Terman's Studies of Genius

Background

Terman was born on the January 15, 1877, on a small farm in Johnson County, Indiana. Terman displayed an aptitude for school at an early age, quickly finishing the rural schools and entering a teacher's college at the age of 15. Terman taught for several years to earn enough money to permit graduate study and ultimately earned an M.A. from Indiana University at Bloomington in 1903 and a Ph.D. in psychology from Clark University in 1905. After graduation, Terman was employed as a school principal for San Bernardino, California, and as a professor at the Los Angeles Normal School in 1907. In 1910, Terman became a professor at Stanford University, where he remained until his death in 1956. During his career, he was elected as the president of the American Psychological Society and served as the editor of six professionally reviewed journals.

Intelligence Testing

Terman's interest in intelligence developed early in his academic career, as evidenced by his doctoral thesis entitled, “Genius and Stupidity: A Study of the Intellectual Processes of Seven ‘Bright’ and Seven ‘Stupid’ Boys.” Interestingly, his most famous contribution to the field of intelligence came from adapting a French intelligence test developed by Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon in 1906. Terman translated the measure to English, revised or removed some of the tasks, and added several additional tasks developed for his doctoral thesis. To develop statistical norms for U.S. populations, Terman undertook the arduous task of organizing the testing of more than 1,000 California schoolchildren. Although this sample was not representative in race and socioeconomic status, it is widely considered revolutionary in its attempt at rigorous empirical controls. In 1916, Terman published the Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon scale, or the Stanford-Binet.

Though it is possibly now the most famous test from that era, the Stanford-Binet was not the only mental test available during the 1920s. Many other intelligence and achievement tests had been developed, and an English translation of the Binet-Simon scale had already been developed by Henry H. Goddard in 1908. However, Terman's empirical standardization, combined with effective marketing by its publisher World Books, led to his measures being some of the most popular instruments of academics and school administrators. A school district in San Jose, California, became the first to develop a tracked system to accelerate students or offer remedial work based on the Stanford-Binet in 1921 and was quickly emulated by school systems around the nation. The Stanford-Binet is still one of the most commonly used measures of intelligence. Though the current edition has been thoroughly updated, many test items from the 1916 revision are still employed. Similarly, scores on intelligence tests like the Stanford-Binet are still one of the main criteria for receiving special education services in many states.

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