A measure of supervisory quality.

A 50-item Supervisor's Problems Test was developed and tested in 3 companies against superior ratings of "good" and "poor" supervisors. Scores were also correlated with scores on verbal intelligence tests and on the F scales. "1. The test differentiates significantly between supervisors high in understanding of how to effectively supervise and those low in this understanding. 2… . [it] has a low relationship with verbal intelligence. 3… . [it] is substantially related to the democratic-authoritarian dimension of personality as measured by the F Scale." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

American attitudes toward intelligence tests.

If one asks a representative group of Americans over 18 about the use of intelligence tests in student selection for school or college or to aid in job promotion selection "he finds that many of them are against the use of intelligence tests. High school students in the U. S. are even more strongly opposed to the use of intelligence tests." Critical attitudes toward tests involve the following issues: Inaccessibility of test data. Invasion of privacy. Rigidity in use of test scores. Types of talent selected by tests. Fairness of tests to minority groups. Among the personal and social characteristics of the critics are: Some people are distinctly hostile to any self examination. People subscribing strongly to aristocratic or equalitarian viewpoints of society may oppose testing. People who have done poorly on tests may have wounded self-esteem leading to test opposition. The punishing effects tests may have had on an individual's life chances may lead to resentment against tests. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rater accuracy as a generalized ability.

To see if those people who can most accurately estimate their peers' performance on an objective criterion are also those who can most accurately rate their peers on carefulness, 236 basic airmen estimated the scores their peers made on a vocabulary test. Then they rated their peers on carefulness, and all Ss took 5 carefulness tests. All 5 of the carefulness tests correlated higher with the ratings assigned by airmen who most accurately estimated their peers' vocabulary scores than they did with ratings assigned by the airmen who least accurately estimated their peers' vocabulary scores. These results were interpreted as a demonstration of the generalizability of rating accuracy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On not "giving psychology away": The Minnesota Multiphasic Inventory and public controversy over testing in the 1960s.

Psychological tests, especially the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, became the center of public controversy and Congressional scrutiny during the 1960s. This unwanted attention actually helped American psychologists more than they imagined. Assisted by those on Capitol Hill, psychologists were able to defend their science in a manner that avoided imposed forms of public accountability. Social questions were reformulated as technical problems. The need to adjust intelligence and aptitude tests reinforced psychologists' control over them. Conversely, personality tests were not made more transparent and nonintrusive, unless psychologists thought these changes were scientifically necessary. This episode prompted tighter regulation of test use and demonstrated that traditional forms of testing were far too important to popularize and "give away." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Early language behavior in Negro children and the testing of intelligence.

"Forty Negro children examined by a white examiner were found to have lowered language scores on third examination at two years of age. This was apparently due to lack of verbal responsiveness, rather than poor comprehension of language. This apparent early awareness of racial differences and loss of rapport has serious implications in the field of ethnic group psychology, particularly in the use of verbal items on intelligence testing." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The exchangeability of IQs: Implications for professional psychology.

IQs are important measures in the practice of psychology. Psychologists may frequently expect that IQs from different test batteries are reasonably exchangeable as measures of general intelligence. Results presented in this article provide evidence that different test batteries produce less similar IQs for samples of school-age children and undergraduate students than may have been expected. In fact, psychologists can anticipate that 1 in 4 individuals taking an intelligence test battery will receive an IQ more than 10 points higher or lower when taking another battery. Resulting suggestions for practice include carefully choosing batteries that provide representative sampling of specific abilities, differential weighting, or both; attending to unreliability in measurement; closely monitoring behaviors that undermine assessment of general intelligence; and considering the benefits of obtaining multiple IQs when such scores are used to make high-stakes diagnostic or eligibility decisions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Levels of perceptual organization and cognition: Conflicting evidence.

Low relations generally have been found between performance on perceptual and cognitive tasks. This experiment was designed to test the high relation reported by Krech & Calvin (see 28: 2250) between the ability to organize a group of dots into an articulated pattern and scores on the vocabulary section of the Wechsler Bellevue. The Krech measure yielded a higher relation than other perceptual measures to verbal test performance, although lower than that obtained by Krech & Calvin. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

White matter lesions account for all age-related declines in speed but not in intelligence.

MRI scans measured white matter lesion prevalence (WMLP) in 65 people ages 65-84 years who also took 17 cognitive tests: 3 tests of general fluid intelligence, 3 of vocabulary, 2 of episodic and 3 of working memory, 2 of processing speed, and 4 of frontal and executive function. Entry of age with WMLP into regression equations as predictors of test scores showed that inferences about the functional relationships between markers of brain aging and cognitive impairments are seriously misleading if they are based on simple correlations alone. A new finding that WMLP accounts for all of the age-related variance between individuals in tests of speed and executive ability but for none of the age-related variance in intelligence revises current hypotheses that gross brain changes affect general fluid intelligence and other mental abilities solely through their effects on information-processing speed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Estimating root word vocabulary growth in normative and advantaged populations: Evidence for a common sequence of vocabulary acquisition.

Root word vocabulary was studied in 2 normative samples (English-speaking, wide socioeconomic range) and in an advantaged sample. The authors estimated that in 2nd grade, the mean normative vocabulary was 5,200 root words, increasing to approximately 8,400 root words by 5th grade. During grades 3–5, the lowest quartile added about 3 root words a day, whereas the highest quartile added about 2.3 words a day. However, by 5th grade, children in the lowest quartile had only reached average 4th-grade level because they had such a small vocabulary in 2nd grade. There is evidence that words are learned in roughly the same order. The implications of these findings suggest (a) that greater efforts should be made to foster vocabulary acquisition in the primary years and (b) that a rough vocabulary curriculum sequence can be identified for the elementary years. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intellectual Differences Between Suburban Preschizophrenic Children and Their Siblings.

The intelligence test scores of 56 suburban school children who later became schizophrenic adults were found to be significantly lower than the intelligence test scores of their siblings on tests taken at the same ages. Early intellectual deficit of future schizophrenics which is not easily discernible in suburban children, whose intelligence test scores often are above average but near the average of their own schools, shows up in comparisons with the performance of their own siblings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Use of the Sugar Pill by Industrial Psychologists.

Argues that it is necessary, for the good of industrial psychology, that the Barnum Effect be discredited as a method for the validation of psychological tests. as a method for the validation of psychological tests. Businessmen, as they become aware of its nature and obvious limitations, should demand sophisticated methods of test validation. In order to avoid ills resulting from the "quick cure," businessmen should, at the same time, exercise a degree of patience in their demand for the services of psychologists. It should be up to businessmen to seek objective validity which goes far beyond mere anecdotal accounts. Decisions based on psychological tests should be delayed until good evidence of the tests' validity is presented. At the same time, it is the ethical duty of industrial psychologists to resist the temptation to use tests which have not been properly validated. It is their duty to educate the persons for whom they perform services; further, it is their duty to create and maintain an atmosphere conducive to test research and validation. In many cases, they will need to "unsell" more persons on testing than they will be called upon to sell, and they will need to caution their clients concerning the many qualifications to be attached to test interpretations. methods of appropriate psychological test validation. By demanding a high level of competency from industrial and consulting psychologists, American business will render unprofitable the currently widespread use of questionable and often misguided psychological test appraisals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Purpose for Culture-Fair.

Comments on the article by Alexander G. Wesman (see record 1968-18802-001), in which he proposed an organization of intelligence as a composite of all past learning experiences and discussed intelligence tests and what they truly measure. The current author responds to a point Wesman made, which implied that the Culture-Fair test had been designed for no sound purpose. It is suggested that one way to distinguish between the child who truly cannot benefit from regular class instruction and one who could would be to get some measure of what he has acquired (learned) from his particular subculture. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The significance of microabscesses in liver transplant biopsies: a clinicopathological study

BACKGROUND: Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, or "Ecstasy") is a popular recreational drug of abuse that is known to damage brain serotonergic neurons in animals and possibly humans. Few functional consequences of MDMA-induced serotonin (5-HT) neurotoxicity have been identified, either in animals or humans. This study sought to determine whether individuals with a history of extensive MDMA use showed evidence of memory impairment, because brain serotonin has been implicated in mnemonic function. METHOD: The authors compared 24 abstinent MDMA users and 24 control subjects on several standardized tests of memory, after matching subjects for age, gender, educational level, and vocabulary score (a surrogate of verbal intelligence). The authors also explored correlations between changes in memory function and decrements in CSF 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA), which serves as a marker of central 5-HT neural function. RESULTS: Greater use of MDMA (total milligrams per month) was associated with greater impairment in immediate verbal memory (p < 0.02) and delayed visual memory (p < 0.06). Furthermore, lower vocabulary scores were associated with stronger dose-related effects, with men having greater dose-related deficits than women. Lastly, lower concentrations of CSF 5-HIAA were associated with poorer memory performance. CONCLUSION: Abstinent MDMA users have impairment in verbal and visual memory. The extent of memory impairment correlates with the degree of MDMA exposure and the reduction in brain 5-HT, as indexed by CSF 5-HIAA.     

Intelligence: Foundations and issues in assessment.

There is no more central topic in psychology than intelligence and intelligence testing. With a history as long as psychology itself, intelligence is the most studied and likely the best understood construct in psychology, albeit still with many “unknowns.” The psychometric sophistication employed in creating intelligence tests is at the highest level. The authors provide an overview of the history, theory, and assessment of intelligence. Five questions are proposed and discussed that focus on key areas of confusion or misunderstanding associated with the measurement and assessment of intelligence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intelligence and Maturity: Meta-Analytic Evidence for the Incremental and Discriminant Validity of Loevinger's Measure of Ego Development.

This review examined whether Loevinger's measure of personality (ego) development is equivalent to the measurement of intelligence. The authors conducted a meta-analysis of 52 correlations between ego level scores and intelligence test scores (retrieved from 42 studies involving 5,648 participants). The weighted average correlation between ego level and intelligence ranged from .20 to .34, depending on the intellectual ability assessed (e.g., verbal intelligence). Adjusting for measurement unreliability increased these values only minimally. The authors also reviewed 16 studies that examined the association between ego level and various criterion variables (e.g., aggressive behavior) after statistically controlling for the effects of intelligence. Ninety-four percent of the tests revealed significant relations between ego level and criterion variables after controlling for intelligence, indicating that ego development and intelligence are not interchangeable constructs. These findings do not support recent speculations concerning the limited value of stage models of maturity, social development, and moral reasoning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of global atrophy, white matter lesions, and cerebral blood flow on age-related changes in speed, memory, intelligence, vocabulary, and frontal function.

Brain images were obtained from 133 healthy people of ages 61-85 years who completed 20 tests of information processing speed, intelligence, frontal and executive function, memory, and vocabulary. Structural equation models examined relationships between cognitive test scores, ages and measurements of global age-associated atrophy, white matter lesions, and cerebral blood flow. These neurophysiological measures jointly account for all age-related variance in information processing speed. Speed entirely mediated relationships between neurophysiological measures and memory and partly mediated relationships between neurophysiological measures and intelligence and frontal function. Neurophysiological measures, but not calendar age, accounted for vocabulary scores. Cognitive slowing was responsible for some, but not all, age-related declines in mental function. Age-related declines in intelligence, frontal function, and speed were due to changes in different functional systems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A note on measurement scales and statistical tests.

The author defends the use of parametric tests (Boneau, 1960), and has been challenged on more than one occasion to justify the use of the t test in many typical psychological situations where there are measurement considerations. Intelligence is often given as an instance, the point being that intelligence is actually measured by an ordinal scale, that equal differences between scores represent different magnitudes at different places on the underlying continuum. This is seen as somehow invalidating the use of the t test with such scores. Burke (1953) has presented an argument which should have ended further discussion, but, in view of the present concern, a restatement of the argument and the addition of a few comments would seem indicated. The present concern seems to have been stimulated by the publication by psychologists of two texts in the field of statistics (Senders, 1958; Siegel, 1956) both of which are organized around Stevens' (1951) system of classifying measurement scales. Siegel and Senders belabor the point that parametric statistics, specifically the t and F tests should be avoided when the measurement scales are no stronger than ordinal, a state of affairs purportedly typical in psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)