PSY631 Highlighted Short Notes

Lesson 1

Difference Between Testing And Assessment:

What is a test?

“A test is a measurement device used to in the understanding and prediction of behavior ”.

Assessment includes more than just tests. A typical assessment plan may include a test or a battery of tests, interview, behavioral observation, and case history data. In many cases even more sources of information regarding a person’s behavior and mental processes are also used e.g. portfolios containing samples of a person’s (mostly a student or a job candidate) skill or work such as photographs, drawings, stories, or essays.

Remember!!!

• A test is just one tool. In order to make more precise and accurate predictions one should supplement tests with other sources of data as well, e.g., observation, case history etc.

Essential characteristics of psychological tests:

A good psychological test should have these qualities:

• Validity: A test should measure what it is intended to measure.
• Reliability: A test should give consistent results. It should give same or similar results every time it is administered to the same subjects in same conditions.
• Norm development and standardization

Ethics in Psychological Testing:

• Confidentiality
• No hurt or damage
• Respect the viewpoint of subject

Lesson 2

Researchers and historians agree that China was perhaps the first country to develop and use tests in the formal sense of mental measurement. We should also know that the Chinese had developed a system of mental measurement even in 2200 years BC.

Chinese had developed a civil service testing program. Under the Chinese emperors, oral examinations were arranged every third year in order to determine work evaluations and promotion decisions.

Han Dynasty (206 B.CE. to 220 C.E). These early tests pertained a variety of topics e.g. revenue, civil law, military affairs, agriculture, and geography. The civil service evaluation system and the test became broader based in the Chan dynasty, beginning in 1115 B.C.E. It covered the evaluation of proficiency in such divergent areas as bow shooting, horsemanship, music, writing, arithmetic, civil law, agriculture, revenue, military affairs, geography, and skill in the rites of public and social life.

By the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 C.E.) very well developed tests were being used. The evaluation process involved a national multistage testing program. During this period, tests were held at local as well as regional testing centers. These centers had special testing booths. The people being tested would go for more extensive essay examinations to provincial capitals if they were successful in the examination at local level. This second testing was followed by another round. The candidates who had the highest test scores in the second round went on to the nation’s capital for a final round. Only those who passed this third set of tests were considered eligible for public office.

In 1832 the English East India Company copied the Chinese model. They started using this system as a method of selecting employees for overseas duty.

In 1883, the American Civil Service Commission was established. This commission developed and administered competitive examinations for certain government job

Charles Darwin wrote On the Origins of Species in 1859. He wrote that chance variation in species would be selected or rejected by nature on the basis of adaptability and survival value. He also proposed concept of ‘survival of the fittest’, that only those species would survive who are capable of adapting to the natural conditions and who were strong enough to bear the atrocities of these conditions.

Darwin is considered to be the one who generated the interest of scientists in the study of individual differences. He wrote: “The many slight differences which appear in the offspring from the same parents…… may be called individual differences………….. These individual differences are of the highest importance…….[for they] afford materials for natural selection to act on” (Darwin, 1859 p. 125)

British: Francis Galton

France: Alfred binet

America: James McKean Catell

Galton was a cousin of Charles Darwin. He was born in the family of geniuses and he himself was a genius having an IQ of more than 200. He was a geographer, meteorologist, tropical explorer, “founder of differential psychology”, inventor of fingerprint identification, pioneer of statistical correlation and regression, convinced of hereditarianism, eugenics, proto-genetics and a best-selling author. He gave the concept of “hereditary genius”. According to Francis Galton (" Hereditary Genius, 1869) “gifted individuals” tended to come from families, which had other, gifted individuals. He further attempted to measure human trait quantitatively in order to determine the distribution of heredity in it. For this he used “word association test”, and “mental imagery”.

". Eugenics, he said, was the study of the agencies under social control that may improve or repair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally.

Among the many methodological contributions made by Galton was the technique of “corelations”, which has continued to be a popular method for analyzing test scores.

Cattell and Galton held the common understanding that intellectual function could be measured by measuring sensory discrimination and reaction time

He also developed some sensorimotor tests. He established his anthropometric lab at the International exposition of 1884. He looked into characteristics in related and unrelated people. The tests that he used involved physical traits. He believed that: “The only information that reaches us concerning outward events appears to pass through the avenue of our senses; and the more perceptive the senses are of difference, the larger is the field upon which our judgment and intelligence can act” (Galton, 1883). The tests that he included the sort of:

• Galton whistle for determining the highest audible pitch
• Galton bar of visual discrimination of length
• Graduated series of weights for measuring kinesthetic discrimination

James McKeen Cattell. He was the first ever to use the term “mental test” for devices used to measure intelligence. He developed tasks that were aimed to measure reaction time, word association test, keenness of vision and weight discrimination

It remained for Frenchman, Alfred Binet to construct the first mental test that proved to be an effective predictor of scholastic achievement.

Alfred Binet: The first formal measure of intelligence was developed by French psychologist Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon, in 1905 in France.

Binet preferred to stick to the term ‘mental level’ whereas many other psychologists used ‘mental age’ instead. L. M. Terman and associates at Stanford University. This revision is called StanfordBinet.. StanfordBinet is one of the most widely used tests even today. The idea of intelligence quotient was first used in this version. Intelligence quotient or IQ was described as a ratio between mental age and chronological age

As a result of the work of Binet and his associates the Ministerial Commission for the Study of Retarded Children was established