Procedure. Hand the selection to the subject, who should be seated comfortably in a good light, and say: “I want you to read this for me as nicely as you can.” The subject must read aloud.
Pronounce all the words which the subject is unable to make out, not allowing more than five seconds’ hesitation in such a case.
Record all errors made in reading the selection, and the exact time. By “error” is meant the omission, substitution, transposition, or mispronunciation of one word.
The subject is not warned in advance that he will be asked to report what he has read, but as soon as he has finished reading, put the selection out of sight and say: “Very well done. Now, I want you to tell me what you read. Begin at the first and tell everything you can remember.” After the subject has repeated everything he can recall and has stopped, say: “And what else? Can you remember any more of it?” Give no other aid of any kind. It is of course not permissible, when the child stops, to prompt him with such questions as, “And what next? Where were the houses burned? What happened to the fireman?” etc. The report must be spontaneous.
Now and then, though not often, a subject hesitates or even refuses to try, saying he is unable to do it. Perhaps he has misunderstood the request and thinks he is expected to repeat the selection word for word, as in the [tests of memory] [for sentences]. We urge a little and repeat: “Tell me in your own words all you can remember of it.” Others misunderstand in a different way, and thinking they are expected to tell merely what the story is about, they say: “It was about some houses that burned.” In such cases we repeat the instructions with special emphasis on the words all you can remember.
Scoring. The test is passed if the selection is read in thirty-five seconds with not more than two errors, and if the report contains at least eight “memories.” By underscoring the memories correctly reproduced, and by interlineations to show serious departures from the text, the record can be made complete with a minimum of trouble.
The main difficulty in scoring is to decide whether a memory has been reproduced correctly enough to be counted. Absolutely literal reproduction is not expected. The rule is to count all memories whose thought is reproduced with only minor changes in the wording. “It took quite a while” instead of “it took some time” is satisfactory; likewise, “got burnt” for “was burned”; “who was sleeping” for “who was asleep”; “are homeless” for “lost their homes”; “in the middle” for “near the center”; “a big fire” for “a fire,” etc.
Memories as badly mutilated as the following, however, are not counted: “A lot of buildings” for “three houses;” “a man” for “a fireman”; “who was sick” for “who was asleep”; etc. Occasionally we may give half credit, as in the case of “was seventeen thousand dollars” for “was fifty thousand dollars”; “and fifteen families” for “and seventeen families,” etc.
Remarks. Are we warranted in using at all as a measure of intelligence a test which depends as much on instruction as this one does? Many are inclined to answer this question in the negative. The test has been omitted from the revisions of Goddard, Kuhlmann, and Binet himself. As regards Binet’s earlier test of reading for two memories, in year VIII, there could hardly be any difference of opinion. The ability to read at that age depends so much on the accident of environment that the test is meaningless unless we know all about the conditions which have surrounded the child.
The use of the test in year X, however, is a very different matter. There are comparatively few children of that age who will fail to pass it for lack of the requisite school instruction. Children of 10 years who have attended school with reasonable regularity for three years are practically always able to read the selection in thirty-five seconds and without over two mistakes unless they are retarded almost to the border-line of mental deficiency. Of our 10-year-olds who failed to meet the test, only a fourth did so because of inability to meet the reading requirements as regards time or mistakes. The remaining failures were caused by inadequate report, and most of these subjects were of the distinctly retarded group.