About the Pintner Non-Language Mental Test
The 1917 Pintner-Paterson Performance Scale required one-on-one administration with physical materials. For schools and clinics that wanted to screen large groups of non-English-speaking children, this was too slow. Pintner's 1920 Non-Language Mental Test solved the problem by adapting the non-verbal items into a printed test booklet that could be administered to an entire class at once.
The 1920 test had six subtests: digit-symbol substitution, picture completion, picture absurdities, paper form board, picture analogies, and number sequence. All were administered with pantomime and demonstration; no spoken or written language was required.
The Pintner Non-Language Mental Test was widely used in US schools that served immigrant populations through the 1930s and 1940s. It directly influenced the design of the Army Beta Form Two (1941) and the Cattell Culture Fair Intelligence Test (1949) - both of which used the same group-administered non-verbal philosophy.
The 6 subtests
Take the interactive subset
Sample non-verbal items.
No data leaves your browser.
Source
All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from:
Pintner, R. (1920). Pintner Non-Language Mental Test. Yonkers-on-Hudson, NY: World Book Company.
Public domain. This 1920 group-administered version built on Pintner's earlier individually-administered Performance Scale (1917).
Want a modern IQ score?
The Pintner Non-Language Mental Test is a historical artifact. For a contemporary IQ score using modern norms, take our modern full IQ test.
Take the Modern IQ Test