Pintner-Paterson Performance Scale (1917)

WHY A PERFORMANCE SCALE

It began in schools for the deaf

Pintner and Paterson had tested deaf children with the Binet scale and got mental ages that reflected language deprivation more than ability. They argued that a deaf child, an immigrant child or a child with a speech disorder needed tasks that could be shown rather than said.

Rather than invent new tests, they gathered the best existing ones from Seguin, Goddard, Healy and Fernald, Knox and others. They fixed the instructions, timed and scored each one, and built age norms for each test.

15testsForm boards, picture puzzles, assembly tasks and one paper test.

4–16age rangeNorms ran roughly from four years to adolescence; not every test covered every age.

10short scaleA shorter version for when time was limited.

0words neededTasks were demonstrated where possible, with gesture instead of speech.

THE FIFTEEN TESTS

Form boards, picture puzzles and a few odd ones

9. ManikinWooden body parts (head, trunk, arms, legs) assembled into a human figure.Origin: Pintner · type: assembly

Test list and origins as given in later histories of the scale; descriptions are summaries, not the manual's instructions. Which ten tests made up the short scale is not shown, as it wasn't confirmed for this version.

TEST 13 · SUBSTITUTION

Match each shape to its number

The only pencil-and-paper item in the scale. A key pairs five shapes with five numbers, and the child fills in the number under each shape in a row as fast as possible. Here you click the number. Twenty items, timed, with errors counted.

Shapes here are our own; the 1917 key used its own figures. No 1917 norms are applied.

Press start

SCORING · MEDIAN MENTAL AGE

Each test gives an age; the scale takes the middle one

Every test had its own age norms from time, moves and errors. The child's overall mental age was the median of the test ages, so one very good or very bad test couldn't swing the result. The authors also offered a point-scale score. Set five test ages and see the median.

Mare and Foal8.0Seguin9.0Manikin7.5Ship Test12.0Cube Imitation8.5

MEDIAN MENTAL AGE8 y 6 m

MEAN, FOR COMPARISON9 y 0 m

With no outliers, median and mean agree. Push one slider to an extreme to see the difference.

WHAT IT LED TO

From a box of puzzles to Wechsler's performance scale

Wechsler's performance half takes over object assembly (the manikin and profile idea), picture completion and digit symbol (substitution).Sources [2][5]

1884–1942

Rudolf Pintner

1884Born in Lytham, England; educated at Edinburgh and Leipzig, where he took his doctorate in 1913 under Wundt's successors.

1912–21Ohio State University; studies deaf children with Paterson.

1921Moves to Teachers College, Columbia, where he stays until his death.

1923–31Intelligence Testing: Methods and Results, and widely used group tests including the Pintner–Cunningham Primary Test.

1892–1961

Donald G. Paterson

1892Born in Columbus, Ohio.

1917Co-authors the scale while a graduate student under Pintner at Ohio State.

1918Army psychological examining in the First World War.

1921–61University of Minnesota; a founder of applied and vocational psychology and the Minnesota mechanical-ability tests.

REFERENCES

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

[2]Boake, C. (2002). From the Binet–Simon to the Wechsler–Bellevue: tracing the history of intelligence testing. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 24(3), 383–405.doi

[3]Pintner, R. (1923). Intelligence Testing: Methods and Results. Holt (Internet Archive search).archive.org

[4]Arthur, G. (1930). A Point Scale of Performance Tests. Commonwealth Fund (Internet Archive search).archive.org

[5]Wechsler, D. (1939). The Measurement of Adult Intelligence. Williams & Wilkins.archive.org

[6]Pintner, R., & Paterson, D. G. (1915). The Binet scale and the deaf child. Journal of Educational Psychology, 6(4), 201–210.doi

[7]Wikipedia. Rudolf Pintner.en.wikipedia.org

[8]Wikipedia. Donald G. Paterson.en.wikipedia.org

Editorial record: new page in this project, written from general histories of performance testing. The 1917 book is public domain and digitised but was not read for this version, and the reference links were not checked to load. The test list, origins and dates should be checked against it.

KEEP EXPLORING

1914 · Test 15 in the scaleKnox Cube ImitationKnox's Ellis Island tapping test, standardised here on schoolchildren.1914 · Test 12 in the scaleHealy Pictorial CompletionHealy's painted scene with square holes, built for delinquent youth in Chicago.c. 1919 · The group follow-upPintner Non-Language TestsPintner's paper version for whole classes of deaf or non-English-speaking children.1939 · Where the puzzles ended upWechsler-BellevueObject assembly, picture completion and digit symbol became Wechsler's performance subtests.

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

Pintner–Paterson: fifteen puzzles in place of words.

It began in schools for the deaf

Form boards, picture puzzles and a few odd ones

Match each shape to its number

Each test gives an age; the scale takes the middle one

From a box of puzzles to Wechsler's performance scale

Show, don't tell. Then measure.