Intelligence

INTRODUCTION: In 1917, as the United States mobilized its vast resources for the war against Germany, Professor Lewis Terman of Stanford University traveled east to meet with a group of prominent psychologists. Terman was an expert on intelligence testing, for he had pioneered the application of a French Intelligence test (developed by Alfred Binet) in the U.S. Terman, a devoted member of the Stanford University faculty, called his test the Stanford- Binet, and it was widely used in clinical settings.
But why was Terman meeting with other psychologists? Their goal: to develop some kind of psychological test that the U.S. Army could give to the thousands of new recruits coming into the army. The test would help them decide who had the intellectual potential to be an officer, who did not. Terman carried in his briefcase the rough materials his student Arthur Otis had designed for a questionnaire measure of intelligence. In several weeks the group of psychologists had designed the Army Alpha Examination, based on the Otis scales. The test was given to 1,700,000 men, and it seemed to work. Some were sent off to the trenches, and others were selected to lead them there. And psychologists, delighted with their success, began to spread their testing into civilian settings: particularly in educational settings.
School systems and colleges snatched up the tests for use in pupil classification, guidance, and admissions
Within 30 months of the first publication of the group test some four million children had been tested, and the IQ test was on its way to acceptance

I. Intelligence Testing
A. Historical Development
1) Alfred Binet Charged by the Minister of Public Instruction in Paris to develop a method of detecting "defective" children who could then be given special instructions
Although he toyed with the idea of developing a physiological measure, he ended up with a test he called "aptitude for academic achievement"
this test was designed to be relevant in...