Eager to measure human minds,Terman plunged into intelligence testing soon after he arrived atStanford. The original intelligence test had been designed five years earlier byFrenchpsychologistAlfred Binet as a tool to identify "slow" children needing specialhelp. Terman and his Stanford colleaguestranslated Binet's test, adapted the content forU.S. schools, set new age norms and standardized the distribution of scores so that the mean score would always be 100. Terman called the new version theStanford-Binet test. ~ Mitchell LeslieWith questions ranging frommathematical problems tovocabulary items, the Americanized test was supposed to capture "general intelligence," an innate mental capability that Terman felt was as measurable asheight andweight. ~ Mitchell Leslie
Eager to measure human minds,Terman plunged into intelligence testing soon after he arrived atStanford. The original intelligence test had been designed five years earlier byFrenchpsychologistAlfred Binet as a tool to identify "slow" children needing specialhelp. Terman and his Stanford colleaguestranslated Binet's test, adapted the content forU.S. schools, set new age norms and standardized the distribution of scores so that the mean score would always be 100. Terman called the new version theStanford-Binet test. With questions ranging frommathematical problems tovocabulary items, the Americanized test was supposed to capture "general intelligence," an innate mental capability that Terman felt was as measurable asheight andweight. As a hardcore hereditarian, he believed thatgenetics alone dictated one's level of general intelligence. This vital constant, which he called an "original endowment," wasn't altered byeducation orhomeenvironment orhardwork, he maintained. To denote it, he selected the term "intelligence quotient."
