1990). Psychology, science and history: A introduction to historiometry. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Simonton, D. K. (1997). Genius and creativity: Selected papers: Greenwich, CT: Ablex
Simonton, D. K. (1999). Origins of genius: Darwinian perspectives on creativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Simonton, D.K. (2003). It's absolutely impossible? A longitudinal study of one psychologist's response to conventional naysayers. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed .). Psychologists defying the crowd: Stories of those who battled the establishment and won (pp. 239-254). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
Simonton, D. K. (2004). Creativity in science: Chance, logic, genius, and zeitgeist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simonton, D. K. (2006). Presidential IQ, Openness, Intellectual Brilliance, and leadership: Estimates and correlations for 42 US chief executives. Political Psychology, 27, 511-639.
Simonton, D. K. (2008). Childhood giftedness and adulthood genius: A historiometric analysis of 291 eminent African Americans. Gifted Child Quarterly, 52, 243-255.
Simonton, D. K. (2009). Genius 101. New York: Springer.
Simonton, D. K., & Song, A. V. (2009). Eminence, IQ, physical and mental health, and achievement domain: Cox’s 282 geniuses revisited. Psychological Science, 20, 429-434.
References
Simonton, D. K. (1984). Genius, creativity and leadership: Historiometric inquiries. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Simonton, D. K. (1985). Intelligence and personal influence in groups: Four nonlinear models. Psychological Review, 92, 532-547.
Simonton, D. K. (1999a). Origins of genius: Darwinian perspectives on creativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Simonton, D. K. (1999b). Significant samples: The psychological study of eminent individuals. Psychological Methods, 4(4), 425-451.
Simonton, D. K. (2009). The "other IQ": Historiometric assessments of intelligence and related constructs. Review of General Psychology, 13, 315- 326.
www.intelltheory.com
Influenced by: Cox, Darwin, Galton
Time Period: Current Efforts
Education:
Occidental College (B.A. in Psychology, Magna Cum Laude, 1970)
Harvard University (M.A. in Social Psychology, 1973; Ph.D. in Social Psychology, 1975)
Career:
Assistant Professor, University of Arkansas (1974-1976)
Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis (1976-1980)
Associate Professor, University of California, Davis (1980-1985)
Visiting Research Psychologist, Institute for Personality Assessment and Research, UC Berkeley (1985)
Professor, University of California, Davis (1985-present; became Distinguished Professor in 2004)
Numerous awards, including the Robert S. Daniel Award for Four Year College/University Teaching (American Psychological Association, 2006); the Theoretical Innovation Prize (APA, 2004), the William James Book Award (APA, 2000), George A. Miller Outstanding Article Award (APA, 1997), Rudolf Arnheim Award for Outstanding Achievement in Psychology and the Arts (APA, 1996), Sir Francis Galton Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Study of Creativity (International Association of Empirical Aesthetics, 1996), Award for Excellence in Research (Mensa Education and Research Foundation, 1986, 2009)
Definition of Intelligence:
"My view of intelligence is basically a Darwinian one. It's based on sort of the old Functionalist notion that goes way back to Francis Galton, that says that there are a certain set of cognitive capacities that enable an individual to adapt and thrive in any given environment they find themselves in, and those cognitive capacities include things like memory and retrieval, and problem solving and so forth. There's a cluster of cognitive abilities that lead to successful adaptation to a wide range of environments (Simonton, personal communication, July 5, 2003)."
Major Contributions:
Empirically examines the nature and origins of genius as it manifests in creativity, leadership, talent and aesthetics
Extended and advanced the historiometric approach of measuring the intelligence of historical persons
Author of more than 300 books, book chapters and research articles
Ideas and Interests:
Dean Keith Simonton's substantial contributions to the study of human intelligence arose in part from his youthful enthusiasm for the classical arts, sciences, and humanities. At an early age he developed a keen interest in the nature and origins of genius in these domains, and his prolific research career is a testament to his personal passion for all that is culturally significant, great and beautiful, as well as his insatiable curiosity about the eminent individuals involved in the creation of such things. Dr. Simonton's more than 300 books, book chapters and research articles explore genius, creativity, leadership, talent and aesthetics; specifically, the "cognitive, personal, developmental, social, and cultural factors behind eminence, giftedness, and talent in science, art, politics and war" as well as the psychology of science and distinguished scientists (retrieved from http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/simonton/). Having firmly established himself in the tradition of Sir Francis Galton, Dr. Simonton's preferred research approach is historiometric; that is, he uses the tools of history, biography and psychometrics to extrapolate general principles about human behavior from the lives and works of the eminent individuals he studies (Simonton, 1984; 1999b) . Some of his findings related to intelligence include: Although at least a moderately high IQ is important for the achievement of eminence, statistical analyses demonstrate that intelligence accounts for only about 4-5 percent of the variance in measures of cultural eminence. Developmental, motivational and personality factors seem to matter a great deal more. Thus, very intelligent people do not necessarily accomplish great things (Simonton, 1999a; Simonton, personal communication, July 5, 2003).
The relationship between IQ and persuasive influence over other members of one's group may drop off beyond an IQ of approximately 120. Individuals who are very smart may be less comprehensible to other group members, and this might have a negative impact on their ability to influence those around them. Even if the exceptionally bright individuals are able to target their use of language to the needs of their audience, the complexity of their ideas may be less accessible to listeners with IQs more than one standard deviation lower than their own (Simonton, 1985; 1999a). As evidence, Simonton's historiometric research demonstrates that more intelligent individuals have had a harder time getting elected to the American presidency (Simonton, 1999a) Intelligence level impacts everyday creativity, such as that involved in problem-solving, but individuals with very high intelligence do not necessarily demonstrate the type of creativity that will make an impression on society at large (Simonton, 1999a).
Selected Publications
Simonton, D. K. (1984). Genius, creativity and leadership: Historiometric inquiries. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Simonton, D. K. (1988). Scientific genius: A psychology of science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simonton, D. K. (1990). Psychology, science and history: A introduction to historiometry. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Simonton, D. K. (1997). Genius and creativity: Selected papers: Greenwich, CT: Ablex
Simonton, D. K. (1999). Origins of genius: Darwinian perspectives on creativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Simonton, D.K. (2003). It's absolutely impossible? A longitudinal study of one psychologist's response to conventional naysayers. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed .). Psychologists defying the crowd: Stories of those who battled the establishment and won (pp. 239-254). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
Simonton, D. K. (2004). Creativity in science: Chance, logic, genius, and zeitgeist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simonton, D. K. (2006). Presidential IQ, Openness, Intellectual Brilliance, and leadership: Estimates and correlations for 42 US chief executives. Political Psychology, 27, 511-639.
Simonton, D. K. (2008). Childhood giftedness and adulthood genius: A historiometric analysis of 291 eminent African Americans. Gifted Child Quarterly, 52, 243-255.
Simonton, D. K. (2009). Genius 101. New York: Springer.
Simonton, D. K., & Song, A. V. (2009). Eminence, IQ, physical and mental health, and achievement domain: Cox’s 282 geniuses revisited. Psychological Science, 20, 429-434.
References
Simonton, D. K. (1984). Genius, creativity and leadership: Historiometric inquiries. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Simonton, D. K. (1985). Intelligence and personal influence in groups: Four nonlinear models. Psychological Review, 92, 532-547.
Simonton, D. K. (1999a). Origins of genius: Darwinian perspectives on creativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Simonton, D. K. (1999b). Significant samples: The psychological study of eminent individuals. Psychological Methods, 4(4), 425-451.
Simonton, D. K. (2009). The "other IQ": Historiometric assessments of intelligence and related constructs. Review of General Psychology, 13, 315- 326.
www.intelltheory.com
Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget (August 9, 1896-September 16, 1980) is a Swiss Biologist and Child Psychologist, student of Theodore Simon, mentor to Inhelder, influenced the research of Sternberg and Gardner
Time Period: The Great Schools' Influence
Education:
Ph.D. in the Natural Sciences, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland (1918)
Postdoctoral studies in psychoanalysis, University of Zurich (Winter, 1918-1919)
Career:
Publishes his first biology paper (on the albino sparrow) at age 10 (1907)
Théodore Simon asks him to standardize Cyril Burt's intelligence tests with Parisian children (1920)
Publishes his first article on the psychology of intelligence (1921)
Research Director, Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Geneva (1921-1925)
Professor of psychology, sociology and history of science, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland (1925-1929)
Professor of the History of Scientific Thought, University of Geneva (1929-1939)
Director of the International Bureau of Education, Geneva (1929-1967)
Director, Institute of Educational Sciences, University of Geneva (1932-1971)
Professor of Psychology and Sociology, University of Lausanne, Switzerland (1938-1951)
Professor of Sociology, University of Geneva (1939-1952)
Chair of Experimental Psychology, University of Geneva (1940-1971)
Professor of Genetic Psychology, the Sorbonne, Paris (1952-1963)
Founder/Director of the International Center for Genetic Epistemology, Geneva (1955-1980)
Founder, School of Sciences, University of Geneva (1956)
Emeritus Professor, University of Geneva (1971-1980)
Ph.D. in the Natural Sciences, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland (1918)
Postdoctoral studies in psychoanalysis, University of Zurich (Winter, 1918-1919)
Definition of Intelligence:
"Intelligence is an adaptation…To say that intelligence is a particular instance of biological adaptation is thus to suppose that it is essentially an organization and that its function is to structure the universe just as the organism structures its immediate environment" (Piaget, 1963, pp. 3-4).
"Intelligence is assimilation to the extent that it incorporates all the given data of experience within its framework…There can be no doubt either, that mental life is also accommodation to the environment. Assimilation can never be pure because by incorporating new elements into its earlier schemata the intelligence constantly modifies the latter in order to adjust them to new elements" (Piaget, 1963, p. 6-7).
Major Contributions:
The theory of Genetic Epistemology
Ideas and Interests:
Jean Piaget was a precocious child who demonstrated a keen interest in animal life and an encyclopedic knowledge of biology and taxonomy. When he was ten years old, he began volunteering at the Neuchâtel Museum of Natural History. The museum's director, the seventy year-old naturalist Paul Godet, took him on as his assistant and apprentice, and paid him for his work by giving him rare specimens for his personal collection (Vidal, 1994). Piaget continued to work at the museum for four years, and his interest in the natural sciences continued to grow. His professional accomplishments in this area were numerous, beginning at age ten when he published a paper on the albino sparrow, and culminating with a doctoral thesis on the classification of mollusks when he was twenty-one. After completing his Ph.D., Piaget spent several months studying psychoanalysis at the University of Zurich. He was a promising student, and his contemporaries believed that he would eventually make important contributions to this field (Vidal, 1994). However, a serendipitous opportunity presented itself, and Piaget soon found himself working for Théodore Simon, co-author of the Binet-Simon intelligence scale. Simon placed him in Binet's laboratory, and set him to work standardizing Cyril Burt's reasoning tests on Parisian children. Piaget thought that the standardizing task was dull, and he never finished it. However, his clinical interactions with the children were not without interest. He began to notice that children of similar ages made similar types of mistakes, and it occurred to him that Simon, Binet and Burt might be asking the wrong question: Perhaps the key to understanding human intellectual development is not in what children get wrong, but how they get it wrong. It was clear to Piaget that childish reasoning is not merely less accurate than adult reasoning; it is qualitatively different (Wadsworth 1996). From this point forward, Piaget dedicated himself to answering the question "How does knowledge grow?" Piaget eventually came to believe that intelligence is a form of adaptation, wherein knowledge is constructed by each individual through the two complementary processes of assimilation and accommodation. He theorized that as children interact with their physical and social environments, they organize information into groups of interrelated ideas called "schemes". When children encounter something new, they must either assimilate it into an existing scheme or create an entirely new scheme to deal with it (Wadsworth 1996). Piaget also believed that intellectual development occurs in four distinct stages. The sensorimotor stage begins at birth, and lasts until the child is approximately two years old. At this stage, the child cannot form mental representations of objects that are outside his immediate view, so his intelligence develops through his motor interactions with his environment. The preoperational stage typically lasts until the child is 6 or 7. According to Piaget, this is the stage where true "thought" emerges. Preoperational children are able to make mental representations of unseen objects, but they cannot use deductive reasoning. The concrete operations stage follows, and lasts until the child is 11 or 12. Concrete operational children are able to use deductive reasoning, demonstrate conservation of number, and can differentiate their perspective from that of other people. Formal operations is the final stage. Its most salient feature is the ability to think abstractly.
A central tenet of Piaget's Genetic Epistemology is that increasingly complex intellectual processes are built on the primitive foundations laid in earlier stages of development. An infant's physical explorations of his environment form the basis for the mental representations he develops as a preoperational child, and so on. Another important principle of Piaget's stage theory is that there are genetic constraints inherent in the human organism-You can challenge a child to confront new ideas, but you cannot necessarily "teach" him out of one stage and into another. Moreover, a child cannot build new, increasingly complex schemes without interacting with his environment; nature and nurture are inexorably linked. As Piaget put it: Intelligence does not by any means appear at once derived from mental development, like a higher mechanism, and radically distinct from those which have preceded it. Intelligence presents, on the contrary, a remarkable continuity with the acquired or even inborn processes on which it depends and at the same time makes use of. (Piaget, 1963, p. 21). Attempts have been made to correlate performance on Piagetian conservation tasks with standardized intelligence test scores, and the results have been mixed. (Kirk, 1977). Ultimately, an intelligence test built on a Piagetian framework would have to function very differently from intelligence tests like the Wechsler or the Stanford-Binet. In addition to recording a child's correct and incorrect responses, the test administrator would also have to ask the child to explain why he answered in a given way. Piaget suggested that one way to reconcile these two approaches would be to adopt a method clinique, whereby a traditional intelligence test could serve as the basis for a clinical interview (Elkind, 1969).
*Epistemology: n. a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge.
Selected Publications:
Piaget, J. (1936, 1963) The origins of intelligence in children. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Piaget, J. (1954, 1981). Intelligence and affectivity: Their relationship during child development. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Review, Inc.
Piaget, J. (1963, 2001). The psychology of intelligence. New York: Routledge.
Piaget, J. (1970). Genetic epistemology. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Piaget, J. (1972). Intellectual evolution from adolescence to adulthood. Human Development, 15(1), 1-12.
Piaget, J. (1973). Memory and intelligence: New York: BasicBooks.
Piaget, J. (1974, 1980). Adaptation and intelligence: Organic selection and phenocopy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
References:
Costello, R.B. (Ed.) (1992). Random House Webster's college dictionary. New York: Random House.
Kirk, L (1977). Maternal and subcultural correlates of cognitive growth rate: The GA pattern. IN P.R. Dasen (Ed.), Piagetian psychology: Cross-cultural contributions. New York: Gardner Press.
Elkind, David. (1969). Pagetian and psychometric conceptions of intelligence. Harvard Educational Review, 39(2), 319-337.
www.intelltheory.com
Piaget, J. (1936, 1963) The origins of intelligence in children. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Vidal, F. (1994). Piaget before Piaget. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Wadsworth, B.J. (1996). Piaget's theory of cognitive and affective development: White Plains, NY: Longman.
Time Period: The Great Schools' Influence
Education:
Ph.D. in the Natural Sciences, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland (1918)
Postdoctoral studies in psychoanalysis, University of Zurich (Winter, 1918-1919)
Career:
Publishes his first biology paper (on the albino sparrow) at age 10 (1907)
Théodore Simon asks him to standardize Cyril Burt's intelligence tests with Parisian children (1920)
Publishes his first article on the psychology of intelligence (1921)
Research Director, Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Geneva (1921-1925)
Professor of psychology, sociology and history of science, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland (1925-1929)
Professor of the History of Scientific Thought, University of Geneva (1929-1939)
Director of the International Bureau of Education, Geneva (1929-1967)
Director, Institute of Educational Sciences, University of Geneva (1932-1971)
Professor of Psychology and Sociology, University of Lausanne, Switzerland (1938-1951)
Professor of Sociology, University of Geneva (1939-1952)
Chair of Experimental Psychology, University of Geneva (1940-1971)
Professor of Genetic Psychology, the Sorbonne, Paris (1952-1963)
Founder/Director of the International Center for Genetic Epistemology, Geneva (1955-1980)
Founder, School of Sciences, University of Geneva (1956)
Emeritus Professor, University of Geneva (1971-1980)
Ph.D. in the Natural Sciences, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland (1918)
Postdoctoral studies in psychoanalysis, University of Zurich (Winter, 1918-1919)
Definition of Intelligence:
"Intelligence is an adaptation…To say that intelligence is a particular instance of biological adaptation is thus to suppose that it is essentially an organization and that its function is to structure the universe just as the organism structures its immediate environment" (Piaget, 1963, pp. 3-4).
"Intelligence is assimilation to the extent that it incorporates all the given data of experience within its framework…There can be no doubt either, that mental life is also accommodation to the environment. Assimilation can never be pure because by incorporating new elements into its earlier schemata the intelligence constantly modifies the latter in order to adjust them to new elements" (Piaget, 1963, p. 6-7).
Major Contributions:
The theory of Genetic Epistemology
Ideas and Interests:
Jean Piaget was a precocious child who demonstrated a keen interest in animal life and an encyclopedic knowledge of biology and taxonomy. When he was ten years old, he began volunteering at the Neuchâtel Museum of Natural History. The museum's director, the seventy year-old naturalist Paul Godet, took him on as his assistant and apprentice, and paid him for his work by giving him rare specimens for his personal collection (Vidal, 1994). Piaget continued to work at the museum for four years, and his interest in the natural sciences continued to grow. His professional accomplishments in this area were numerous, beginning at age ten when he published a paper on the albino sparrow, and culminating with a doctoral thesis on the classification of mollusks when he was twenty-one. After completing his Ph.D., Piaget spent several months studying psychoanalysis at the University of Zurich. He was a promising student, and his contemporaries believed that he would eventually make important contributions to this field (Vidal, 1994). However, a serendipitous opportunity presented itself, and Piaget soon found himself working for Théodore Simon, co-author of the Binet-Simon intelligence scale. Simon placed him in Binet's laboratory, and set him to work standardizing Cyril Burt's reasoning tests on Parisian children. Piaget thought that the standardizing task was dull, and he never finished it. However, his clinical interactions with the children were not without interest. He began to notice that children of similar ages made similar types of mistakes, and it occurred to him that Simon, Binet and Burt might be asking the wrong question: Perhaps the key to understanding human intellectual development is not in what children get wrong, but how they get it wrong. It was clear to Piaget that childish reasoning is not merely less accurate than adult reasoning; it is qualitatively different (Wadsworth 1996). From this point forward, Piaget dedicated himself to answering the question "How does knowledge grow?" Piaget eventually came to believe that intelligence is a form of adaptation, wherein knowledge is constructed by each individual through the two complementary processes of assimilation and accommodation. He theorized that as children interact with their physical and social environments, they organize information into groups of interrelated ideas called "schemes". When children encounter something new, they must either assimilate it into an existing scheme or create an entirely new scheme to deal with it (Wadsworth 1996). Piaget also believed that intellectual development occurs in four distinct stages. The sensorimotor stage begins at birth, and lasts until the child is approximately two years old. At this stage, the child cannot form mental representations of objects that are outside his immediate view, so his intelligence develops through his motor interactions with his environment. The preoperational stage typically lasts until the child is 6 or 7. According to Piaget, this is the stage where true "thought" emerges. Preoperational children are able to make mental representations of unseen objects, but they cannot use deductive reasoning. The concrete operations stage follows, and lasts until the child is 11 or 12. Concrete operational children are able to use deductive reasoning, demonstrate conservation of number, and can differentiate their perspective from that of other people. Formal operations is the final stage. Its most salient feature is the ability to think abstractly.
A central tenet of Piaget's Genetic Epistemology is that increasingly complex intellectual processes are built on the primitive foundations laid in earlier stages of development. An infant's physical explorations of his environment form the basis for the mental representations he develops as a preoperational child, and so on. Another important principle of Piaget's stage theory is that there are genetic constraints inherent in the human organism-You can challenge a child to confront new ideas, but you cannot necessarily "teach" him out of one stage and into another. Moreover, a child cannot build new, increasingly complex schemes without interacting with his environment; nature and nurture are inexorably linked. As Piaget put it: Intelligence does not by any means appear at once derived from mental development, like a higher mechanism, and radically distinct from those which have preceded it. Intelligence presents, on the contrary, a remarkable continuity with the acquired or even inborn processes on which it depends and at the same time makes use of. (Piaget, 1963, p. 21). Attempts have been made to correlate performance on Piagetian conservation tasks with standardized intelligence test scores, and the results have been mixed. (Kirk, 1977). Ultimately, an intelligence test built on a Piagetian framework would have to function very differently from intelligence tests like the Wechsler or the Stanford-Binet. In addition to recording a child's correct and incorrect responses, the test administrator would also have to ask the child to explain why he answered in a given way. Piaget suggested that one way to reconcile these two approaches would be to adopt a method clinique, whereby a traditional intelligence test could serve as the basis for a clinical interview (Elkind, 1969).
*Epistemology: n. a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge.
Selected Publications:
Piaget, J. (1936, 1963) The origins of intelligence in children. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Piaget, J. (1954, 1981). Intelligence and affectivity: Their relationship during child development. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Review, Inc.
Piaget, J. (1963, 2001). The psychology of intelligence. New York: Routledge.
Piaget, J. (1970). Genetic epistemology. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Piaget, J. (1972). Intellectual evolution from adolescence to adulthood. Human Development, 15(1), 1-12.
Piaget, J. (1973). Memory and intelligence: New York: BasicBooks.
Piaget, J. (1974, 1980). Adaptation and intelligence: Organic selection and phenocopy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
References:
Costello, R.B. (Ed.) (1992). Random House Webster's college dictionary. New York: Random House.
Kirk, L (1977). Maternal and subcultural correlates of cognitive growth rate: The GA pattern. IN P.R. Dasen (Ed.), Piagetian psychology: Cross-cultural contributions. New York: Gardner Press.
Elkind, David. (1969). Pagetian and psychometric conceptions of intelligence. Harvard Educational Review, 39(2), 319-337.
www.intelltheory.com
Piaget, J. (1936, 1963) The origins of intelligence in children. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Vidal, F. (1994). Piaget before Piaget. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Wadsworth, B.J. (1996). Piaget's theory of cognitive and affective development: White Plains, NY: Longman.
Theodore Simon
Theodore Simon (1873-1961), student and colleague of Binet, mentor of Piaget
Influences
Influenced by: Binet
Students: Piaget
Time Period: The Great Schools' Influence
Major Contribution:
The Binet-Simon Scale
Ideas and Interests:
Theodore Simon, colleague of Alfred Binet in Paris, helped develop and coauthor a test to roughly estimate intelligence. The principal conclusion from their work was that the test could measure the intellectual development of young children between the age of three and twelve years old. Simon also believed that their method was practical, convenient, and rapid. It was also Dr. Simon who put Jean Piaget in charge of administering Binet's reading tests on Parisian children. An endeavor which allowed Piaget to develop an enthusiasm into probing the successes and failures of children, leading him into the field of child psychology.
Publications:
Binet, A., Simon, T., The Development of Intelligence in Children, Reprint 1983. Ayer Company, Salem, New Hampshire.
Influences
Influenced by: Binet
Students: Piaget
Time Period: The Great Schools' Influence
Major Contribution:
The Binet-Simon Scale
Ideas and Interests:
Theodore Simon, colleague of Alfred Binet in Paris, helped develop and coauthor a test to roughly estimate intelligence. The principal conclusion from their work was that the test could measure the intellectual development of young children between the age of three and twelve years old. Simon also believed that their method was practical, convenient, and rapid. It was also Dr. Simon who put Jean Piaget in charge of administering Binet's reading tests on Parisian children. An endeavor which allowed Piaget to develop an enthusiasm into probing the successes and failures of children, leading him into the field of child psychology.
Publications:
Binet, A., Simon, T., The Development of Intelligence in Children, Reprint 1983. Ayer Company, Salem, New Hampshire.
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