Course : Ba Program

Subject : research methodologies in psychology (Practical)

Title : History of psychological testing
Year : Second year
Semester : Fourth Semester
Session : 2022
Submitted by : Tanvi Taneja
Submitted to : Amarjyoti Sen mam
Date of submission : 1.02.2022
Roll number : Bap/20/341

Psychological testing originated in its modern form a little more than hundred years ago in the
laboratory studies of sensory discrimination of motor sensed and reaction times. The British
genius Francis Galton (1822 to 1911) invented the first battery of the tests, a Peculiar
assortment of sensory and motor measures. The American Psychologist McLean Cattell studied
with Galton then in 1890, proclaimed the modern testing agenda in his classical popular paper
"Mental Tests and Measurements". He was tentative and modest while designing the purposes
and applications In the instruments.

Historical Timeline Of Psychological

Testing

Rudimentary forms of testing in China in 2200 B.C.

Rudimentary forms of psychological testing and assessment date back to at least 2200 b.c.
when the Chinese emperor had his officials examined every third time in the year to determine
their fitness for office (Boreman, 1985, Frank, 1963, Ting, 1942-43). Such testing was modified
and refined over centuries until written exams were introduced in Han Dynasty. Following were
the topics that were tested:
>Civil Law
>Military affairs
>Agriculture
>Revenue
>Geography

Although the Chinese Developed the external training of a comprehensive civil services
examination program, the similarities between their traditions and current practices are in the
main superficial. The Chinese failed to validate their selection procedure.
↓
The brass Era instrument of testing

Experimental psychology flourished in the late 1800s in continental Europe and Great Britain.
Human abilities were tested in laboratories with objective procedures that were capable of
replication.
Because experimental psychology arose at the juncture of those other scientific disciplines, a
study of instruments they used in common also casts light on the development of those
disciplines in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The problem with experimental psychology was that it mistook simple sensory processes for
intelligence.
They used assorted brass instruments to measure sensory thresholds and reaction times,
thinking that such abilities were at the heart of intelligence.
Specifically, the topics were:

●Time measurement. These are time measuring devices, including chronoscopes,

chronographs, kymographs, and similar devices.
●Time production instruments. These are devices that produce timed stimuli. They included
pendulums, gravity fall devices, clockwork markers, multiple interval timers, and electromagnetic
time marking devices. They include both stimulus devices and calibration devices.
●Response devices. These are represented primarily by keying devices beginning with the
Morse telegraphic key and including lip keys, voice keys, and other similar devices.
Wilhelm Wundt founded the first psychological laboratory in 1879 in Leipzig.
He believed that the speed of thought might differ from one person to the next.
Even though much of Galton’s own data failed to support his hypothesis, his idea slowly gained
momentum and appeared to be borne out by research in the 20th Century. The late 1970s and
early 1980s saw the development of improved batteries of micro level tasks. These were
superior to those of the earlier researchers because they had better psychometric properties
and were explicitly focused on theoretically important constructs that were cognitive in nature
rather than on constructs that were unrelated to intellectual ability (e.g., simple motor speed).

↓
Galton and the first battery of mental tests

Most historians trace the beginnings of psychological testing to the experimental investigation of
individual differences that flourished in Germany and Great Britain in the late 1800s. Early
experimentalists like Wilhelm Wundt, Francis Galton, and James Cattell laid the foundation for
testing in the twentieth century (Gregory, 1992). They departed from the wholly subjective and
introspective methods and began to test human abilities in laboratories.
Galton used several of the psychophysical procedures practiced by Wundt and others in Europe
and adapted them to a series of simple and quick sensorimotor measures.
The tests and measures used involved both the physical and behavioral domains. Galton has
often been regarded as the father of mental testing by historians (Gregory, 1992). Even though
his simplistic attempts to gauge intellect with measures of reaction time and sensory
discrimination proved fruitless, he provided a tremendous impetus to the testing movement by
demonstrating that objective tests could be devised and that meaningful scores could be
obtained through standardized procedures (Gregory, 1992).
James McKeen Cattell studied the new experimental psychology with both Wundt and Galton
before settling in Columbia University. Cattell continued studying reaction times to measure
individual differences (Gregory, 1992). Cattell also introduced the term “mental test” in his
famous paper entitled “Mental Tests and Measurements”. This paper described ten mental tests,
which were physiological and sensory measures, reflecting his Galtonian heritage (Gregory,
1992).
With the publication of Wissler’s results, that showed that academic performance wasn't
correlated to mental tendencies, experimental psychologists largely abandoned the use of
reaction time and sensory discrimination as measures of intelligence. Binet’s measures of
intelligence focused on higher psychological processes rather than the elementary sensory
processes such as reaction time. Binet developed his 1905 scales in collaboration with
Theodore Simon.
they are interpreted in an exact same way by everyone.

Properties of a Good Psychological Test

Three important properties of any good psychological test are validity, reliability, and (where
appropriate) standardization. Below I define each of these properties and describe ways in
which those properties are established.

Validity

A psychological test is said to be valid if it measures what it is intended to measure. An

intelligence test, for example, is valid to the extent that it does measure intelligence and not
simply some other variable, such as knowledge. A number of ways to assess the validity of a
test have been developed; here I will describe a few of them.

Concurrent Validity
Results of the test agree with those of another test of accepted validity as a measure of that
characteristic. A newly developed test of intelligence would be considered to have concurrent
validity if it gave the same IQ. values (within measurement error) as an established intelligence
test.

Predictive Validity
Predictions based on the results agree with what one would expect if the test is a valid measure
of the characteristic. A newly developed test of intelligence would be considered to have
predictive validity if those who score high on the test tend to do very well in academic settings or
other areas thought to require high intelligence, while those who score low on the test do poorly
in those areas.

Face Validity -- examination of the test reveals that the test appears to measure what it is
intended to measure. For example, a test of mathematical aptitude contains mathematical and
logical problems to solve. Face validity is a relatively poor index of the validity of the test as
gagged by other methods - a test may have low face validity and yet prove to have good
predictive validity, for example.

Standardization

In tests of physical characteristics such as weight, it is possible to establish the accuracy of the
measurement by comparing measurements against a set of known standards. For example, a
scale could be checked against standard weights of 50 grams, 100 grams, 500 grams, and so
on. If inaccuracies were found, the scale would be calibrated to remove them. Standard
samples for many variables are available from the National Bureau of Standards.
For psychological characteristics, there are no standard samples that one can purchase and
use to evaluate the accuracy of the test. (For example, you cannot rent a person known to have
an I.Q. of exactly 100.) Thus, to standardize psychological tests, a different method is needed.
What is actually done is to administer the test to a large sample of individuals from the
population for which the test is intended, and then compute certain group statistics, usually the
mean and standard deviation. These provide the average value across individuals and the
amount of variability, and are used to determine a formula for converting raw scores to standard
scores. For example, different I.Q. tests are standardized so that the average I.Q. on the test is
100.

Scoring Rules

The immediate aim of testing is to measure or to describe in a quantitative way some attribute or
set of attributes of the person taking the test. The final defining characteristic of a psychological
test is that there must be some set of rules or procedures for describing in quantitative or
numeric terms the subject's behavior in response to the test. These rules must be sufficiently
comprehensive and well defined that different examiners will assign scores that are at-least
similar.

Practicability:

The test must be practicable in- time required for completion, the length, number of items or
questions, scoring, etc. The test should not be too lengthy and difficult to answer as well as
scoring.

Test norms

Test norms consist of data that make it possible to determine the relative standing of an
individual who has taken a test. By itself, a subject’s raw score (e.g., the number of answers that
agree with the scoring key) has little meaning. Almost always, a test score must be interpreted
as indicating the subject’s position relative to others in some group. Norms provide a basis for
comparing the individual with a group.
Another class of norm system (standard scores) is based on how far each raw score falls above
or below an average score, the arithmetic mean. One resulting type of standard score,
symbolized as z, is positive (e.g., +1.69 or +2.43) for a raw score above the mean and negative
for a raw score below the mean. Negative and fractional values can, however, be avoided in
practice by using other types of standard scores obtained by multiplying z scores by an
arbitrarily selected constant (say, 10) and by adding another constant (say, 50, which changes
the z score mean of zero to a new mean of 50). Such changes of constants do not alter the
essential characteristics of the underlying set of z scores.

**Types of tests
* Verbal Vs Non Verbal Tests
Non-verbal tests include such items as:
(i) Relationship of figures, which may be either (a) functional or (b) spatial.

(ii) Drawing figures, especially human figures,

(iii) Completing pictures and patterns.

(iv) Analysing space relationship from diagrams (two dimensional),

(v) Analysing cube relationship.

(vi) Drawing lines through figures to break them up into a given section, as in Minnesota paper
form board test.

(vii) Mechanical relationship, tracing relationship of interlocking gears-pulleys, shown in pictorial

form.

(viii) Memory for design.

Some performance tests do not need actual handling of the material.
The following tests are examples where actual handling is needed:

(i) Assembly of objects from their disconnected pans (called Manikin and Profile),

(ii) Kohli's Block Design,

(iii) Picture completion,
(iv) Cube construction,
(v) Form board paper pencil,
(vi) Pass along test,
(vii) Picture arrangement,
(viii) Mazes, and
(ix) Cube imitation (tapping).

A number of performance tests have been prepared. The most important are:

1. Alexander’s Pass-along test.

2. Koh’s Block Design test.
3. Collin and Driver's Performance Tests.
4. Weschler's Performance Test.
5. Terman and Merill’s Performance Test.
6. Kent’s Performance Test.

Performance tests have the following advantages:

(i) These are generally useful for measuring specific abilities, but particularly useful for testing
some category of persons.
(ii) These are highly useful in vocational and educational guidance. Persons of practical and
mechanical ability can be discovered by these tests alone.
(iii) For the study of pre-school children, who have not begun reading and writing these are only
suitable tests.
(iv) These are useful for clinical purposes, for testing neurotics and mentally defective (or
feeble-minded).
(v) These are useful for adults over 30, who have lost interest in numbers and words.
(vi) Performance tests are culture-free. No verbal test can boast of having no relation with the
linguistic cultural background of the nation.

Limitations:

Performance tests have also been criticised on the following grounds:

(i) Some test items do not have connection with life situations. Some call for speed rather than
the solution of problems.
(ii) Performance tests do not measure exactly what Binet’s tests measure- reasoning, judgment
and imagination.
(iii) Most of these tests do not require above-average thinking, so these are not suitable for
higher levels.
(iv) There are variations in the utility of different tests. Picture completion tests may suffer from
poor material. Maze tests require continual adaptation and planning. Form-board tests tend to
depend upon speed.
(v) Most of these tests need to be administered individually, in small groups, which entails
expense. Again single performance tests are not so reliable.

Verbal Tests

A verbal (or symbol) test poses questions to which the subject supplies symbolic
answers (in words or in other symbols, such as numbers. It requires subjects to give
verbal responses either orally or in a written form. The subjects do not require to
manipulate any material or objects to perform tasks. It can be administered only to
literate people.
Verbal reasoning is the ability to understand, comprehend and critically evaluate written
information. Verbal reasoning tests typically provide a passage of information, around a
paragraph in length, and require candidates to answer questions related to the
information presented in that passage. Questions will be presented in multiple choice
format, and candidates will likely need to choose one of 3-5 possible answers. Verbal
reasoning tests are often combined with other aptitude tests, which may include
numerical reasoning, inductive reasoning or deductive reasoning tests. Similarly,
candidates may be asked to complete a personality questionnaire alongside their verbal
reasoning test.
References:
https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Applied_History_of_Psychology/Models_of_Assessment

https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/research/projects/DepIII_Rand_B_Evans

Psychological testing - Tests versus inventories | Britannica

https://www.psychologydiscussion.net/psychology/intelligence-psychology/intelligence-test-type
s-and-uses-individual/2583

Book: Psychological testing: History principles and applications, gregory