About the Detroit First-Grade Intelligence Test
By the mid-1920s, US schools wanted to identify children needing extra support as early as possible. The Stanford-Binet could be used individually but took 45-60 minutes per child. Group tests like the Otis required reading ability that 5-7-year-olds did not yet have. The Detroit First-Grade Test was designed to fill the gap.
Items use pictures of common objects (dog, hat, house, etc.) and require the child to make various judgments: which thing is biggest, which thing comes next in a sequence, which thing matches a given category. The examiner reads instructions aloud; the child marks answers on the test booklet with a pencil. Total testing time is about 25 minutes.
The Detroit Test was widely used in US schools through the 1940s. It influenced subsequent kindergarten and first-grade screening instruments including the Metropolitan Readiness Test and modern instruments like the Bracken School Readiness Assessment.
The 3 subtests
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Sample first-grade items adapted from the 1925 Engel manual.
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Source
All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from:
Engel, A. J. (1925). Detroit First-Grade Intelligence Test. Detroit, MI: Detroit Public Schools.
Public domain. Anna Engel was the supervising psychologist for the Detroit Public Schools' Bureau of Educational Research. The test was designed for the specific problem of cognitive screening at school entry (kindergarten or first grade), when children are too young for verbal group tests like the Otis or National Intelligence Tests.
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