Some Results of the Intelligence Tests
The principal fact discovered by use of standardized intelligence tests is that the tests serve very well the purpose for which they were intended. In expert hands they actually give a fairly reliable measure of the individual's intelligence. They have located the trouble in the case of many a backward school child, whose intelligence was too low to enable him to derive much benefit from the regular school curriculum. His schooling needed to be adjusted to his intelligence so as to prepare him to do what he was constitutionally able to do.
On the other hand, it sometimes happens that a child who is mischievous and inattentive in school, and whose school work is rather poor, tests high in intelligence, the trouble with him being that the work set him is below his mental level and therefore unstimulating. Such children do better when given more advanced work. The intelligence tests are proving of great service in detecting boys and girls of superior intelligence who have been dragging along, forming lazy habits of work, and not preparing for the kind of service that their intelligence should enable them to give.
Some results obtained by the "Alpha test" are given in the following table, and in the diagram which restates the facts of the table in graphic form. The Alpha test included 212 questions in all, and a correct answer to any question netted the subject one point. The maximum score was thus 212 points, a mark which could only be obtained by a combination of perfect accuracy and very rapid work (since only a limited time was allowed for each page of the test). Very seldom does even a very bright individual score over 200 points. The table shows the approximate per cent, of individuals scoring between certain limits; thus, [{279}] of men drafted into the Army, approximately 8 per cent. scored below 15 points, 12 per cent. scored from 16 to 29 points, etc. Of college freshmen, practically none score below 76 points, 1 per cent. score from 76 to 89 points, etc.
Per cent. of Per cent. of
drafted men college freshmen
making these making these
Scores Scores
Scores
0-14 points 3 0
15-29 12 0
30-44 15 0
45-59 16 0
60-74 13 0
75-89 11 1
90-104 9 4
105-119 7 8
120-134 6 14
135-149 4 23
150-164 2 24
165-179 1.3 13
180-194 0.5 7
195-212 0.2 1
----- ---
100 100
The "drafted men", consisting of men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one, fairly represent the adult male white population of the country, except in two respects. Many able young men were not included in the draft, having previously volunteered for officers' training camps or for special services. Had they been included, the percentages making the higher scores would have gone up slightly. On the other hand, many men of very low intelligence never reached the receiving camps at all, being inmates of institutions for the feebleminded or excluded from the draft because of known mental deficiency; and, of those who reached [{280}] the camps, many, being illiterate, did not take the Alpha test. It is for this reason that the graph for drafted men stops rather short at the lower end; to picture fairly the distribution of intelligence, it should taper off to the left, beyond the zero of the Alpha test.
Fig. 46.--Distribution of the scores of drafted men, and also of college freshmen, in the Alpha test. The height of the broken line above the base line is made proportional to the percent of the group that made the score indicated just below along the base line. (Figure text: army median--65, freshman median--150)