What's Your IQ

THE PROBLEM AT THE DOCK

Federal law barred the “feeble-minded.” Nobody had a fair way to tell.

US immigration law excluded people judged mentally defective, and the Public Health Service doctors at Ellis Island had to decide in a matter of minutes. Arrivals were tired, frightened and spoke dozens of languages. Many had never been to school. A translated Binet question about money or the calendar tested culture and schooling as much as intelligence.

Knox and his colleagues built performance tests instead: form boards, puzzles and the cube test, which could be explained by demonstration. He argued that a test should be one the person's own community would regard as fair.

1912–16Knox at Ellis IslandAbout four years as an assistant surgeon in the Public Health Service.

4 + 1cubesFour in a row, a fifth to tap with.

0words requiredThe task was demonstrated, not explained.

1914JAMA scaleKnox's scale for estimating mental defect, built on the Ellis Island work.

FROM THE GANGWAY TO THE TEST ROOM

Where the cube test sat in the inspection

If doubt remained, the person was given the cubes, form boards and puzzles. These were often repeated over more than one day, so that fatigue and fear weren't mistaken for defect.Sources [1][2]

CUBE IMITATION

Watch the taps, then tap the same cubes in order

Sequences start at two taps and grow by one. You get two tries at each length; the run ends after two misses at the same length. Like Knox, the page demonstrates and doesn't explain.

READY

LONGEST SEQUENCE COPIED—

THIS RUN

No trials yet.

Sequences are generated at random, not Knox's printed series, and no age norms are applied.

THE ELLIS ISLAND TEST ROOM

The cubes were one of several hands-on tests

KnoxCube ImitationCopy a sequence of taps on four cubes. Length rises until the person fails.

KnoxFeature ProfileAssemble wooden pieces into a human head in profile, with an ear, eye and features.

KnoxShip TestFit cut pieces back together into a picture of a ship.

AdaptedSeguin Form BoardA 19th-century board of shaped holes, timed for speed of fitting the pieces.

Gwyn / KnoxCasuist Form BoardA harder form board in which pieces combine to fill each hole.

Knox described these in a 1914 JAMA paper as a scale for estimating mental defect, with tests arranged by the age at which a normal person could pass them.

A CENTURY OF TAPPING

How the cubes outlived Ellis Island

Rudolf Pintner and Donald Paterson include the Knox cubes in their Scale of Performance Tests, standardising it on American schoolchildren.Sources [2][5]

HOWARD ANDREW KNOX · 1885–1949

Four years that shaped performance testing

1885Born in Romulus, New York.

1908Graduates in medicine from Dartmouth.

1908–12Serves as an army medical officer before joining the Public Health Service.

1912Posted to Ellis Island as an assistant surgeon in the Public Health Service.

1913–15Publishes a series of papers on mental testing of immigrants, including the 1914 JAMA scale and a 1915 Scientific American article.

1916Leaves the Public Health Service and Ellis Island for general practice in New Jersey; publishes no more on testing.

1949Dies. His work was largely forgotten until historians, notably John Richardson, revived it.

KNOX VS GODDARDHenry Goddard visited Ellis Island in 1912–13 and claimed that large shares of some immigrant groups were “feeble-minded” on translated Binet tests. Knox's performance tests were partly a response: he thought Goddard's methods unfair to people who had no schooling and no English.

STILL A GATEKEEPERFairer tests were still tools of exclusion. They were used to certify people as mentally defective for deportation under laws shaped by eugenic fears about immigration. The 1924 Immigration Act's quotas came after Knox had left.

REFERENCES

[1]Richardson, J. T. E. (2003). Howard Andrew Knox and the origins of performance testing on Ellis Island, 1912–1916. History of Psychology, 6(2), 143–170.doi

[2]Richardson, J. T. E. (2011). Howard Andrew Knox: Pioneer of Intelligence Testing at Ellis Island. Columbia University Press.cup.columbia.edu

[3]National Park Service. Ellis Island: medical inspection.nps.gov

[4]Knox, H. A. (1914). A scale, based on the work at Ellis Island, for estimating mental defect. JAMA, 62(10), 741–747.doi

[5]Pintner, R., & Paterson, D. G. (1917). A Scale of Performance Tests. Appleton (Internet Archive).archive.org

[6]Wikipedia. Corsi block-tapping test.en.wikipedia.org

[7]Wikipedia. Howard Andrew Knox.en.wikipedia.org

[8]Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Knox cube test (collections search).si.edu

[9]Gould, S. J. (1996). The Mismeasure of Man, rev. ed., on Goddard at Ellis Island. Norton.wwnorton.com

Editorial record: new page in this project, written from general histories of Ellis Island testing and Knox's biography. Neither Knox's 1914 JAMA paper nor Richardson's 2011 book was read for this version, so dates and test attributions should be checked against them. No individual records are reproduced.

KEEP EXPLORING

1910 · The approach Knox resistedGoddard's Binet-SimonGoddard tested immigrants at Ellis Island with translated Binet items and reported high rates of “feeble-mindedness.”1914 · Another 1914 performance testHealy Pictorial CompletionA picture-and-pieces board built for delinquent youth in Chicago, later in Pintner–Paterson too.c. 1919 · Movement imitation in a groupPintner Non-Language TestsPintner turned cube-style imitation into a group test for deaf children and non-English speakers.1918 · Testing without words, at scaleArmy BetaGroup tests for illiterate and non-English-speaking recruits, given by pantomime.

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

Knox's cubes: a test you could give without a shared language.