Historical Roots of Psychological Testing and Assessment

This set of vocabulary flashcards summarizes the key figures, dates, and concepts involved in the historical development of psychological testing and assessment from ancient times through the late 1930s.

China ($2200\,\text{B.C.E.}$)

The location and time where testing and testing systems are thought to have emerged to select who would acquire government jobs.

Greco-Roman Societies

Early societies that sought to categorize the personality of individuals with respect to bodily fluid.

Sanguine personality

A personality type that Greco-Roman societies attributed to having too much blood in the body.

Wilhelm Max Wundt ($1832 - 1920$)

The Father of Experimental Psychology who founded the first experimental psychology laboratory and focused on human similarities.

Experimental error

How Wilhelm Max Wundt viewed human differences in his research.

Francis Galton

A pioneer of research on heredity and the Father of Eugenics and Psychometrics who sought to identify people according to natural talents and normal variance.

Coefficient of correlation

A statistical concept introduced by Francis Galton for use in psychological assessment.

James McKeen Cattell

A student of Wundt whose doctoral dissertation dealt with human differences and who coined the term mental test in $1890$.

Charles Spearman

A student of Wundt who introduced the concept of test reliability and the statistical technique of factor analysis.

Victor Henri

A student of Wundt who recommended how to use mental tests in assessing higher mental processes and collaborated with Alfred Binet.

Emil Kraeplin

A student of Wundt who was a pioneer in using word association techniques as a formal test.

Lightner Witmer

Cited as the little-known founder of clinical psychology.

Binet and Simon ($1905$)

Published a $30$-item measuring scale of intelligence designed to help identify intellectually disabled Paris school-children.

World War 1 ($1914 - 1918$)

The period during which group intelligence tests came into being in the United States in response to the Military's need.

David Wechsler ($1939$)

Introduced the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale (W-B), a test designed to measure adult intelligence.

Robert Woodworth

Developed the Personal Data Sheet, which served as a measure of adjustment and emotional stability.

Projective stimuli

The use of pictures popularized in the late $1930\text{s}$ by Henry A. Murray, Christiana D. Morgan, and colleagues at the Harvard Psychological Clinic.