INTELLIGENCE TEST

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 423, 3 May 1937, Page 3

INTELLIGENCE TEST

PROBLEM FOR ROTARIANS Sign Of Superior Adult If an adult can answer the following problem it is a sign that he or she has shown the intelligence of a superior adult, according to Dr H. E. Field, Professor of Education at Canterbury College, addressing the Rotary Club at Auckland. A mother sent her boy to the river and told him to bring back seven pints of water. She gave him two vessels, one of three pints and the other five pints, not graduated. Show how 4 the boy can measure out seven pints of water, using nothing hut the two vessels and without guessing, beginning by filling the five-pint vessel. Dr Field’s subject was “Intelligence Tests,” and in the course of his address he presented members with the above problem, stating jocularly that he would take the risk of being thrown out by the sergeant-at-arms. In the formal test, he added, five minutes were allowed to find the solution. After referring at length to the results of intelligence tests study, Dr Field declared that intellectual growth was very little after the age of sixteen, and, in the case of dull children, the growth probably ceased even before that age. In the last fifteen or twenty years great use had been made of group tests, which could be given to adults or children in much the same way as ordinary examinations. It was interesting to note that tests of such a kind had been given to between one and two million recruits in the American Army during the war, and a great deal of useful information had come to light. It was found, for instance, that the people who came out highest were most satisfactory in the army, and particularly in executive posts. Group tests had also been devised for different age levels in the schools.