Average Adult Alternative Test 1: Repeating Twenty-eight Syllables

The sentences for this test are:--



(a) _Walter likes very much to go on visits to his grandmother,

because she always tells him many funny stories._

(b) _Yesterday I saw a pretty little dog in the street. It had

curly brown hair, short legs, and a long tail._



PROCEDURE. Exactly as in VI, 6. Emphasize that the sentence must be

repeated without a single change of any sort. Get ttention before

giving each sentence.



SCORING. Passed _if one sentence is repeated without a single error_. In

VI and X we scored the response as satisfactory if one sentence was

repeated without error, or if two were repeated with not more than one

error each.



REMARKS. The test of repeating sentences is not as satisfactory in the

higher intelligence levels as in the lower. It is too mechanical to tax

very heavily the higher thought processes. It does, however, have a

certain correlation with intelligence. Contrary to what one would have

expected, uneducated adults of "average adult" intelligence surpassed

our high-school students of the same mental level.



Binet located this test in year XII of the 1908 series, but shifted it

to year XV in 1911. The American versions of the Binet scale have

usually retained it in year XII, though Goddard admits that the

sentences are somewhat too difficult for that year. Kuhlmann puts the

test in year XII, but reduces the sentences to twenty-four syllables and

permits one re-reading. We give only two trials and our sentences are

considerably more difficult. With the procedure and scoring we have

used, the test is rather easy for the "average adult" group, but a

little too hard for year XIV.