Psychological testing movement: history and applications

¶ … Psychological Testing Movement: History and Controversies

Science and technology have had a profound effect on the world, and will likely continue to do so for many years to come. With the current and recent past being focused upon scientific discoveries and scientific categorization of both biological and psychological scientific classifications there has been a great deal of emphasis on naming and categorizing phenomena, even when the phenomena is in-concrete and difficult to name or categorize. The emphasis on science has proliferated every field of research and psychology is no exception to that rule. Over the last fifty or so years there has been countless attempts to scientifically categorize intelligence. Intelligence is intangible but outward expressions of it seem to be capable of categorization and standardization, if for no other reason but to better understand how intelligence works and how to help people gain in this intangible commodity that drives science and thought and makes any kind of progress possible. The answer in psychology and education has been the psychological testing movement. This movement was a concerted effort to better understand and attempt to focus attention on intervention, for those who have less intelligence, by certain standards and identify and recognize those who will later become standouts, in their ability to think and reason through the many problems and concerns of the world.

Science-based technologies have done much to shape late twentieth century American society and culture. The assumptions of their developers and the implications of their use thus deserve, and have received, the serious attention of scholars, policy makers, and the public. In recent years, controversy over the use and influence of such technologies has mushroomed...No such technology, however, has been more controversial than standardized psychological testing, and all agree that it plays a major role in current American society, particularly with respect to education and employment practices. Its importance has led to well-publicized and often impassioned debates about all of its aspects, and major public figures have, at times, taken a full range of radically overstated positions on the meaning of the tests and their results, and on the testers' goals and assumptions. (Sokal, 1990, p. 1)

The value of intelligence is unprecedented and no other human commodity can compare to the power that an intelligent thought and process of thoughts can exert into changing the world. Without great human minds the world would be lost and stagnated and the developments that have occurred since the beginning of time would be entirely determined by biological evolution, rather than a combination of the later and human and animal ingenuity. There is no strict definition of intelligence and the exceptions to traditional intelligence seeking behaviors, such as education in a standardized form are often called upon to point out that it is not an intangible that can be manipulated, yet there is always a desire to do so.

The work of Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon are clear examples of this phenomena, beginning their work in 1905, Binet and Simon developed a system of intelligence testing, that was based on a comparison model, i.e. one where all would be judged and quantified through a comparison to the average of a given age group. The quantification testing system was later expanded and reworked by Lewis Terman and dubbed the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Tests, and this format of test is still widely used today, though with differing politically correct terminology associated with the groupings and classifications. (Goslin, 1963, p. 14) Other forms of intelligence tests went even farther, a set of intelligence tests developed by David Wechsler, first known as the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale and now dubbed the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, first published in 1939, has become the standardized intelligence test of the day. It was the first test of its kind to apply the idea that there is a ratio between mental age and chronological age and intelligence quotient or (IQ) can be utilized to group and quantify scores. (a term and process borrowed from Wilhelm Stern, whose format is no longer used but whose term will forever be associated with human intelligence

2004)) (Goslin, 1963, p. 26)

During WWI the psychological testing movement moved into the military and new recruits, some 2 million, were given what was called the Army Alpha Test. Additionally the Otis Group Intelligence Scale also became a standardized base for the development of mass testing scenarios, as school and industry began to seek such implements to group children according to ability and also to help with vocational placement of adults in the increasingly specialized and industry-based economy that was emerging, especially after WWII. National standardized tests are still very much a part of the culture of education and psychology as college hopefuls and graduate school applicants as well as many civil servants sit for tests that are in a sense determinant of their intelligence, though they are becoming more and more specialized. With outcomes and accountability as the foundation for a revitalization of the public education system, there are also many standardized tests required to be taken by school aged children though they have been taken for years as progress reports are now determining much broader issues, such as funding and resources given to schools.

2004) "Today, an average IQ score is considered to be 100, with deviations based on this figure. Mentally retarded individuals usually score below 70 in IQ tests, and are classified according to functional ability through reference to a scale of low IQ scores."

2004)

The basic controversy that surrounds the psychological testing movement surrounds the idea that an intangible item cannot be effectively quantified based on comparison, as the standards of comparison cannot apply to all subjects. Gender, race, culture, language, ideology, testing environment and even the tests themselves can be influential and skew results. A person's intelligence and cannot be accounted for appropriately when all the tests are standardized and all the comparison models do not reflect the real knowledge of the individual and his or her background. In addition to the fact that abilities whether learned or innate cannot always determine strength or weakness of intelligence, as they are observable and the objectification of intelligence, an intangible phenomena is difficult if not impossible to do. The base argument of opponents of intelligence testing or at least the scientists that think it must be done differently follows:

One criticism of intelligence testing is that it is difficult to insure that test items are equally meaningful or difficult for members of different sociocultural groups. Testing is often considered validated in part, however, by the finding that the quantity measured by the tests can be closely correlated in American society with career and academic achievement. There has been a decline in interest in pure intelligence tests since the 1920s, with a corresponding increase in the number of mental tests that measure special aptitudes and personality factors.

2004)

All that can be judged by observable is again, a likely potential of future or present ability to succeed at any given task, and again this is simply potential, not concrete. It is only likely that a person who scores well on an abilities test, as they are often now termed will succeed, and it is only likely that a person who scores low on such a test will no succeed, its all a matter of statistical, again scientific, probabilities and individuals are qualitative, not quantitative.

When arguing the nature of intelligence in a heated debate the sum total of the discussion reverts to the ability to define intelligence, non-quantitative phenomena. The reasoning of one opposing view is based on a set of definitions, regarding intelligence that does no correlate with the definition of the other and/or the results of the so called "standardized" tests that they both utilize to determine a score. Just as in the field of psychology in general there is the debate between nature and nurture, with some believing that we can alter almost every aspect of our being, beyond the core human necessities and the other side saying no, that is not the case we are born with what we have and it will dominate our lives to conclusion, intelligence testers and theorists on the one side want to be able to say without exception that intelligence can be influenced, and improved upon, while others say no we are born with all we will have and though we can learn novel things it will not change our core intelligence. According to Casse in a 1998 commentary on the controversy surrounding popular publications about intelligence,

Each side has made the same points over and over, and each side believes it has refuted the other side's arguments. The reason this is so is that the two sides proceed according to different definitions of intelligence. The psychometric camp, which includes Herrnstein and Murray, Jensen, Eysenck, John Carroll (whose 1993 treatise, Human Cognitive Abilities, offers the most extensive factor-analysis of mental tests), and most psychologists who have traditionally studied the topic, hold to a conception of intelligence that closely matches what common sense and the dictionary tell us the term means. The opposing side, which sports a more eclectic set of disciplinary backgrounds and prides itself on a more sophisticated and inclusive perspective, divides human abilities into broad classes -- logical, spatial, interpersonal, verbal, etc. -- and labels each class an "intelligence." The two sides then proceed to talk past each other. (Casse, 1998, p. 33)

The resulting controversy then falls back to the idea of socio-cultural differences, and race/gender/culture/environment. (Skidmore & Aagaard, 2004, p. 304) Casse claims that by differing on core definitions of intelligence scientists are not good at comparing anything but data or defining concepts,

Scientists make bad dictionary writers and worse philosophers. Their main skills are in constructing experiments and generating explanations for what they observe. Neither of these endeavors requires agreement on what the words involved "mean" in any deep or absolute sense, only on ways of converting the elements of the theory at issue into operations that can be carried out in an experiment and repeated later if necessary. Measurement is the most important such operation; as Kelvin pointed out long ago, without a way to measure something it cannot be studied scientifically. (Casse, 1998, p. 33)

The measure must be universalized for the meanings and scientific statistics to be compared in any constructive way. To call an intelligence test of any kind universal, all encompassing or even standardized is a simple response to the desire to quantify and therefore calculate an intangible. Yet, as we can see from controversy and analysis of it there is likely no end in the desire to do so,