Читать книгу The Measurement of Intelligence - Lewis M. Terman - Страница 28

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By means of the Binet tests we can judge the intelligence of a given individual by comparison with standards of intellectual performance for normal children of different ages. In order to make the comparison it is only necessary to begin the examination of the subject at a point in the scale where all the tests are passed successfully, and to continue up the scale until no more successes are possible. Then we compare our subject’s performances with the standard for normal children of the same age, and note the amount of acceleration or retardation.

Let us suppose the subject being tested is 9 years of age. If he goes as far in the tests as normal 9-year-old children ordinarily go, we can say that the child has a “mental age” of 9 years, which in this case is normal (our child being 9 years of age). If he goes only as far as normal 8-year-old children ordinarily go, we say that his “mental age” is 8 years. In like manner, a mentally defective child of 9 years may have a “mental age” of only 4 years, or a young genius of 9 years may have a mental age of 12 or 13 years.