Pintner-Cunningham Primary Mental Test (1923)

HOW IT WORKED

The teacher read, the children drew

Every page was pictures. The examiner read a short instruction for each row, such as “mark the one that…” or “draw a line…”, and waited while the class answered with a crayon or pencil. The children didn't have to read or write a single word. Scoring was a count of correct marks, converted to a mental age.

That let a school test an entering class in one sitting instead of booking a psychologist for every child. It also brought the trade-off of all group tests: a child who misheard an instruction or copied a neighbour couldn't be spotted the way an individual examiner would.

K–2gradesKindergarten, first and second grade.

0words to readAll instructions were read aloud by the examiner.

1sittingA whole class at once, instead of one child at a time.

43years in printFrom 1923 to the 1966 revised series, in successive editions.

PLAY · IN THE STYLE OF A PRIMARY GROUP TEST

Listen, then mark

Press “Read aloud” to hear the instruction, as a child would from the teacher, or read it on screen. Two item types: picking out a size, and copying a dot pattern. These are our own demonstrations of the format, not items from the 1923 booklet, which we haven't been able to examine.

“Mark the biggest ball.”

THIS SESSION0 / 0correct marks, the only thing the scorer counted

Read-aloud uses your browser's speech voice. No 1923 norms are applied; these are format demonstrations only.

1923 · CUNNINGHAM'S DISSERTATIONDoes a first-grade test predict anything?Cunningham's Teachers College study, The Prognostic Value of a Primary Group Test: A Study of Intelligence and Relative Achievement in the First Grade, was published the same year as the test. It asked whether scores at school entry forecast how children went on to do in first-grade work. That was the test's main selling point to schools.

VOL. 18 · PINTNER'S REPORT“The Pintner–Cunningham primary test”Four years on, Pintner reported on the test in the Journal of Educational Psychology (vol. 18, pp. 52–58). Library holdings show a Form B dated 1923 alongside the first form.

THE CAVEATFive-year-olds are hard to measureScores at this age shift a lot with attention, familiarity with pencils and pictures, and a year's development. Early group tests were used to sort children into reading groups and classes, a use later critics argued fixed labels on children too early.

REVISIONS · 1923–1966

From one booklet to a four-level series

World Book Company publishes the Primary Mental Test for kindergarten and grades 1–2, with a manual of directions. The Smithsonian holds a first-edition copy.Sources [1][2][3]

Kgr–2Pintner–Cunningham Primary

Grades 2–4Pintner–Durost Elementary

Grades 4–9Pintner Intermediate

Grade 9 +Pintner Advanced

The 1966 Pintner General Abilities Tests, Revised, by grade range [6]. Pintner–Cunningham stayed the entry level.

1884–1942

Rudolf Pintner

Born in England and trained at Edinburgh and Leipzig. At Ohio State he built the 1917 Pintner–Paterson performance scale for deaf children, then moved to Teachers College in 1921. He wrote Intelligence Testing: Methods and Results (1923) and a family of group tests that carried his name into the 1960s.

1882–1964

Bess V. Cunningham

A Teachers College psychologist working on young children's development and education. Her 1923 dissertation tested whether the primary group test predicted first-grade achievement. Her name stayed on the primary level of the Pintner tests through every revision.

REFERENCES

[1]Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Psychological Test with Manual of Directions, Pintner–Cunningham Primary Mental Test (first edition, 1923).si.edu

[2]HathiTrust. Pintner–Cunningham primary mental test for kindergarten, and first and second grades (World Book, c1923).hathitrust.org

[3]WorldCat. Pintner–Cunningham primary mental test for kindergarten and first and second grades (1923).worldcat.org

[4]University of Illinois SSHEL Test Collection: Pintner–Cunningham Primary Mental Test and later revisions.library.illinois.edu

[5]Pintner, R., Cunningham, B. V., & Durost, W. N. (1946). Pintner–Cunningham Primary Test: Manual of Directions and Key, 12 pp. World Book (Google Books).books.google.com

[6]Pintner, R., Cunningham, B. V., & Durost, W. N. (1966). Pintner General Abilities Tests, Revised: four levels, Kgr–2 to grade 9 and over. Harcourt, Brace & World (Google Books).books.google.com

[7]Pintner, R. (1927). The Pintner–Cunningham primary test. Journal of Educational Psychology, 18, 52–58.semanticscholar.org

[8]Cunningham, B. V. (1923). The Prognostic Value of a Primary Group Test: A Study of Intelligence and Relative Achievement in the First Grade. Teachers College (cited in the Smithsonian record).si.edu

Editorial record: title, publisher, grades, authors' affiliation and dates, Cunningham's dissertation, the 1927 article and the revision sequence are from the Smithsonian, HathiTrust, WorldCat, University of Illinois, Google Books and Semantic Scholar records [1–8], found by web search for this page. Pintner's biography (training, Ohio State, 1921 move) is from memory and unchecked. The original booklet and manual weren't available to us, so the subtests are not listed and no items are reproduced. The playable section is a demonstration of the format.

KEEP EXPLORING

1917 · Pintner's earlier scalePintner–Paterson Performance ScaleFifteen form boards and puzzles for deaf and non-English-speaking children, given one at a time.c. 1919 · Group testing without wordsPintner Non-Language TestsPintner's earlier group test by gesture, for deaf children and immigrants.1925 · A rival primary testDetroit First-Grade TestAnother 1920s picture test for sorting entering first-graders.

Part of the Historical IQ Tests Archive. Editorial content under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Pintner–Cunningham: a whole class of five-year-olds, tested at once.

The teacher read, the children drew

Listen, then mark

From one booklet to a four-level series

Pictures instead of words. Reasoning all the same.