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Home/Historical IQ Tests/Cattell's Mental Tests
1890 · JAMES McKEEN CATTELL · PUBLIC DOMAIN · 9 SOURCES

The first "mental tests" measured the senses.

Cattell introduced the term "mental test" in 1890, announcing a battery in Galton's tradition.4 It measured grip, touch, reaction time and line bisection, on the premise that sharpness at the senses reflects power at the centre.2 Eleven years later his own student showed it predicted almost nothing.

Try Test 9 →See why it failed
MIND · VOL. 15 · NO. 591890
Mental Tests and Measurements
10
core tests
50
supplementary tests proposed
−.02
reaction time vs class standing, 1901
300+
students in Wissler's analysis

Four laboratories, one idea

Cattell took Wundt's reaction-time methods and Galton's interest in individual differences, something Wundt himself cared little about, and built them into a testing programme.6

1880–82LeipzigStudies under Wundt and runs a series of reaction-time experiments.4
1887–89CambridgeRuns a psychometric laboratory whose tests included reaction time, colour naming, judgement, memory and attention.3
1888PennsylvaniaOpens a testing laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. Two years later the Mind paper names the method.4
1890sColumbiaLarge-scale physical and mental measurements of Columbia students. This is the data Wissler would later analyse.6

Ten tests in four groups

In Cattell's own order, grouped by what each test probes. The paper proposed fifty supplementary tests besides these.2,1

Strength and movementHow much force, how fast
1
Dynamometer pressureMaximum squeeze of a hand dynamometer.
2
Rate of movementSpeed of moving the hand through a fixed distance.
Sensation and discriminationHow finely the senses register
3
Sensation-areasThe smallest separation at which two points on the skin are felt as two.
4
Pressure causing painHow much pressure on the forehead before it becomes painful.
5
Least noticeable difference in weightThe smallest weight difference the subject can detect.
SpeedHow quickly a response follows
6
Reaction-time for soundTime from a sound to the subject's response.
7
Time for naming coloursTime to name a series of coloured squares.
Estimation and memoryJudging space, time and letters
8
Bisection of a 50 cm lineMarking the midpoint of a line by eye.
9
Judgment of 10 seconds of time▶ PLAYABLE BELOWSaying "stop" when ten seconds seem to have passed.
10
Number of letters remembered on once hearingImmediate memory span for a spoken series of letters.
TEST 9 · JUDGMENT OF 10 SECONDS OF TIME

The one test that works in a browser

The examiner said "start" and the subject said "stop" when ten seconds seemed to have passed. Press Start, don't look at a clock, and press Stop at what feels like ten seconds.

A reconstruction adapted for self-administration. Nothing leaves your browser.
Ready when you are
10.00

1901: correlations close to zero

Clark Wissler, Cattell's doctoral student, set the tests against the grades of more than 300 Columbia and Barnard students, using Pearson's new correlation coefficient.5,9

CORRELATION WITH CLASS STANDING
Reaction time
−.02
Colour naming
.02
Memory for number lists
.16
Range across the tests
−.09 to .19
School subjects with each other
.30 to .75
−0.20+0.4+0.8
Values from Wissler as reported in Gregory's textbook and a Cogn-IQ summary.5,2 The last row is the range of correlations between school subjects, shown for contrast.
THE OVERLOOKED ROWThe grades did correlate, just with each other.In the same tables, school subjects correlated 0.30 to 0.75 with one another. That's the positive pattern Spearman would name three years later.2 The mental tests also correlated only weakly with each other.5
EXPLORE · WHY WISSLER'S NUMBERS WERE SO SMALL

Test only the top students, and the link disappears

Testing only bright college students restricted the range, which shrinks any correlation. Few trials per person also made measures like reaction time unreliable.5 Drag the slider to admit a smaller slice of a simulated population.

Share of population tested100%
Top 5% onlyEveryone
General ability →Test score ↑
0.40correlation in the whole population (assumed)
0.40correlation among the 1200 people tested
1%of the relationship hidden by selection

Simulation with 1,200 simulated people and an assumed population correlation of 0.40. This isn't Wissler's data. It only illustrates the statistical effect.

THE LAB CLOSESCattell moves onWissler's results, together with the wide acceptance of Binet's method, led Cattell to abandon this research. He went on to found The Psychological Corporation, a template for commercial test publishing.7
THE IDEA RETURNSReaction time, revisitedLater researchers revived the approach and found that individual differences on elementary cognitive tasks do relate to general intelligence, once they are measured reliably.7
REPLICATEDVision and grades, 1990A reliable self-report measure of vision correlated .01 with the semester grades of 331 students, repeating Cattell's sensory null result a century later.8

References

  1. [1]Cattell, J. M. (1890). Mental tests and measurements. Mind, 15(59), 373–381. Classics in the History of Psychology, York University.psychclassics.yorku.ca
  2. [2]James McKeen Cattell: the first mental tests. Cogn-IQ encyclopedia (2026).cogn-iq.org
  3. [3]The birth of psychometrics in Cambridge, 1886–1889. The Psychometrics Centre, University of Cambridge.psychometrics.cam.ac.uk
  4. [4]Applied History of Psychology / Models of Assessment. Wikibooks.en.wikibooks.org
  5. [5]Gregory, R. J. Psychological Testing, Chapter 1: The origins of psychological testing (course copy). Studocu.studocu.com
  6. [6]Wasserman, J. D., & Kaufman, A. S. A history of mental ability tests and theories (in press, 2013, PDF).johndwasserman.com
  7. [7]Buckhalt, J. A. (1991). Reaction time and intelligence: contemporary research supports Cattell's abandoned hypothesis. School Psychology International.journals.sagepub.com
  8. [8]Cogan, R., & Staples, J. (1990). Self-reported visual function and academic success: Cattell revisited. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 70(2), 673–674.doi.org
  9. [9]Wikipedia contributors. Clark Wissler (accessed 1 Oct 2026).en.wikipedia.org
HOW TO CITE THIS PAGE
What's Your IQ. (2026). Cattell's Mental Tests (1890). In Historical IQ Tests Archive. Retrieved October 1, 2026, from /en/historical-iq-tests/cattell-mental-tests-1890
EDITORIAL RECORD
First published2026
Last reviewed1 October 2026
Sources9: the 1890 paper, histories of testing and later research
Open questionsWissler's exact dynamometer coefficient; which test gave the +.19 maximum
Canonical URLwhats-your-iq.com/en/historical-iq-tests/cattell-mental-tests-1890

Related historical tests

Where he trained1880
Wundt's Reaction Time Studies

Cattell ran reaction-time experiments in Wundt's Leipzig laboratory from 1880 to 1882. He kept the timing methods but dropped Wundt's search for universal laws in favour of differences between people.

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His model1884
Galton's Anthropometric Laboratory

Galton measured the public's senses and reflexes at his London laboratory. Cattell brought that premise, that sensory acuity reflects mental power, to American universities.

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The rival programme1895
Binet-Henri Mental Tests

Five years after Cattell, Binet and Henri argued that tests should target memory, imagination and judgement instead of the senses. Stella Sharp's 1899 comparison favoured their complex tasks.

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Same laboratory lineage1895
Kraepelin Continuous Arithmetic Test

Kraepelin also trained with Wundt and used simple timed tasks. His test looked at sustained work over long sessions, where Cattell's looked at single measurements.

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Who read the tables right1904
Spearman's General Intelligence (g)

Wissler's grade correlations of 0.30 to 0.75 already showed a positive pattern across subjects. Three years later Spearman named that pattern g.

ReferenceRead more →
What replaced it1905
Binet-Simon Scale

Wissler's null result and the wide acceptance of Binet's method ended Cattell's programme. Binet tested judgement and reasoning directly, using tasks graded by age, where Cattell had timed the senses.

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Part of the Historical IQ Tests Archive. Editorial content under CC BY-SA 4.0. Cattell's 1890 paper is in the public domain; read the full text.
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Cattell measured the senses. We measure reasoning.

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