ommands called for rather complicated reactions. The second page
consisted of arithmetical problems, ranging from very simple at the
top of the page to more difficult ones below, though none of them went
into the more technical parts of arithmetic. One page tested the
subject's information on matters of common knowledge; and another
called for the selection of the best of three reasons offered for a
given fact, as, for example, "Why is copper used for electric wires?
Because--it is mined in Montana--it is a good conductor--it is the
cheapest metal." Another page presented disarranged sentences (as,
"wet rain always is", or "school horses all to go"), to be put
straight mentally, and indicated on the paper as true or false.

Many group tests are now in use, and among them some performance
tests. In the latter, pictures are often employed; sometimes the
subject has to complete the picture by drawing in a missing part,
sometimes he has to cancel from the picture a part that is
superfluous. He may have to draw a pencil line indicating the shortest
path through a maze, or he may have to continue a series of marks
which starts off according to a definite plan. The problems set him
under each class range from very easy to fairly difficult.

{278}

Some Results of the Intelligence Tests

The principal fact discovered by use of standardized intelligence
tests is that the tests serve very well the purpose for which they
were intended. In expert hands they actually give a fairly reliable
measure of the individual's intelligence. They have located the
trouble in the case of many a backward school child, whose
intelligence was too low to enable him to derive much benefit from the
regular school curriculum. His schooling needed to be adjusted to his
intelligence so as to prepare him to do what he was constitutionally
able to do.

On the other hand, it sometimes happens that a child who is
mischievous and inattentive in school, and whose school work is rather
poor, tests high in intelligence, the trouble with him being that the
work set him is below his mental level and therefore unstimulating.
Such children do better when given more advanced work. The
intelligence tests are proving of great service in detecting boys and
girls of superior intelligence who have been dragging along, forming
lazy habits of work, and not preparing for the kind of service that
their intelligence should enable them to give.

Some results obtained by