How do you test millions of recruits who can't read the test?
The Beta was created in 1917 alongside the Alpha by the same Yerkes committee. Early in WWI the Army found that many draftees — recent immigrants and native-born Americans with limited schooling — couldn't read the Alpha's instructions. Two solutions were tried.
Two to play here, five on paper
Trace a path through printed mazes — a format still used in clinical neuropsychology.
Open the 1918 page scan→Count the cubes in stacked piles, including the ones you can't see.
Take it in your browser→Substitute symbols for digits using a key — essentially unchanged in the WAIS today.
Open the 1918 page scan→Spot whether paired columns of numbers are the same or different.
Open the 1918 page scan→Show how pieces fit together to form a given shape.
Open the 1918 page scan→You may have taken part of it already
The most successful non-verbal battery of its era shaped every modern non-verbal intelligence test. Its lasting claim — that a meaningful score can come from people who share no language with the examiner — is now uncontroversial. In 1917 it was a major theoretical claim.
Beta materials, pages 277–283
The volume reproduces the Beta with correct answers marked on the page — mazes show the path, digit-symbol shows the filled symbols. That keyed version powers the interactive subtests. Read the full book on Internet Archive ↗
The interactive items are original reconstructions in the tradition of the 1918 test, adapted to self-administered multiple choice. The authentic items, in their original format, are in the source volume.
The Beta in numbers, and its limits
References
- [1]Yoakum, C. S., & Yerkes, R. M. (Eds.). (1920). Army mental tests. New York: Henry Holt. Internet Archive.archive.org
- [2]Wikipedia contributors. Army Beta (accessed 1 Oct 2026).en.wikipedia.org
- [3]Robert Yerkes: Army Alpha, primates, APA. Cogn-IQ (2026).cogn-iq.org
- [4]Yerkes' Army intelligence tests. New Learning Online.newlearningonline.com
- [5]Gould (1982): A nation of morons. tutor2u Psychology.tutor2u.net
Related historical IQ tests
The verbal partner to the Beta: 200 items across eight subtests, given to over 1.7 million WWI recruits.
The first major non-verbal battery, built for the deaf, recent immigrants and recruits with limited English.
Reproduce printed designs with coloured blocks — the ancestor of the WAIS Block Design subtest.
The visual matrix format that became the most-used non-verbal intelligence test in the world.
The adult scale whose performance subtests, including Digit Symbol, trace back to the Beta.
The WWII successor to the Army tests, given to about 12 million US service members.