Report of psychological tests at Reed College.

Abstract

It was the purpose of those conducting this investigation to discover if there were some practical and valuable grouping of psychological tests for college students which would give an index of relative mental ability. Our problem was to find if any group of tests showed correlation with the office grades in college subjects, granting the assumption that grades in college subjects are an indication of the mental ability of the student. The tests were carried out individually on all the students in Reed College, over a space of three years. Three classes received the tests during the sophomore year, and one during the freshman year.A group of experiments was selected for trial which were standard tests for measuring the processes of memory, association, attention, suggestion, imagination and judgment. Both rote memory and logical memory were tested. For the former a series of 42 cards was used for auditory-visualarticulatory presentation, and the experiment was performed and evaluated according to Whipple's 'Manual of Mental and Physical Tests,' pp. 364-66. The logical memory test consisted of the reading twice to the subject of a story of ten logically related incidents, after which he was to write this story in the form in which it was read. As it contained 166 words, it is evident that it could be remembered only by meaning, that is by the dependence of one point on the preceding.Complete success in the logical memory meant 10 points. Failure in one complete section of the ten meant a deduction of 1. Failure in one half a section meant a deduction of 0.5. Attention was measured by three different tests. For studying the range of visual attention, cardboards were prepared 211

“The highest values are individual”: The life and times of Eleanor Harris Rowland Wembridge.

“…Eleanor’s interest in assessment grew throughout her time at Reed as well. Following pilot testing with her psychology students, Eleanor assessed the general mental capabilities of the sophomores at Reed in 1913 to explore correlations with achievement, ultimately hoping to extend assessment to the rest of the student body and incorporated it into the admissions and examinations processes (“Reed Tests Given,” 1913; Rowland & Lowden, 1916). She sought consultation with her old mentor Hugo Münsterberg and Guy Montrose Whipple in conducting the experiment (“Unusual Mental Tests for Reed College Students,” 1913), and was eventually able to assess the whole student body, establishing a battery from the tests that had the highest correlations with official college grades (Rowland & Lowden, 1916).…”

“…Following pilot testing with her psychology students, Eleanor assessed the general mental capabilities of the sophomores at Reed in 1913 to explore correlations with achievement, ultimately hoping to extend assessment to the rest of the student body and incorporated it into the admissions and examinations processes (“Reed Tests Given,” 1913; Rowland & Lowden, 1916). She sought consultation with her old mentor Hugo Münsterberg and Guy Montrose Whipple in conducting the experiment (“Unusual Mental Tests for Reed College Students,” 1913), and was eventually able to assess the whole student body, establishing a battery from the tests that had the highest correlations with official college grades (Rowland & Lowden, 1916). This was the first attempt at large-scale psychometrics in institutions of higher learning, a trend that would not emerge nationally until years after Eleanor had departed Reed, although she did have opportunities to convey her experiences while serving as the instructor in mental tests and measurements at the San Diego State Normal School in 1916 (Reed College, 1917).…”

“…The significance of art: Studies in analytical esthetics . Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co. Rowland, E. H., & Lowden, G. (1916). Report of psychological tests at Reed College.…”

Editorial.

“…Numerous other studies on applied topics appeared in that journal in the decades that followed. The Journal of Experimental Psychology started publication in 1916, and in the very first volume contained studies on the effects of uniform and non-uniform lighting with reference to street illumination (Burtt, 1916), on the use of psychological tests for college students (Rowland & Lowden, 1916), and on the effects of repetition on advertisement impressions (Strong, 1916). The first issues of the Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP) appeared in 1917.…”