> there," etc. These statements are true, but they do not satisfy the

requirements of the test, so we say: "_No; I am talking about the face.

Look again and tell me what is left out of the face._" If the correct

response does not follow, we point to the place where the eye should be

and say: "_See, the eye is gone._" When picture _b_ is shown we say

merely: "_What is left out of this face?_" Likewise with picture _c_.

For picture _d_ we say: "_What is left out of this picture?_" No help of

any kind is given unless (if necessary) with the first picture. With the

others we confine ourselves to the single question, and the answer

should be given promptly, say within twenty to twenty-five seconds.



SCORING. Passed if the omission is correctly pointed out in _three out

of four_ of the pictures. Certain minor errors we may overlook, such as

"eyes" instead of "eye" for the first picture; "nose and one ear"

instead of merely "nose" for the third; "hands" instead of "arms" for

the fourth, etc. Errors like the following, however, count as failure:

"The other eye," or "The other ear" for the first or third; "The ears"

for the fourth, etc.



REMARKS. The test is one of the two or three dozen forms of the

so-called "completion test," all of which have it in common that from

the given parts of a whole the missing parts are to be found. The whole

to be completed may be a word, a sentence, a story, a picture, a group

of pictures, an object, or in fact almost anything. Sometimes all the

parts of the whole are given and only the arrangement or order is to be

found, as in the test with dissected sentences.



Further discussion of the completion test will be found in connection

with test 4, year XII. For the present we will only observe that

notwithstanding a certain similarity among the tests of this type, they

do not all call into play the same mental processes. The factor most

involved may be verbal language coherence, visual perception of form,

the association of abstract ideas, etc. To pass Binet's test with

mutilated pictures requires, (1) that the parts of the picture be

perceived as constituting a whole; and (2) that the idea of a human face

or form be so easily and so clearly reproducible that it may act, even

before it comes fully into consciousness, as a model or pattern, for the

criticism of the picture shown. The younger the child, the less

adequate, in this sense, is his perceptual familiarity with common

objects. In standardizing a series of "absurd pictures," the writer has

found that normal children of 3 years often see nothing wrong in a

picture which shows a cat with two legs or a hen with four legs. Such

children would, of course, never mistake a cat for a hen. Their trouble

lies in the inability to call up in clear form a "free idea" of a cat or

a hen for comparison with the perceptual presentation offered by the

picture. Middle-grade imbeciles of adult age have much the same

difficulty as normal children of 4 years in recognizing mutilations or

absurdities in pictures of familiar objects.



Binet first placed this test in year VII, changing it to year VIII in

the 1911 revision. In other revisions it has been retained in year VII,

although all the available statistics except Bobertag's warrant its

location in year VI.