1975/05/01 by Robert L. Thorndike · 2 citations
Psychology · #Educational and Psychological Assessments #Cognitive Abilities and Testing
paper · doi:10.3102/0013189x004005003
openalex publication_date 1975/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/01
intelligence test. And so, we may define 1975 as the 70th anniversary of that event-an event that, as much as any in the early years of this century, determined the shape and course of subsequent psychological and educational research, and of psychological and possibly educational practice. For my remarks today, I have chosen to look at a few aspects of that 70-year career. That first set of tasks proposed by Binet stemmed from no elegant theory, nor from any precise definition of intelligence. Binet made no assumptions about the causes or origins of the intellectual deficits that he proposed to study (for his initial concern was primarily with intellectual deficiency), nor about their prognostic significance for future development. He undertook to describe objectively, in the here and now, levels of development of what he described in a very general way as judgment. The basis of his selection of tasks was very largely empirical try-out with groups of children of various ages in regular school, and comparison of their performance with that of those who were in institutions for