Part 21 (1/2)
”There's an Indian and some white people in the boat. I suppose they are out for a ride in a canoe.”
”Picture about some man and lady in a canoe and going down to the sea.”
”They are taking a boat ride on the ocean and the water is up so high that one of them is scared. Here are some trees and two of them are going to fall down. Here's a little place or bridge you can stand on. The man is touching this one's head and this one has his hand on the cover.”
”The water is splas.h.i.+ng all over. There's trees on this bank and there's a rock and some trees falling down. The people have a blanket over them.”
_Picture (c): satisfactory responses_
”A man selling eggs and two men reading the paper together and two men watching.”
”A few men reading a newspaper and one has a basket of eggs and this one has been fis.h.i.+ng.”
”There's a man with a basket of eggs and another is reading the paper and a woman is hanging out clothes. There's a house near.”
”There's a man trying to read the paper and the others want to read it too. Here's a lady walking up to the barn. There are houses over there and one man has a basket.”
”There's a big brick house and five men by it and a man with a basket of eggs and a post-office sign and a lady going home.”
”They are all looking at the paper. He is looking over the other man's shoulder and this one is looking at the back of the paper.
There's a woman cleaning up her back yard and some coops for hens.”
”A man reading a paper, a man with eggs, a woman and a tree and another house. That man has an ap.r.o.n on. This is the post-office.”
Unsatisfactory responses are those made up entirely or mainly of enumeration. A phrase or two of description intermingled with a larger amount of enumeration counts _minus_. Sometimes the description is satisfactory as far as it goes, but is exceedingly brief. In such cases a little tactful urging (”_Go ahead_,” etc.) will extend the response sufficiently to reveal its true character.
REMARKS. Description is better than enumeration because it involves putting the elements of a picture together in a simple way or noting their qualities. This requires a higher type of mental a.s.sociation (combinative power) than mere enumeration. An unusually complete description indicates relative wealth of mental content and facility of a.s.sociation.
Binet placed this test in year VII, and it seems to have been retained in this location in all revisions except Bobertag's. However, the statistics of various workers show much disagreement. Lack of agreement is easily accounted for by the fact that different investigators have used different series of pictures and doubtless also different standards for success. The pictures used by Binet have little action or detail and are therefore rather difficult for description. On the other hand, the Jingleman-Jack pictures used by Kuhlmann represent such familiar situations and have so much action that even 5- or 6-year intelligence seldom fails with them. The pictures we employ belong without question in year VII.
No better proof than the above could be found to show how ability of a given kind does not make its appearance suddenly. There is no one time in the life of even a single child when the power to describe pictures suddenly develops. On the contrary, pictures of a certain type will ordinarily provoke description, rather than enumeration, as early as 5 or 6 years; others not before 7 or 8 years, or even later.
VII, 3. REPEATING FIVE DIGITS
PROCEDURE. Use: 3-1-7-5-9; 4-2-3-8-5; 9-8-1-7-6. Tell the child to listen and to say after you just what you say. Then read the first series of digits at a slightly faster rate than one per second, in a distinct voice, and with perfectly uniform emphasis. _Avoid rhythm._
In previous tests with digits, it was permissible to re-read the first series if the child refused to respond. In this year, and in the digits tests of later years, this is not permissible. Warning is not given as to the number of digits to be repeated. Before reading each series, get the child's attention. Do not stare at the child during the response, as this is disconcerting. Look aside or at the record sheet.
SCORING. Pa.s.sed if the child repeats correctly, after a single reading, _one series out of the three_ series given. The order must be correct.
REMARKS. Psychologically the repet.i.tion of digits differs from the repet.i.tion of sentences mainly in the fact that digits have less meaning (fewer a.s.sociations) than the words of a sentence. It is because they are not as well knit together in meaning that three digits tax the memory as much as six syllables making up a sentence.
Testing auditory memory for digits is one of the oldest of intelligence tests. It is easy to give and lends itself well to exact quant.i.tative standardization. Its value has been questioned, however, on two grounds: (1) That it is not a test of pure memory, but depends largely on attention; and (2) that the results are too much influenced by the child's type of imagery. As to the first objection, it is true that more than one mental function is brought into play by the test. The same may be said of every other test in the Binet scale and for that matter of any test that could be devised. It is impossible to isolate any function for separate testing. In fact, the functions called memory, attention, perception, judgment, etc., never operate in isolation. There are no separate and special ”faculties” corresponding to such terms, which are merely convenient names for characterizing mental processes of various types. In any test it is ”general ability” which is operative, perhaps now _chiefly_ in remembering, at another time _chiefly_ in sensory discrimination, again in reasoning, etc.
The second objection, that the test is largely invalidated by the existence of imagery types, is not borne out by the facts. Experiments have shown that pure imagery types are exceedingly rare, and that children, especially, are characterized by ”mixed” imagery. There are probably few subjects so lacking in auditory imagery as to be placed at a serious disadvantage in this test.
Lengthening a series by the addition of a single digit adds greatly to the difficulty. While four digits can usually be repeated by children of 4 years, five digits belong in year VII and six in year X.
It is always interesting to note the type of errors made. The most common error is to omit one or more of the digits, usually in the first part of the series. If the child's ability is decidedly below the test he may give only the last two or three out of the five or six heard.
Subst.i.tutions are also quite frequent, and if so many subst.i.tutions are made as to give a series quite unlike that which the child has heard, it is an unfavorable sign, indicating weakness of the critical sense which is so often found with low-level intelligence. In case of extreme weakness of the power of auto-criticism, the child in response to the series 9-8-1-7-6-, may say 1-2-3-4-5-6, or perhaps merely a couple of digits like 8-6, and still express complete satisfaction with his absurd response. After each series, therefore, the examiner should say, ”_Was it right?_”[54] Very young subjects, however, have a tendency to answer ”yes” to any question of this type, and it is therefore best not to call for criticism of a performance below the age of 6 or 7 years.