Use Of Mental Tests Research Articles

A qualificação profissional sob enfoque da psicologia do trabalho: estudo histórico em uma instituição de ensino tecnológico

Este estudo aborda questões relativas à qualificação profissional e aos fatores humanos no trabalho. O objetivo do artigo foi o de analisar o uso do teste mental, nas décadas de 1940 e 1950, como forma de avaliar aptidões específicas dos alunos na Escola Técnica Nacional (ETN), a partir da perspectiva da Psicologia do Trabalho e de uma metodologia qualitativa de análise documental exploratório-descritiva. Os resultados obtidos mostraram que na ETN, os exames vestibulares, a partir de 1942, passaram a incluir a obrigatoriedade do teste de nível mental, porque se o candidato não apresentasse aptidão para o ensino técnico, não poderia ser matriculado. No entanto, em que pese a ênfase nesse teste mental, a gestão desse processo de ensino foi truncada e inconsistente, muito embora prevalecesse, no contexto do taylorismo, um discurso em prol da relevância de uma avaliação objetiva e científica das aptidões dos trabalhadores.

Testing: The dilemma of group differences.

A revival of test bashing has followed the growing public disillusionment with racial preferences as a means for abrogating the adverse impact of tests on certain groups in educational and occupational selection. This, added to the racial differences in g and the slight and ephemeral effects of Head Start and other more intensive interventions aimed at decreasing racial group differences in scholastic achievement, is the dilemma of group differences. In the face of the apparent failure of equal educational opportunity to make all groups in American society equal in scholastic performance or in the test scores used in selection for higher education, jobs, and the Armed Forces, psychological tests are again being blamed and scorned. This could be averted in the public's perception by emphasizing tests' face validity in test construction without lessening the latent traits that account for the tests' validity. The new wave of opposition against the use of mental tests in educational and personnel selection really has nothing to do with psychometric science. It is a public, political, and popular1 media phenomenon entirely driven by the fact that identifiable groups in our society have different distributions of test scores, all of them more or less normally distributed but with different means and different standard deviations, and with the means of some groups differing by more than one standard deviation. This well known fact, in and of itself, would be trivial were it not for the fact that the best professionally constructed tests are valid correlates and predictors of a person's actual performance in school, in college, in Armed Forces training programs, and in many jobs. Therefore tests are useful in selection, the need for which is inescapable whenever the number of applicants exceeds the number of openings or the costs of failure are prohibitive (e.g., pilots). Professionally constructed, standardized, objective tests have a better proven track record for valid meritocratic selection than any other single means that has been tried, including letters of recommendation, personal interviews, biographical information, essays, and portfolios. Because high school grades in English, history, math, science, and a foreign language may also reflect a student's level of academic motivation and effective study habits—variables that are not as well reflected by test scores alone—a combination of grade point average (GPA) and test scores is the best predictor of academic performance in college that psychometricians have come up with. If a typical selective college decided to admit a random sample of youths from the general population and maintained its usual grading standards, the validity

Psykodiagnostiske metoder ved demens hos eldre

Thorough diagnostic evaluation of elderly patients with signs and symptoms of dementia is necessary because 10-20% suffer from reversible organic or functional disorders. The diagnostic evaluation includes comprehensive clinical examination with blood tests and non-invasive investigation of the brain. The diagnostic programme should also include mental tests and/or rating scales for the assessment of mental capacity, emotional disturbances and motor deficits. Numerous tests and rating scales have been developed both for screening purposes and overall assessment. The use of mental tests and dementia rating scales in the hand of the clinician is discussed in this paper.

Statistical Theories of Mental Test Scores

This is a reprint of the orginal book released in 1968. Our primary goal in this book is to sharpen the skill, sophistication, and in- tuition of the reader in the interpretation of mental test data, and in the construction and use of mental tests both as instruments of psychological theory and as tools in the practical problems of selection, evaluation, and guidance. We seek to do this by exposing the reader to some psychologically meaningful statistical theories of mental test scores. Although this book is organized in terms of test-score theories and models, the practical applications and limitations of each model studied receive substantial emphasis, and these discussions are presented in as nontechnical a manner as we have found possible. Since this book catalogues a host of test theory models and formulas, it may serve as a reference handbook. Also, for a limited group of specialists, this book aims to provide a more rigorous foundation for further theoretical research than has heretofore been available.One aim of this book is to present statements of the assumptions, together with derivations of the implications, of a selected group of statistical models that the authors believe to be useful as guides in the practices of test construction and utilization. With few exceptions we have given a complete proof for each major result presented in the book. In many cases these proofs are simpler, more complete, and more illuminating than those originally offered. When we have omitted proofs or parts of proofs, we have generally provided a reference containing the omitted argument. We have left some proofs as exercises for the reader, but only when the general method of proof has already been demonstrated. At times we have proved only special cases of more generally stated theorems, when the general proof affords no additional insight into the problem and yet is substantially more complex mathematically.

Mental Testing

Increased use of mental tests for the study of psychoses and allied disorders is conspicuous in recent psychiatric practice. This increase is most prominent first in the use of Rorschach's ink-blots; second, in the investigation of conceptual thinking with methods originated by Goldstein; third, in the study of psychometric pattern; fourth, in the diagnosis and measurement of intellectual deterioration; fifth, in assessing prognosis and the effects of treatment. It is partially attributable to sharpening of interest, due to the war, in the prediction of break-down under stress, in the stability and social potentialities of border-line groups, and in estimating the effects of head injury. Another factor is that popular modern treatments such as shock therapy and prefrontal leucotomy appear to involve cerebral areas intimately associated with intelligence. The greatest advances, however, have been made by the followers of Rorschach and of Goldstein and their contributions began before these factors arose. Their methods are also much applied in investigations under the fourth and fifth headings. Their influence, too, is discernible in a change now developing in the way of using mental tests. Whereas in most early investigations tests were used quantitatively as instruments for studying how intelligence level affects and is affected by psychosis, the modern tendency is to use tests not as measuring instruments, but as standard interviews or situations in which the quality rather than the level of the subject's behaviour is studied. On the other hand, perhaps it was growing recognition of the unsuitability of most quantitative tests for application to adults, and of the additional difficulties of interpreting results in psychoses, that first induced search for other techniques.

Tests in Clinical Practice.

In these days, when mental tests are being given by the thousand in schools and colleges and institutions, there is grave danger that the individual and the individual method of examination will be overlooked. It is the author's purpose to emphasize the importance of studying each individual as well as to give in detail the technic involved in the use of mental tests. The practical point of view of the author resulting from his rich clinical experience, coupled with sound psychologic knowledge and thorough acquaintance with the mental test literature, gives the book a distinct value. The book includes a detailed analysis of the technic involved in the clinical use of some of the more common tests of general intelligence; a chapter on a "method of memory examination adapted to psychotic cases," and discussions of word association tests, of the relation between vocational adjustment and psychometric methods, and of other

The use of mental tests in the psychological clinic.

The use of mental tests in the psychological clinic.

The Accuracy of Certain Standard Tests for School Classification

We have passed through a period of enthusiastic acceptance of the use of mental tests for the purposes of school classifica tion. Quite widely the tests have been hailed as scientific instru ments whose use would make school grading more precise. The leaders of the testing movement have been quite well aware of the inaccuracy of the tests and in many cases have precisely de fined it. But their statements have been in terms rather far removed from the practical necessities of school administration. The school principal has not been able to interpret these state ments?which have been in terms of coefficients of correlation or probable errors?to fit his own problems. The purpose of this paper is to state the accuracy of certain standard tests in the customary terms of the statistician and then to interpret these statements for their practical application in school. The question of the accuracy of mental tests resolves itself into three factors. The first factor is technically called reliabil ity. By this the psychologist means the degree to which the scores of a second giving of a test correlate with the scores of the first giving. In the actual determination of reliability two methods are in vogue. One is to divide the test into halves, chosen at random, and to correlate the scores of these halves against each other. Then a correction by the Spearman (Brown) formula is made to account for the fact that the whole test is twice as long as each of the two halves. The other method is to correlate one test with a second test as nearly as possible like the first in form, construction, and difficulty but different as to material?for example, Forms 1 and 2 of Scale A of the National Intelligence Test. The method of correlating random halves gives higher reliabilities than the method of correlating two forms of the same test because it does not contain those differ

An Experiment in the Classification of First-Grade Children Through the Use of Mental Tests

Every school system of respectable size has made repeated surveys of the age-grade status of the children in the system during recent years. The percentage of non-promotions and the consequential clogging of the system by retardates have been matters of some concern. Opportunity classes have been organized to minister to the needs of the exceptionally bright as well as special classes to take care of the exceptionally dull. But in regard to classifying adequately the millions of fairly typical school children, after these compelling problems have been handled, the schools are largely at sea. Chronological age is still permitted to be the most important factor in determining school placement, although in reality it has scarcely more to do with the character of the school work of a child than has the size of the shoe which he is wearing. In almost every city there are schools to which the children come from homes that are foreign, where little or no English is spoken, where the parents are generally illiterate and endow the child with little mental inheritance. In such cases the child's experiences have been limited to those that he encounters in the street or in the squalor of his own backyard. There are other schools attended by children coming from homes of affluence and plenty-children who possess the finest type of mental inheritance and a stock of experiences which are in direct antitheses to those of the less fortunate children to whom reference has just been made. In the democracy of our public schools these children figuratively, and often literally, are put side by side. At the end of the

A report of the use of mental tests in school administration.

A report of the use of mental tests in school administration.

Review of The Intelligence of School Children. How Children Differ in Ability. The Use of Mental Tests in School Grading and the Proper Education of Exceptional Children.

Review of The Intelligence of School Children. How Children Differ in Ability. The Use of Mental Tests in School Grading and the Proper Education of Exceptional Children.

The Use of Mental Tests in Vocational Guidance

The Use of Mental Tests in Vocational Guidance

The Use of Mental Tests in the School

The Use of Mental Tests in the School