ce, but rather to employ many brief tests
and give the child plenty of chances to demonstrate what he had
learned and what he could do. These little tests were graded in
difficulty from the level of the three-year-old to that of the
twelve-year-old, and the general plan was to determine how far up the
scale the child could successfully pass the tests.

These were not the first tests in existence by any means, but they
were the first attempt at a measure of general intelligence, and they
proved extraordinarily useful. They have been added to and revised by
other psychologists, notably by Terman in America, who has extended
the scale of tests up to the adult level. A few samples from Terman's
revision will give an idea of the character of the Binet tests.

From the tests for three-year-olds: Naming familiar objects--the
child must name correctly at least three of five common objects that
are shown him.

Six-year test: Finding omissions in pictures of faces, from which
the nose, or one eye, etc., is left out. Four such pictures are
shown, and three correct responses are required to pass the test.

Eight-year test: Tell how wood and coal are alike; and so with three
other pairs of familiar things; two out of four correct responses
are required to pass the test.

{273}

Twelve-year test: Vocabulary test--rough definitions showing the
child's understanding of forty words out of a standard list of one
hundred.

The question may be raised, "Why such arbitrary standards-three out of
five required here, two out of four there, forty out of a hundred the
next time?" The answer is that the tests have been standardized by
actual trial on large numbers of children, and so standardized that
the average child of a given age can just barely pass the tests of
that age.

Intelligence is measured by Binet on a scale of _mental age_. The
average child of, let us say, eight years and six months is said to
have a mental age of eight years and six months; and any individual
who does just as well as this is said to have this mental age, no
matter what his chronological age may be. The average child of this
age passes all the tests for eight years and below, and three of the
six tests for age nine; or passes an equivalent number of tests from
the total series. Usually there is some "scatter" in the child's
successes, as he fails in a test here and there below his mental age,
and succeeds here and there above his