Classics in the History of Psychology -- Commentary on Binet (1905/1916) and Terman (1916) by H.L. Minton

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• dapt the army tests for school use.

• If the tests were measuring innate ability, as Terman contended, then it was possible to make long-range predictions based on test performance

• Terman's hyperbole is accompanied by a set of explicitly stated assumptions regarding the nature of intelligence.

• Binet and Terman are notably different

• Binet is cautious, adhering to the immediate purpose of mental tests for diagnosing the mentally retarded

• Terman offers a broader mandate in which the full range of individual differences in mental ability would be assessed.

• Terman, using a rhetorical style of expositio

• thus is willing to make broad claims about the use of mental testing

• Among his claims are the prognostication that testing will reduce crime, reduce prostitution thereby raising morality, preserve the national gene pool (by segregating the mentally defective), and identify the future national leaders (gifted children).

• Binet's more tentative position

• Terman assumed that intelligence tests measured innate ability, a point of view shared by the other American testers who revised the Binet-Simon scale.

• Binet, on the other hand, believed that while there were genetically determined upper limits, intelligence could also be significantly affected by environmental influences

• if the tests were assessing intellectual functioning that was malleable within limits, as Binet posited, then such functioning could be influenced by environmental intervention.

• Binet viewed mental tests as diagnostic tools

• in working with retarded children, he developed special training methods, called "mental orthopedics," which were aimed at improving learning skills

• Consequently, test performance would also be improved.

• Stanford-Binet was developed to assess the full range of individual differences in intelligence

• thus enabling the schools to develop specialized program

• Such programs would allow each child to progress at his or her own rate--whether the rate was rapid or slow.

• With respect to mental deficiency