It was impossible to standardise any intelligence tests and consequently my results are quantitatively valueless. But as I had had some experience in the diagnostic use of tests, I found them useful in forming a preliminary estimate of the girls’ intelligence. Also, the natives have long been accustomed to examinations which the missionary authorities conduct each year, and the knowledge that an examination is in progress makes them respect the privacy of investigator and subject. In this way it was possible for me to get the children alone, without antagonising their parents. Furthermore, the novelty of the tests, especially the colour-naming and picture interpretation tests, served to divert their attention from other questions which I wished to ask them. The results of the tests showed a much narrower range than would be expected in a group varying in age from ten to twenty. Without any standardisation it is impossible to draw any more detailed conclusions. I shall, however, include a few comments about the peculiar responses which the girls made to particular tests, as I believe such comment is useful in evaluating intelligence testing among primitive peoples and also in estimating the possibilities of such testing.
Tests Used
- Colour Naming. 100 half-inch squares, red, yellow, black and blue.
- Rote Memory for Digits. Customary Stanford Binet directions were used.
- Digit Symbol Substitution. 72 one-inch figures, square, circle, cross, triangle and diamond.
- Opposites. 23 words. Stimulus words: fat, white, long, old, tall, wise, beautiful, late, night, near, hot, win, thick, sweet, tired, slow, rich, happy, darkness, up, inland, inside, sick.
- Picture Interpretation. Three reproductions from the moving picture Moana, showing, (a) Two children who had caught a cocoanut crab by smoking it out of the rocks above them, (b) A canoe putting out to sea after bonito as evidenced by the shape of the canoe and the position of the crew, (c) A Samoan girl sitting on a log eating a small live fish which a boy, garlanded and stretched on the ground at her feet, had given her.
- Ball and Field. Standard-sized circle.
Standard directions were given throughout in all cases entirely in Samoan. Many children, unused to such definitely set tasks, although all are accustomed to the use of slate and of pencil and paper, had to be encouraged to start. The ball and field test was the least satisfactory as in over fifty per cent of the cases the children followed an accidental first line and simply completed an elaborate pattern within the circle. When this pattern happened by accident to be either the Inferior or Superior solution, the child’s comment usually betrayed the guiding idea as æsthetic rather than as an attempt to solve the problem. The children whom I was led to believe to be most intelligent, subordinated the æsthetic consideration to the solution of the problem, but the less intelligent children were sidetracked by their interest in the design they could make much more easily than are children in our civilisation. In only two cases did I find a rote memory for digits which exceeded six digits; two girls completing seven successfully. The Samoan civilisation puts the slightest of premiums upon rote memory of any sort. On the digit-symbol test they were slow to understand the point of the test and very few learned the combinations before the last line of the test sheet. The picture interpretation test was the most subject to vitiation through a cultural factor; almost all of the children adopted some highly stylized form of comment and then pursued it through one balanced sentence after another: “Beautiful is the boy and beautiful is the girl. Beautiful is the garland of the boy and beautiful is the wreath of the girl,” etc. In the two pictures which emphasised human beings no discussion could be commenced until the question of the relationship of the characters had been ascertained. The opposites test was the one which they did most easily, a natural consequence of a vivid interest in words, an interest which leads them to spend most of their mythological speculation upon punning explanations of names.
Check List USED IN INVESTIGATION OF EACH GIRL’S EXPERIENCE
In order to standardise this investigation I made out a questionnaire which I filled out for each girl. The questions were not asked consecutively but from time to time I added one item of information after another to the record sheets. The various items fell into the loose groupings indicated below.
- Agricultural proficiency. Weeding, selecting leaves for use in cooking, gathering bananas, taro, breadfruit, cutting cocoanuts for copra.
- Cooking. Skinning bananas, grating cocoanut, preparing breadfruit, mixing palusami,[13] wrapping palusami, making tafolo,[14] making banana poi, making arrow-root pudding.
- Fishing. Daylight reef fishing, torchlight reef fishing, gathering lole, catching small fish on reef, using the “come hither” octopus stick, gathering large crabs.
- Weaving. Balls, pin-wheels, baskets to hold food gifts, carrying baskets, woven blinds, floor mats, fishing baskets, food trays, thatching mats, roof bonetting mats, plain fans, pandanus floor mats, bed mats (number of designs known and number of mats completed), fine mats, dancing skirts, sugar-cane thatch.
- Bark cloth making. Gathering paper mulberry wands, scraping the bark, pounding the bark, using a pattern board, tracing patterns free hand.
- Care of clothing. Washing, ironing, ironing starched clothes, sewing, sewing on a machine, embroidering.
- Athletics. Climbing palm trees, swimming, swimming in the swimming hole within the reef,[15] playing cricket.
- Kava making. Pounding the kava root, distributing the kava, making the kava, shaking out the hibiscus bark strainer.
- Proficiency in foreign things. Writing a letter, telling time, reading a calendar, filling a fountain pen.
- Dancing.
- Reciting the family genealogy.
- Index of knowledge of the courtesy language. Giving the chiefs’ words for: arm, leg, food, house, dance, wife, sickness, talk, sit. Giving courtesy phrases of welcome, when passing in front of some one.
- Experience of life and death. Witnessing of birth, miscarriage, intercourse, death, Cæsarian post-mortem operation.
- Marital preferences, rank, residence, age of marriage, number of children.
- Index of knowledge of the social organisation. Reason for Cæsarian post-mortem, proper treatment of a chief’s bed, exactions of the brother and sister taboo, penalties attached to cocoanut tapui,[16] proper treatment of a kava bowl, the titles and present incumbents of the titles of the Manaia of Lumā, Siufaga and Faleasao, the Taupo of Fitiuta, the meaning of the Fale Ula[17], the Umu Sa,[18] the Mua o le taule’ale’a,[19] the proper kinds of property for a marriage exchange, who was the high chief of Lumā, Siufaga, Faleasao and Fitiuta, and what constituted the Lafo[20] of the talking chief.
[13] Palusami—a pudding prepared from grated cocoanut, flavoured with red hot stone, mixed with sea water, and wrapped in taro leaves, from which the acrid stem has been scorched, then in a banana leaf, finally in a breadfruit leaf.
[14] Tafolo—a pudding made of breadfruit with a sauce of grated cocoanut.
[15] Swimming in the hole within the reef required more skill than swimming in still water; it involved diving and also battling with a water level which changed several feet with each great wave.