Unsatisfactory responses are those made up entirely or mainly of enumeration. A phrase or two of description intermingled with a larger amount of enumeration counts minus. Sometimes the description is satisfactory as far as it goes, but is exceedingly brief. In such cases a little tactful urging (“Go ahead,” etc.) will extend the response sufficiently to reveal its true character.
Remarks. Description is better than enumeration because it involves putting the elements of a picture together in a simple way or noting their qualities. This requires a higher type of mental association (combinative power) than mere enumeration. An unusually complete description indicates relative wealth of mental content and facility of association.
Binet placed this test in year VII, and it seems to have been retained in this location in all revisions except Bobertag’s. However, the statistics of various workers show much disagreement. Lack of agreement is easily accounted for by the fact that different investigators have used different series of pictures and doubtless also different standards for success. The pictures used by Binet have little action or detail and are therefore rather difficult for description. On the other hand, the Jingleman-Jack pictures used by Kuhlmann represent such familiar situations and have so much action that even 5- or 6-year intelligence seldom fails with them. The pictures we employ belong without question in year VII.
No better proof than the above could be found to show how ability of a given kind does not make its appearance suddenly. There is no one time in the life of even a single child when the power to describe pictures suddenly develops. On the contrary, pictures of a certain type will ordinarily provoke description, rather than enumeration, as early as 5 or 6 years; others not before 7 or 8 years, or even later.
VII, 3. Repeating five digits
Procedure. Use: 3–1–7–5–9; 4–2–3–8–5; 9–8–1–7–6. Tell the child to listen and to say after you just what you say. Then read the first series of digits at a slightly faster rate than one per second, in a distinct voice, and with perfectly uniform emphasis. Avoid rhythm.
In previous tests with digits, it was permissible to re-read the first series if the child refused to respond. In this year, and in the digits tests of later years, this is not permissible. Warning is not given as to the number of digits to be repeated. Before reading each series, get the child’s attention. Do not stare at the child during the response, as this is disconcerting. Look aside or at the record sheet.
Scoring. Passed if the child repeats correctly, after a single reading, one series out of the three series given. The order must be correct.
Remarks. Psychologically the repetition of digits differs from the repetition of sentences mainly in the fact that digits have less meaning (fewer associations) than the words of a sentence. It is because they are not as well knit together in meaning that three digits tax the memory as much as six syllables making up a sentence.
Testing auditory memory for digits is one of the oldest of intelligence tests. It is easy to give and lends itself well to exact quantitative standardization. Its value has been questioned, however, on two grounds: (1) That it is not a test of pure memory, but depends largely on attention; and (2) that the results are too much influenced by the child’s type of imagery. As to the first objection, it is true that more than one mental function is brought into play by the test. The same may be said of every other test in the Binet scale and for that matter of any test that could be devised. It is impossible to isolate any function for separate testing. In fact, the functions called memory, attention, perception, judgment, etc., never operate in isolation. There are no separate and special “faculties” corresponding to such terms, which are merely convenient names for characterizing mental processes of various types. In any test it is “general ability” which is operative, perhaps now chiefly in remembering, at another time chiefly in sensory discrimination, again in reasoning, etc.