- Sentence with a simple subject and simple predicate (including 75 per cent of 116 satisfactory responses); as: “Men work for their money.” “Men get money for their work,” etc.
- A complex sentence with a relative clause (12 per cent of correct answers); as: “Men who work earn much money.” “It is easy for men to earn money if they are willing to work,” etc.
- A compound sentence with two independent, coördinate clauses (13 per cent); as: “Men work and they earn money.” “Some men have money and they do not work.”
- Three clauses; as: “I know a man and he has money, and he works at the store.”
- Sentences which are absurd or meaningless; as: “Men work with their money.”
- Omission of one of the words.
- Inability to respond.
- Sentences with a simple subject and a simple predicate (including 84 per cent of 126 correct answers); as: “There are no rivers or lakes in the desert.” “The desert has one river and one lake,” etc.
- A complex sentence with a relative clause (only 2 per cent); as: “In the desert there was a river which flowed into a lake.”
- A compound sentence with two independent, coördinate clauses (11 per cent); as: “We went to the desert, and it had no rivers or lakes.”
- A compound, complex sentence (3 per cent of all); as: “There was a desert, and near by there was a river that emptied into a lake.”
- Sentences with three clauses (40 per cent of all failures); as: “A desert is dry, rivers are long, lakes are rough.”
- Sentences containing an absurdity (12 per cent of the failures): as: “a desert is dry, rivers are long, lakes are filled with swimming boys.” “The lake went through the desert and the river.” “There was a desert and rivers and lakes in the forest.” “The desert is full of rivers and lakes.”
- Omission of one of the words (40 per cent of the failures).
- Inability to respond (8 per cent).
Remarks. The test of constructing a sentence containing given words was first used by Masselon and is known as “the Masselon experiment.” Meumann, who used it in a rather extended experiment,[65] finds it a good test of intelligence and a reliable index as to the richness, definiteness, and maturity of the associative processes. As Meumann shows, it is instructive to study the qualitative differences between the responses of bright and dull children, apart from questions of sentence structure. These differences are especially discernible in (a) the logical qualities of the associations, and (b) the definiteness of statement. As regards (a), bright children are much more likely to use the given words as keystones in the construction of a sentence which would be logically suggested by them. For example, donkey, blows, suggest some such sentence as, “The donkey receives blows because he is lazy.” In like manner we have found that the words work, money, men usually suggest to the more intelligent children a sentence like “Men work for their money” (or “because they need money,” etc.), while the dull child is more likely to give some such sentence as “The men have work and they don’t have much money.” That is, the sentence of the dull child, even though correct in structure and free enough from outright absurdity to satisfy the standard of scoring which we have set forth, is likely to express ideas which are more or less nondescript, ideas not logically suggested by the set of words given.
The experiment is one of the many forms of the “completion test,” or “the combination method.” As we have already noted, the power to combine more or less separate and isolated elements into a logical whole is one of the most essential features of intelligence. The ability to do so in a given case depends, in the first place, upon the number and logical quality of the associations which have previously been made with each of the given elements separately, and in the second place, upon the readiness with which these ideational stores yield up the particular associations necessary for weaving the given words into some kind of unity. The child must pass from what is given to what is not given but merely suggested. This requires a certain amount of invention. Scattered fragments must be conceived as the skeleton of a thought, and this skeleton, or partial skeleton, must be assembled and made whole. The task is analogous to that which confronts the palæontologist, who is able to reconstruct, with a high degree of certainty, the entire skeleton of an extinct animal from the evidence furnished by three or four fragments of bones. It is no wonder, therefore, that subjects whose ideational stores are scanty, and whose associations are based upon accidental rather than logical connections, find the test one of peculiar difficulty. Invention thrives in a different soil.
Binet located this test in year X. Goddard and Kuhlmann assign it the same location, though their actual statistics agree closely with our own. Our procedure makes the test somewhat easier than that of Binet, who gave only one trial and used the somewhat more difficult words Paris, river, fortune. Others have generally followed the Binet procedure, merely substituting for Paris the name of a city better known to the subject. Binet’s requirement of a written response also makes the test harder.
Perhaps the greatest obstacle to uniformity in the use of the test comes from the difficulty of scoring, particularly in deciding whether the sentence contains enough absurdity to disqualify it, and whether it expresses three separate ideas or only two. It is hoped that the rather large variety of sample responses which we have given will reduce these difficulties to a minimum.
An additional word is necessary in regard to what constitutes an absurdity in (b). A sentence like “There are some rivers and lakes in the desert” is not an absurdity in certain parts of Western United States. In Professor Ordahl’s tests at Reno, Nevada, many children whose intelligence was altogether above suspicion gave this reply. The statement is, indeed, perfectly true for the semi-arid region in the vicinity of Reno known as “the desert.” On the other hand, such sentences as “The desert is full of rivers and lakes,” or “There are forty rivers and lakes in the desert,” can hardly be considered satisfactory. Similar difficulties are presented by (c), though not so frequently. “Men who work do not have money” expresses, unfortunately, more truth than nonsense.