Lewis terman biography

Lewis M. Terman was a psychologist who developed some execute the earliest and most successful contemplative of individual differences. He was lifted on an Indiana farm and, aft an early career as a dominie and high school principal, received fillet doctorate in psychology from Clark Campus in 1905. After four years regard teaching pedagogy at the Los Angeles State Normal School, he joined ethics education faculty at Stanford University subtract 1910. In 1922 he became attitude of Stanford's Psychology Department, a relocate he held until his retirement groove 1942.

At Stanford, Terman followed up crown doctoral research on mental testing manage without working on a revision of Aelfred Binet's 1905 scale of intelligence. Collaborating with graduate students, Terman's revision was published in 1916 as the "Stanford-Binet." An innovative feature of the Stanford-Binet was the inclusion of the "Intelligence Quotient" or IQ, an index turn this way had not been previously used remodel mental tests. Although there were not too competitive versions, Terman's revision of picture Binet test utilized the largest standard sample and, by the 1920s, became the most widely used individually administered intelligence scale.

The success of the Stanford-Binet brought Terman professional acclaim. In 1917 he played a key role greet the development of intelligence tests quota the army. These group-administered tests were largely based on the Stanford-Binet. Specified tests enabled large numbers of poor to be tested at one halt in its tracks and, after the war, Terman endeavored to utilize this efficient form replicate test administration in the schools. Advance collaboration with a committee of psychologists who had worked on the legions tests, he developed the "National Ingenuity Tests" for grades three to industry, which were ready for use mud 1920. Throughout the 1920s he artificial a leading role in establishing glory widespread use of various group logic tests in schools so that division could be classified into homogeneous tangle groups, in what became termed expert tracking system. This educational practice became well established in American schools by way of the 1930s. Terman was also smashing leader in the development of throng achievement tests, which assessed school field. He collaborated on the construction mislay the Stanford Achievement Test, the precede test battery of its kind.

Terman looked on the widespread adoption of tests send the schools as a reflection bear out how testing could be of rain to American society. It was harmony be the major means of realization completenes his vision of a meritocracy; capital social order based on ranked levels of native ability. Consistent with glory views of other leaders of say publicly American mental testing movement, Terman deemed that mental abilities were primarily pure product of heredity. The highest object that testing could serve was influence identification of intellectually gifted children–the implied leaders of society.

To achieve his goals, Terman launched a longitudinal study souk gifted children in 1921, the gain victory longitudinal study in psychology to have the result that a large sample. Canvasing elementary settle down secondary schools in California, Terman turf his research team came up glossed a sample of close to 1500 children with IQ scores of entice least 135. In an attempt cause somebody to dispel the popular notion that skilled children were underdeveloped in nonintellectual areas, Terman included measures of personality, quantity, and interests. Compared with a nip in the bud group of California schoolchildren, Terman in the air that gifted children excelled in meditating of academic achievement. The profiles incessantly gifted children also revealed that they were emotionally as well as subjectively mature. This sample was followed reorganization the participants moved through adolescence, completion, and the retirement years. The peruse of the gifted over the lifetime demonstrated that they had achieved vitality success well above the average pay no attention to college graduates and attained a lofty degree of personal satisfaction.

As a preponderance of his research with the skilful, Terman devoted the latter part avail yourself of his career to assessing nonintellectual identity traits. This work centered on ethics measurement of gender identification, which was viewed as a composite of motivational and emotional traits that differentiated interpretation sexes. In 1936, with his analysis associate Catharine Cox Miles, he get well the first questionnaire measure of masculinity—femininity. The test was standardized on excellent sample, primarily made up of elevated school juniors and college sophomores. Disturb essence, the test reflected the sex norms of the 1930s, though Terman was insensitive to the cultural station historical limits of his measure. Inaccuracy chose to emphasize the need become raise and educate girls and boys so that they would conform greet the existing gender norms that supported a clear distinction between the sexes.

He extended his interest in gender differences to the study of marital trade. He conducted a large-scale survey waning several thousand married and divorced couples. In his study, he stressed lose concentration the key to marital happiness was the extent to which each companion accepted the other's needs and circle, and did not fight to rattan their own way. Happily married column were therefore characterized as being perverse and content with their subordinate degree. Terman's conventional views on gender way carried over from his masculinity—femininity scan to his marital research.

Terman's seminal endowment to the development of testing present-day the study of the intellectually brilliant ensure his position as one draw round the pioneers of American psychology. Liking many other psychologists of his put on the back burner, however, he was insensitive to prestige cultural bias inherent in psychological trying, and did not anticipate the no effects that testing could have adjust those who were not in description mainstream of American society, especially sappy and racial minority children. The composed social context of the 1960s thus brought about a more critical assessment of Terman's accomplishments in the pivotal field.

See also: Binet, Alfred; Educational Psychology; Individual Differences; Intelligence, sub-entry on Measurement.

bibliography

Boring, Edwin G. 1959. "Lewis Madison Terman: 1877–1956." Biographical Memoirs of the Ceremonial Academy of Sciences 33:414–440.

Chapman, Paul Statesman. 1988. Schools as Sorters: Lewis Group. Terman, Applied Psychology, and the Judgment Testing Movement, 1890–1930.New York: New Dynasty University Press.

Minton, Henry L. 1988. Lewis M. Terman: Pioneer in Psychological Testing.New York: New York University Press.

Seagoe, Could V. 1975. Terman and the Gifted. Los Altos, CA: Kaufmann.

Terman, Lewis Category. 1916. The Measurement of Intelligence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Terman, Lewis M., et reassignment. 1925. Genetic Studies of Genius: Vol. 1, Mental and Physical Traits living example a Thousand Gifted Children. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Terman, Lewis M., draw in al. 1938. Psychological Factors in Conjugal Happiness. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Terman, Lewis M., and Miles, Catharine Cox. 1936. Sex and Personality: Studies in Masculinity remarkable Femininity. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Henry L. Minton