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Public Domain · 1890 · Pre-modern

Cattell's Mental Tests and Measurements: The first 'mental tests' battery

James McKeen Cattell's 1890 paper that coined the phrase 'mental test' (mental test). 10 sensorimotor tasks - reaction time, sensitivity, memory span, judgment of weights - that Cattell proposed as a battery for measuring individual differences. This predates Binet and Spearman by over a decade.

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About the Cattell's Mental Tests and Measurements

Before there was IQ, before there was Binet, there was Cattell. James McKeen Cattell - American, trained at Wundt's psychology laboratory in Leipzig, later professor at Columbia - was the first to argue that individual differences in cognition could be measured precisely with laboratory techniques. His 1890 paper in the British journal Mind proposed 10 specific tests that he called 'mental tests' (giving the phrase to psychology) and 50 supplementary tests.

Cattell's view of intelligence was Galtonian: he believed that mental capacity was rooted in the speed and acuity of the basic senses and motor system. The 10 tests he proposed were therefore all sensorimotor: dynamometer pressure (squeezing strength), rate of arm movement, two-point skin sensitivity, pressure causing pain, judgment of weights, reaction time for sound, time for naming colors, bisection of a 50-cm line, judgment of a 10-second interval, and immediate memory for letters.

Cattell tested entering Columbia students on his battery for years. In 1901 his graduate student Clark Wissler analyzed the data and found that scores on Cattell's tests correlated essentially zero with college grades. This finding, more than any other single result, killed the Galtonian-Wundtian approach to intelligence measurement and cleared the way for Binet's age-graded approach (1905) to take over.

About this interactive version: Cattell's 10 tests require specialized laboratory equipment (dynamometer, two-point compass, weighted boxes, reaction-time apparatus). None of them can be administered in a browser. We describe each test below; the 1890 paper is short and worth reading in full.

The 10 subtests

#1
Dynamometer Pressure How hard can you squeeze a hand dynamometer? Cattell believed grip strength reflected nervous-system energy.
Equipment
#2
Rate of Movement Speed of moving the arm through a fixed distance. Measured with a metronome and a sliding scale.
Equipment
#3
Sensation-Areas (Two-Point Threshold) Closest distance at which two compass points feel like one. Tested on the back of the hand.
Equipment
#4
Pressure causing Pain How much pressure on the forehead before it becomes painful?
Equipment
#5
Least Noticeable Difference in Weight Smallest weight difference the subject can detect. Tested by comparing 100g boxes with progressively heavier ones.
Equipment
#6
Reaction Time for Sound Time from a buzzer to the subject's key-press response.
Equipment
#7
Time for Naming Colors Time to name 100 colored squares (red, yellow, green, blue) shown in sequence.
Equipment
#8
Bisection of a 50-cm Line Mark the midpoint of a 50-cm line. Measured for accuracy.
Pencil + Paper
#9
Judgment of 10 Seconds Time Examiner says 'start'; subject says 'stop' after what they estimate to be 10 seconds.
Interactive
#10
Number of Letters Remembered Examiner reads a sequence of letters; subject repeats them. Tests immediate memory span.
Audio

Take the interactive subset

Cattell's tests are mostly impossible to administer in a browser, but his Test 9 - judging a 10-second interval - works perfectly online. Try it.

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Source

All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from:

Cattell, J. M. (1890). Mental tests and measurements. Mind, 15(59), 373-381.

Public domain. Cattell coined the phrase 'mental test' in this 1890 paper, although he conceived of intelligence very differently than later workers did. He was trained in Wundt's laboratory in Leipzig and thought intelligence could be measured by precise sensorimotor measurements - reaction time, two-point discrimination, lifted-weight judgment. This Galtonian view was largely discredited by 1901 when Wissler showed that Cattell's 'mental tests' correlated near zero with college grades.

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