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 test is modelled directly upon the Vocabulary test included in the
Stanford Revision of the Binet tests. It has been shown by careful
scientific investigations that a test of this type is very reliable as a
measure of general intellectual capacity. The excuse for having, at the
end of the series, words which are little known and of no great
practical value is that without such words it would be impossible to
obtain a real measure of the vocabulary of writers, well-trained
lawyers, and other specialists in the use of the English language. The
good scientific test of intelligence always begins with elements which
are so simple that the dullest mind will master them and progresses
steadily to elements which are so complex and difficult that even the
keenest minds have difficulty in reaching satisfactory solutions.
A test of this sort measuring general vocabulary will be very useful to
employers in the selection of stenographers and other clerical workers.
In the public schoolroom teachers will find it very helpful in the
classification of new pupils coming to their room for the first time or
in the comparison of pupils who have been observed for a long period.
The disadvantage of the test is that it must be given to one individual
at a time. Such procedure makes it possible, however, for the teacher or
the psychologist to study the more or less intangible attitudes and
reactions of the pupil which cannot be observed in group examinations.
These peculiarities of the pupil are of tremendous value to the trained
psychologist or to the psychiatrist in making a careful diagnosis of
special mental defects.
_Directions for Giving the Test._
This test should not be given in the presence of outsiders. The examiner
should take the individual to as quiet a place as possible, should seat
the candidate in a comfortable chair, and converse with him until he is
thoroughly at ease and ready to answer any sort of question. The
examiner may write on his list the response which is made by the
candidate to each word in the vocabulary. The formula which should be
used by the examiner should be as nearly as possible that of ordinary
conversation, although care must be used to avoid suggesting by the form
of the question any clue to the proper response. Beginning with the
first word, after introducing the general idea by some such phrase as
“Now, I am going to ask you the meanings of a list of words,” the
examiner should say, “The first word is coat. What is a coat?”
If the candidate does not seem to understand, the question may be
repeated or it may be presented as follows: “You know what a coat is, do
you not? Well, what is a coat?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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