History+of+the+IQ+Test

British scientist, Sir Frances Galton was one of the first to investigate individual differences in mental ability by comparing people based on their awards and accomplishments. The research supports the idea that intelligence was inherited. His research led to other studies which involved evaluating individual differences in reaction time and range and specificity of the senses. Results from these studies show a correlation with academic success. In early 1900s France, the government asked psychologist Alfred Binet to help decide which students were mostly likely to experience difficulty in schools. The government felt it was important to find a way to identify children who would need specialized assistance. Binet and his colleague Theodore Simon began developing a number of questions that focused on things that had not been taught in school such as attention, memory and problem-solving skills. Binet determined which questions served as the best predictors of school success. Based on observations of how children were answering the questions, Binet suggested the concept of a mental age, or a measure of intelligence based on the average abilities of children of a certain age group. This first intelligence test, referred to today as the Binet-Simon Scale, became the basis for the intelligence tests still in use today. Soon after the development of the Binet-Simon Scale, the test was brought to the United States and generated much interest. Stanford University psychologist Lewis Terman took Binet's original test and standardized it using a sample of American participants. This adapted test, first published in 1916, was called the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale and soon became the standard intelligence test used in the U.S.  The Stanford-Binet remains a popular assessment tool today, despite going through a number of revisions over the years since its inception. ** World War I: large scale testing ** A team of psychologists led by Robert Yerkes assisted the US army to rapidly assess and assign huge numbers of personnel. They developed two tests that could be administered to large groups. One test was designed for literate personnel and the other for illiterate personnel. They successfully tested 1,726,000 recruits. The outcome was that 0.5% of recruits were discharged as mentally inferior, but Yerkes would have preferred to have discharged 3% whose results showed a mental age under 10. Another team of psychologists led by [|Walter Dill Scott] developed a rating scale to classify and place enlisted men according to how they used their intelligence, not their base levels of intelligence. The army was enthusiastic about Scott’s classification of personnel. By the time the war ended they had already been incorporated into the military and had classified 3½ million men and assigned 973,858 to technical units. American psychologist David Wechsler created another intelligence testing instrument. Wechsler described intelligence as, "the global capacity of a person to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment" (1939). He felt the Stanford-Binet Scale wa limited to children, so he published his new intelligence test known as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) in 1955. Wechsler also developed two different tests specifically for use with children: the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) and the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI). The adult version of the test has been revised since its original publication and is now known as the WAIS-III. [] [] []
 * Sir Frances Galton **
 * Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon **
 * The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test **
 * The Wechsler Intelligence Scales **
 * References **