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.

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)

Gifted Children - The latest report on Terman studies

As i promised today i will try to resume and check what i think is the most important part of the life cycle studies of Terman, and i will provide a link in the end to the full report on PDF, if you want to read it.

Noted ideas and concept in the report:

- Using different intelligence tests, mostly based on Stanford-Binet, 661 gifted boys and girls were found, all of them with IQ of 140 or more. In all, the final number of subjects amounted to 1,528.

- In 1927, when the average age of the group was 17, the first follow up survey was published under the title The Promise of Youth.

- The general idea was in that time that a gifted child will revert to average at maturity or decline and sicken and eventually die. Quote from Terman studies: "With few exceptions the superior child becomes the superior adult, superior in nearly every respect to the generality, though, as in childhood, the degree of the superiority differs in different areas." This was a very brave idea, one that still needed support  even 60 years later.

- The question which naturally interests us most, however, is to what extent is the promise of childhood fulfilled by the achievements of later life? As a general rule, it would seem, the intelligent

child develops into the intelligent adult. As we might expect from the mode of selection, "the

superiority of the gifted group is greatest in intellectual ability, scholastic accomplishment,

and vocational success." Tests applied in 1927, 1939, and 1950-52 show that at every stage their

mental superiority is astonishingly well sustained. "The majority of the subjects remained close to

the 99th percentile of the generality; and this was true even of those whose careers were not

particularly notable." Indeed, judged by the test mainly employed in the follow-up surveys (a test

of "concept mastery") "not only do the mentally superior hold their own, they actually increase in

intellectual stature." Here i want to say that probably because this is based mostly on IQ, they tend to have better intellectual achievements, and this study is not relevant for gifts in other area (arts, gymnastics, sport, dance, mechanics etc.)

- Talking about college and graduation, the proportion of success is ten times as high as that which would hold for a random group of the same age. None of the gifted individuals are in the lowest occupational categories, though these categories account for about 13 per cent of the general urban population.

- Additional evidence of the surprisingly high achievement attained by men only is furnished by their publications and patents. These include nearly 2,000 scientific and technical articles, some sixty books or monographs on science, art, literature, or the humanities (including textbooks translated into

several languages), thirty-three novels, and 700 plays, short stories, essays, and miscellaneous

articles, not to mention thousands of journalistic contributions and scripts for film, radio, or television. The number of technical patents runs to at least 230.

- Out of the 1,500 cases, however, there were eighty or ninety whose apparent progress fell short of expectation. Since their intelligence, as assessed by tests, differs little from that of the rest of the group, it is evident that outstanding accomplishments call for something else besides sheer innate ability. A comparison between the most successful and the least successful suggests that health, emotional stability, ambition, and will to work are equally indispensable. This does not affect the main inference to be drawn from all these investigations-namely, the value of intelligence testing, even in its present imperfect form, for the purpose of predicting future accomplishment. Here anyway could be another matter, as i meet some very gifted people when i was doing my personal research for "The ones that got away" a study about geniuses that prefer a normal life in anonymity and choose family instead of career. Nothing to blame here, and to understand this, check the case on Kim Ung-yong (IQ-210)

- They were noticed to do what is called assortative mating,a strong tendency for gifted men and women to marry persons who, like themselves, are above average in general intelligence. Their children had an average IQ of 133.

- The total expense of this studies has been approximately a quarter of a million dollars.

The books about this subject are fascinating, bringing the genius and geniality in a new light, changing our pre-conceptions and giving us ideas for the new generations. Is a study like no other, still on going, and i had the occasion to have a conversation with one of the original members of Terman group this year in a online forum.

The link for the full text here. 

Catharine Cox Miles

Catharine Cox Miles (May 20, 1890-October 11, 1984) was one of the most prominent american psychologists.

Student of: Lewis Terman
Influenced by: Francis Galton,  James McKeen Cattell  
Influenced: Dean Keith Simonton
Time Period: The Great Schools' Influence

Education:
Stanford University (B.A., 1911)
Stanford University (M.A. in German language and literature, 1913)
Stanford University (Ph.D., 1925) - Under Lewis Terman

Career:
Spent a year at the University of Jena and the University of Berlin (1914)
Instructor to full professor, the College of the Pacific (1915-1920)
Chief psychologist for the Central Mental Hygiene Clinic in Cincinnati General Hospital, the Children’s Hospital, and the Diagnostic Center of the Veterans Bureau (1925-1927)
Research Associate to Terman on the project leading to the construction of the Terman-Miles M-F Test at Stanford University (1927-1932)
Clinical Professor of Psychology, Yale University (1932-1953)

Major Contributions:
Sole-authored Volume 2 of Terman's Genetic Studies of Genius
Calculated IQ estimates for 301 historic geniuses
Estimated the correlation between IQ and eminence
Assessed 67 character traits for 100 historic geniuses
Determined the early mental and physical health of 282 geniuses

Ideas and Contributions:

Catharine Cox entered the Stanford’s graduate program in psychology about the time that her mentor Terman was beginning his ambitious longitudinal study of intellectually gifted children. Because this project did not afford her with the suitable opportunity for a dissertation subject, she proposed a complementary investigation. Whereas Terman’s inquiry was psychometric and prospective, Cox would conduct a study that was historiometric and retrospective. In particular, she would estimate IQ scores for highly eminent but deceased creators and leaders and then show that these scores correlated with eminence measures that J. M. Cattell (1903) had previously provided. Just one year after publishing the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale Terman (1917) had already shown how an IQ score might be computed for a historical figure, in his case assigning an IQ of near 200 to Francis Galton.

Cox’s approach was extremely conscientious and methodical. Using more than 3,000 biographical sources she carefully compiled developmental histories for 301 geniuses, and then she and a team of independent raters – including Terman and Florence Goodenough – used these data to derive the IQ estimates. In addition, she showed that estimated IQ correlated with achieved eminence. Furthermore, for a subset of 100 geniuses she computed ratings on 67 character traits. On the basis of these scores she was able to conclude that motivation, determination, and persistence were also critical to high achievement. The resulting doctoral thesis was sufficiently impressive that Terman had it published as Volume 2 in his Genetic Studies of Genius. Not only was this the only volume that did not involve the longitudinal study of his “Termites,” but it is also the only volume that did not include Terman as an author or co-author. At 842 printed pages, it can easily be considered the most ambitious historiometric investigation ever published. Moreover, many of her key findings have been replicated in subsequent research.  

Unfortunately, Cox was soon diverted from this work by:

(a) her collaboration with Terman on a masculinity-femininity measure 

(b) her marriage to Walter Miles (a recent widower with two teenagers). 

She also started publishing under her married name Miles rather than Cox. However, a decade later she returned to the historic geniuses that were the subject of her thesis. Miles and Wolfe (1936) specifically scored the geniuses on early mental and physical health. Their aim was to show that intellectual giftedness was also positively associated with both mental and physical well-being.

Publications

Cox. C. (1926). The early mental traits of three hundred geniuses. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Miles, C. C. (1928). A human clock. Journal of General Psychology, 1, 602-603.

Miles, C. C., & Terman, L. M. (1929). Sex difference in the association of ideas. American Journal of Psychology, 41, 165-206.

Miles, C. C. (1931). The Otis S-A as a fifteen-minute intelligence test. Personnel Journal, 10, 246-249.

Miles, C.C. (1931). Individual mental hygiene. In B. S. Dyment (Ed.). Health and Its Maintenance (pp.159-192). Stanford Univ.: Stanford Univ. Press.

Miles, C. C., & Miles, W. R. (1932). The correlation of intelligence scores and chronological age from early to late maturity.  American Journal of Psychology, 44, 44-78.

Miles, C. C (1934). Influence of speed and age on intelligence scores of adults. Journal of General Psychology, 10, 208-210.

Miles, C. C. & Wolfe, L. S. (1936). Childhood physical and mental health records of historical geniuses. Psychological Monograph, 47, 390-400.

Miles, C. C. (1938). Intelligence and social adjustment. Mental Hygiene, 22, 544-566.

Terman, L. M., & Miles, C. C. (1936).  Sex and Personality. New Haven, CT, US: Yale University Press.

References:

Rogers, K. B. (1999). The lifelong productivity of the female researchers in Terman’s Genetic Studies of Genius longitudinal study. Gifted Child Quarterly, 43, 150-169.

Sears, R. R. (1986). Catharine Cox Miles; 1890-1984. American Journal of Psychology, 99, 431-433.

Simonton, D. K. (2009). The "other IQ": Historiometric assessments of intelligence and related constructs. Review of General Psychology, 13, 315- 326.

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.

Written by Prof. Dean Keith Simonton, University of California-Davis, with contributions by Meihua Qian, Indiana University.

www.Intelltheory.com

Click here for Catharine Cox Miles papers

Terman data cycle life study of genius and talented children

One of the most longevive study of genius ever done was started by Terman. It was called Terman life-cycle study of children with high ability, and took place in between 1922-1991 (ICPSR 08092). 
The principal investigator of this was professor Lewis M. Terman and here it is a summary of his work:

This study of the personal and life characteristics of children with high ability follows the 1,528 respondents from 1922 through the latest series of interviews with the surviving cohort of 720 in 1986. The original research objectives were to replace myths about intellectually superior children with documented facts. In 1922, the children were identified on the basis of an intelligence test as being in the top one percent of the population. Their development was followed over the next sixty years via questionnaires, personal interviews, and various test instruments. Questions were asked about their health, physical and emotional development, school histories, recreational activities, home life, family background, educational, vocational, and marital histories. Questions were also asked about income, emotional stability, and socio-political attitudes. The follow-up questionnaires were concerned with the evolution of the respondents' careers, activity patterns, and personal adjustment. Since 1972 there has been special emphasis on the aging process. These longitudinal data will continue to be collected as long as living members of the original cohort contribute data.

You can find most of the data here, organized in multiple datasets:

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/DSDR/studies/08092

P. S. I will make one aditional post about the life and achievements of Lewis Terman, and a short resume of his collaborators very soon. 

Transactive memory

 One interesting concept i stumbled upon these days is transactive memory.  Transactive memory is a psychological hypothesis first proposed by Daniel Wegner in 1985 as a response to earlier theories of "group mind" such as groupthink. A transactive memory system is a mechanism through which groups collectively encode, store, and retrieve knowledge. They somehow refer at it for example as a collective memory of a family, after it was pointed out that each of family members is in charge with some specific domains. As mum with cooking, young children with tablet and smartphone use and so one, so each one will know who to ask to find more about directions related to this or that subject. Going even further, some researchers are thinking that this could be one of the reason we feel incomplete after a break-up or loss of a close family member.

In other order, my next blog posts will continue to explore the beginning of IQ concept and genius intelligence tests, most probably i will write about Terman, Silvan Tompkins, Paul Elkman and i will also say a few words of neuroscientist Adam Gazali and his games aproach to brain training. Probably i will mention a new smartphone game i start to play too, after i will test it a bit longer.

See you soon!
G.