Measure Your Mind: The Mentimeter and How to Use ItTrabue, Marion Rex
Science
Measure Your Mind: The Mentimeter and How to Use It
Trabue, Marion Rex
Educational tests and measurements; Intelligence tests; Psychological tests
This Mentimeter is composed of two parts, one of them measuring the
difficulty of the addition problems which a candidate can solve, and
being therefore a fairly good test of intelligence, the other measuring
the speed at which one can add fairly easy problems and therefore having
less relations to intellectual ability.
Teachers in school furnish the children with certain information and
knowledge or guide their pupils to the sources from which this
information and knowledge may be obtained. In Addition, this information
takes the form of “2 and 2 make 4,” “9 and 5 make 14” and such sums. The
instruction also involves such things as how to carry in addition, how
to add when a decimal point enters into the calculation, and all such
problems. The teacher also undertakes a somewhat different task, which
is the review and drilling of the pupils in order to make the
combinations which have been explained automatic in the minds of the
children. It is not sufficient for John to know that “3 and 5 are 8,”
but he must be able to write or say “8” without any hesitation whatever
when 3 and 5 are to be added.
In order to test the extent to which teachers have explained addition,
one would measure the pupils with a test which increased in difficulty
from the first problems to the last, undertaking to determine how
difficult a problem can be solved. In order to test the rapidity with
which the pupils have learned in their drill exercises to make the
different combinations, one would measure the speed with which they can
make the simple combinations. The first addition test which is given on
page 175 measures the extent of the information which the candidate has
gained, while the second measures the speed which the candidate has
developed by drilling upon addition problems.
Teachers in the public schools will undoubtedly wish to measure both the
speed with which their pupils do simple problems as a result of drill,
and the difficulty of the problems which the child can solve correctly
as a result of instruction. Of course the test for difficulty of
problems solved is not absolutely independent of the effect of drill,
although it is relatively much less dependent upon drill than is the
other test.
In industrial organizations the first test given will probably be found
most useful, while in social groups the greatest amount of entertainment
will probably be obtained from the second test. The reliability of the
results from the first test is very much higher than the reliability of
the results from the second test, for in the second case a difference of
one second in time allowed may make as much as one or two points
difference in the score obtained.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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