History of Psychological Testing

Ancient China Testing System

• Civil service exams existed as early as 2200 BC.
• During the Han dynasty, testing focused on civil law, military affairs, agriculture, revenue and geography.
• The testing program ended in 1906 due to administrative and utility concerns.
• The program influenced American and European civil service placements in the 1800s.

Early Psychiatry and Testing

• Examination of the mentally ill in the mid-1800s led to early test development.
• These early tests lacked standardization.

Developments in Individual Intelligence Assessment

• Mid- to late 1800s saw growing interest in individual differences, especially intelligence.
• Charles Darwin's Origin of Species was foundational in using genetic variation and evolution to test human differences.
• Experimental psychologists such as Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911), and James Cattell (1860-1944) revolutionized intelligence measurement.
• They used quantifiable sensory measures like visual/auditory processes and reaction time with brass instruments.
• The early 20th century saw increased interest in "mental testing", now intelligence testing.
• Mental testing aimed at a distinction between emotional and intellectual disabilities.
• Jean Esquirol (1772-1840) and Edouard Sequin (1812-1880) in Paris studied language use to find levels of verbal intelligence.
• Esquirol and Sequin examined motor function to understand performance intelligence.

Developments in Group Intelligence Assessment

• Early individual intelligence tests displayed a beginning awareness of testing misuse.
• Group testing became more efficient to administer.
• Group tests use increased with the need to screen WWI recruits.
• Robert Yerkes (1876-1956), while president of the APA, created the Army Alpha and Army Beta tests.
• The Army Alpha test measured verbal, numerical, directional ability, and factual knowledge.
• Army Beta was a nonverbal equivalent of the Alpha test, used for illiterate/ non-English speakers.
• Over 1.5 million recruits were tested in WWI for placement.

Developments in Ability Assessment

• Group tests started to measure more than just intelligence.
• Initial intelligence tests did not cover all job functions.
• Ability testing grew in schools after WWI.
• Public release of the Army Alpha and Beta tests became models for future ability tests.

Developments in Career Assessment

• Vocational assessment was contemporary to intelligence and ability testing.
• Career assessment arose due to societal shifts from the Industrial Revolution (late 1800s).
• Economic advancement lead to positive and negative social conditions, influencing vocational opportunities.

Developments in Personality Assessment

• Post-WWI, interest in personality assessment increased.
• Personality assessment stemmed from Galton (1883), Kraepelin (1892), and Jung (1910).
• These figures used free association tasks for psychiatric patients and general population to assess personality.
• The assessment required the first word response to a stimulus.
• Personality assessment became popular in the early 1900s.

Hubert von Grashey

• In 1885, made the memory drum to test brain-injured individuals.

Conrad Rieger

• Rieger developed brain damage test battery
• The battery took 100 hours to complete and fell out of favor

Wilhelm Wundt

• Is often credited by sources in psychology
• He established the first psychology lab in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany
• In 1862, he used the "thought meter" to measure the swiftness of observers' thoughts.
• Wundt propagated experimental psychology.
• Individual differences were studied, especially mental processes.

The Experimental Psychology / Brass Instruments Era of Psych Testing

• Flourished in the late 1800s in Europe and Great Britain.
• It was deemed a dead end in regard to psychological testing.
• Psychologists wrongly equated sensory processes with intelligence using brass instruments for sensory thresholds and reaction times.

Sir Francis Galton

• He pioneered experimental psychology in Great Britain
• Galton was very interested in instruments for measurement
• Galton created methodologies to measure intellect through reaction time and sensory discrimination.
• He also created tests to measure beauty, personality, lecture boringness, and prayer efficacy.
• His famous works include: Hereditary Genius (1869) and Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development (1883)
• Hereditary Genius explores genetic factors in attaining eminence
• Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development highlights individual differences in mental aptitude
• Followed Wundt's psychophysical procedures, and modified them
• Promoted reaction time and sensory discrimination measurement
• Set up an Anthropometric lab at the Int’l Health Exhibition in London in 1884 to test at least 17,000 individuals.
• Galton, considered a prolific scholar of math and science.
• He created correlation, regression, central tendency statistics, meteorology, fingerprinting, hearing loss, and heredity concepts.
• He founded eugenics, saying genetics determined genius and mental aptitude.
• Galton is the founder of mental tests, demonstrating differences may exist and be measureable.
• He tested over 17,000 people on physical and behavioral characteristics to indicate intelligence

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)

• Was a German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory
• He created the first sentence completion test in 1897
• Attitudes towards the mentally impaired started changing during this period.
• French physicians J.E.D Esquirol and Seguin had significant findings towards mental retardation

Jean Etienne Dominique Esquirol (1772-1840)

• Was the first to document mental retardation as a lifelong developmental condition.
• Mental illness had an abrupt onset in adulthood comparatively
• Esquirol posited that mental retardation may be incurable.
• Proposed mental illness can be improved.

O. Edward Sequin (1812-1880)

• Was helpful in creating the humanistic approach for those with mental retardation
• In 1866, Sequin's textbook on mental retardation received international fame
• He used methods of assessment in counseling
• Use of the form board as a test is still used today and involves fitting physical blocks in a designated upright board.

James MacKeen Cattel (1860-1944)

• He was the first professor of psychology in the U.S.
• Cattel studied under Wilhelm Wundt before teaching at Columbia University
• Cattel studied reaction time and sensory perception as indicators of intelligence, as Galton had previously
• EL Thorndike, R.S. Woodworth, and Edward K. Strong were doctoral students of Cattel
• Cattell, who studied with Wundt and Galton, coined the phrase "mental test" and outlined ten Galton-like "mental tests."
• Examples include strength of hand squeeze, rate of hand movement, and weight differentiation

Clark Wissler (1870-1947)

• Wissler correlated mental test scores with academic success in 1901.
• Results discouraged reaction time and sensory discrimination as intelligence measures.
• Psychological testing almost stopped in the U.S. after this publication.

Alfred Binet (1857-1911)

• Binet, a French psychologist, invented first modern intelligence test (1916).
• He studied under neurologist Jean M. Charcot, like Freud.
• He learned the importance of sound experimental practices.
• The Minister of Public Instruction in Paris appointed a commission in 1904.
• Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon were appointed to create a tool.
• The Simon-Binet test was published in 1905.
• Binet and Simon made the first formal children’s intelligence scale.
• Henry H Goddard later translated and adapted Binet and Simon's intelligence scale for American children
• In 1908, Binet and Simon altered the scale to remove simple tasks and add higher level tasks.
• The revised scale contained 58 tasks.
• The revised scale introduced the concept of mental level, later called mental age.
• They used a sample of 300 kids of ages 3–13 to calculate the amount of items kids of a certain age could perform.
• Comparison of mental age to chronological age led to the IQ concept.
• The 1908 Binet–Simon scale was misused in the U.S. at the Vineland Training School in New Jersey on "feebleminded" children.

Henry H. Goddard (1866-1957)

• Goddard was an American Psychologist
• Goddard was hired by the Vineland Training School in New Jersey in 1906
• He translated the 1908 version of the Binet-Simon scale and adapted it for American children.
• Goddard used the intelligence scale to classify and educate mentally handicapped kids at Ellis Island.
• Goddard helped make immigration exams more accurate.
• He was invited to Ellis Island in 1910 to make immigrant processing more accurate.
• Folkore believed that the feeble-minded were degenerate being responsible for social problems.
• Testing results were translated to mean the immigrants were feeble-minded.
• Goddard emphasized that a high rate of feeblemindedness occurred among many immigrants.

William Stern (1871-1938)

• German psychologist
• Stern introduced the concept of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) in 1914.
• He defined it as mental age divided by chronological age
• Binet and Simon had subtracted the mental age from the chronological age previously

Lewis Terman (1877-1956)

• Revised the Binet-Simon Scale in 1916, making the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales.
• Revisions followed in 1937, 1960, and 1986.
• He suggested IQ computed by dividing mental age by chronological age, then multiplying by 100.
• Group testing development increased as the U.S. entered World War I in 1917.

Robert Yerkes (1876-1956)

• Modified a test by Otis and created a new test for army recruits
• Developed the Army Alpha and Army Beta (intelligence test for purposes of classification and assignment)

Edward Thorndike (1874-1949)

• Ability: He spearheaded the creation of multiple standardized achievement tests for public schooling
• These tests include: rating scales, spelling tests, arithmetic reasoning, and handwriting assessments.
• These differentiated in administrative format from other tests.
• Studied the interests of 100 college students
• Thorndike oversaw several inventories such as the Carnegie Interest Inventory, Stong Vocational Interest Blank, and the Kuder Preference Record
• Special aptitude tests were developed for vocational counseling to test things such as mechanical, clerical, and artistic aptitudes.
• Multiple aptitude tests such as the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) became more evident.
• Career: The College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) regulated group test use in Universities in 1900.
• CEEB developed the first aptitude test in 1926 called the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) for college admissions.
• Functions of the CEEB was taken over by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in 1948
• The ETS developed modern assesments such as the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), Praxis, and Test of English as a Foreign Language (ToEFL).
• Terman made the Stanford Achievement Test (SAchT)

Robert Woodworth (1869 - 1962)

• He published the personal data sheet, the first objective personality test
• This test assessed emotional stabiilty, especially related to "shell shock"

Hermann Rorschach (1884-1922)

• Swiss psychologist who was influenced by Jungian and Psychoanalytic thought
• He used the Rorschach test that shows ambiguous stimuli and reveals unconscious conflicts
• Other tests like the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and the House-Tree-Person test were developed in the early 1900s
• Projective tests were used for clinical intervew in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1952

The Psychological Corporation

• Developed in 1921 and founded by: Cattel, Thorndike, and Woodworth

Florence Goodenough (1886-1959)

• Worked with Lewis Terman
• She made a measurement of intelligence by drawing in 1926 and created the Daw-A - Man test, now named the Draw A Person Test
• Made significant improvement of sampling in 1928

Edward Kellog Strong (1884-1963)

• First edition of the Strong Vocational Interest Blank in 1927 and is used widely today
• Became the most popular test as the as the Strong Interest Inventory
• It is used in vocational guidance

Louis Leon Thurstone (1887-1955)

• In 1930, Thurstone developed the Thurstone Personality Schedule (an inventory to measure neurosis)
• In 1935, Along with EL Thorndike and JP Guilford, established the journal Psychometrika, and the Psychometric Society where he was the first president.

Henry Murray (1893-1988)

• Worked with Christiana Morgan, together they created the Thematic Apperception Test and was published in 1935
• This was supposed to be a test that determined normal personality in terms of needs

David Wechsler (1896-1981)

• Romanian-American psychologist
• Developed the Wechsler-Bellevue intelligence Scale in 1939.
• Revisions were published in 1955, 1981, and 1997 and is still used til today.

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

• Published in 1942
• Developed by J.C. McKinley and Starke Hathaway.

John N. Buck (1906-1983)

• Published the House-Tree-Person test to measure intellectual ability in 1948.
• Issued the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children in 1949.

Henry Murray

• He started the Psychological Clinic Annex at Harvard in 1947
• From 1959-1962, he created experiments where he used 22 harvard students and directed “abusive personal attacks”
• One of his subjects was Theodore Kaczynski, a math prodigy who later became the Unabomber

Philippine Psychological Corporation

• The Philippine Psychological corporation was created in the Phillipines in 1961
• Annadaisy Carlotta based her work of the Panukat ng Pagkataong Pilipino from Virgilio Enriquez's research in 1985
• Gregorio H, del Billar developed the Masakalaw na Panukat ng Loob (2017) or MAPA ng Loob.