Developing Performance Scales

Abstract

This chapter focuses on subsequent attempts to develop performance scales, many of which incorporated tests originally developed by Howard Andrew Knox and his colleagues to estimate mental deficiency among emigrants at Ellis Island in New York. From May 1912 to May 1916, Knox and his colleagues produced an array of psychological tests. These tests were made available just as interest in the measurement of intelligence and appreciation of the limitations of strictly verbal tests were increasing. It is therefore not surprising that Knox’s tests were widely borrowed and adapted in the test batteries subsequently devised to measure intelligence during the next three decades. Before discussing how Knox’s tests were borrowed and adapted, the chapter considers certain technical developments in intelligence testing that had occurred during Knox’s time at Ellis Island. In particular, it looks at Lewis Madison Terman’s proposed “intelligence quotient” or “IQ” as a measure of intelligence, along with the work of Rudolf Pintner and Donald Gildersleeve Paterson, Frances Isabel Gaw, William Healy and Augusta Fox Bronner, and Paul Chatham Squires.