CONDENSED GUIDE

FOR

THE STANFORD REVISION

OF THE

BINET-SIMON INTELLIGENCE TESTS

LEWIS M. TERMAN

PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION STANFORD UNIVERSITY

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

BOSTON NEWYORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO
The Riverside Press Cambridge

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

PREFACE

Since the appearance of the Stanford Revision of the Binet-SimonIntelligence Scale I have been frequently urged to prepare acondensed guide which would make the application of the tests easierand more convenient. I have hesitated somewhat to act upon thissuggestion because I have not wished to encourage the use of thescale without the supplementary directions and explanations which areset forth in the original text of the Stanford Revision.¹ Thedemand has become so insistent, however, that I have decided to heedit. I have been led to this decision largely by the fact that myrevision is now so generally used by examiners who are sufficientlyexperienced to be trusted to follow the correct procedure without thenecessity of constantly consulting the complete text. Those who arethoroughly familiar with the contents of the latter will find theCondensed Guide a convenient help. It is impossible, however, towarn the inexperienced examiner too emphatically against the dangersinherent in the routine application of mental tests without someknowledge of their derivation, meaning, and purpose. The necessarypsychological background for the use of the Binet scale I have triedto supply in The Measurement of Intelligence, and in TheIntelligence of School Children I have explained the practical usesof mental tests in the grading and classification of school children.It is only as a supplement to these books that the procedure of theStanford Revision is here presented in abbreviated form.

¹ Lewis M. Terman: The Measurement of Intelligence.(Riverside Textbooks in Education.) Houghton Mifflin Company.

For the further aid of the experienced examiner a condensed recordblank has also been prepared. Although this is considerably cheaperthan the original Record Booklet and in certain respects perhapssomewhat more convenient, it is not recommended as a satisfactorysubstitute except when used by thoroughly trained examiners.Beginners, at least, should continue to use the complete RecordBooklet both because of the accuracy of procedure which it fostersand because of the advantages of having a complete verbatim record ofthe responses. Besides being indispensable for the analytical studyof the child's mental processes, the complete record makes possiblethe correction of errors in scoring and permits interestingqualitative comparisons between earlier and later performances

...