Eleven subtests borrowed, one new
For the 1939 adult scale, Wechsler picked eleven subtests from existing tests. His aim, in his words, was "not to produce a set of brand new tests".2,9 The children's version kept that approach: eleven subtests adapted from the Wechsler-Bellevue, plus a new Mazes subtest.5
Intelligence has many sides, so the test does too
Wechsler saw intelligence as a complex ability made up of many skills, so a test of it had to be varied. He divided the skills into verbal and performance, then used factor analysis to decide which subtests went on each side.3
Each child is scored against others the same age.3 In the Wechsler system, each subtest's raw score becomes a scaled score with a mean of 10 and SD of 3. These are then combined into IQs with a mean of 100 and SD of 15.4
Digit Span: hold the numbers in mind
Digit Span was one of the 12 original subtests and has stayed in every edition. It measures working memory.5,7 Watch the digits appear one at a time, then enter them. Each length gets two tries, and a round ends when both tries at the same length are wrong.
Random digits, one per second. These aren't WISC items, instructions or norms.
What happened to the original 12
The WISC-R kept all 12 subtests, and the WISC-III kept them too. The WISC-IV dropped three and moved three others to supplementary status.5,6
The WISC-III also added Symbol Search and four index scores.7 The WISC-IV has 15 subtests, 10 of them core, and was normed on 2,200 US children aged 6 to 16.7 The WISC-V (2014) has five primary indexes.2
A year older, and a new sample
The 1949 norms were suspected of ethnic and socioeconomic bias. The WISC-R was re-normed on a sample that better represented ethnic minorities and children from lower-income families.2 It kept the same subtests but moved the age range from 5–15 to 6–16.7
The first edition was translated into Portuguese for Brazil by Ana Maria Poppovic in 1964. Wechsler scales are still widely used with Brazilian children.8
The size and make-up of the 1949 standardization sample aren't given in these sources.
References
- [1]Wikipedia contributors. Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (accessed 30 Sept 2026).en.wikipedia.org
- [2]Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). EBSCO Research Starters: Health and Medicine.ebsco.com
- [3]Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. Gale Encyclopedia, via Encyclopedia.com.encyclopedia.com
- [4]The Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children: the WISC-R, WISC-III, and WPPSI-R. In Handbook of Psychological Assessment. Springer.link.springer.com
- [5]WISC (course presentation on the WISC editions). Scribd.scribd.com
- [6]The WISC-IV (review paper). Canadian Psychological Association (PDF).cpa.ca (PDF)
- [7]Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. Psynso (2017).psynso.com
- [8]Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children: an overview. ScienceDirect Topics (Psychology).sciencedirect.com
- [9]First publication of subtests in the Stanford-Binet 5, WAIS-IV, WISC-V, and WPPSI-IV (2019). Intelligence. ScienceDirect.sciencedirect.com
Related historical tests
The adult test that the WISC adapted. Eleven of the WISC's twelve subtests came from it, with easier items added so that young children could be tested.
Reproducing printed designs with coloured blocks. Block Design carried this format through the Wechsler-Bellevue into the WISC's performance scale.
Printed mazes of increasing difficulty. Mazes was the one subtest added specifically for the WISC, and the WISC-IV later dropped it.
A children's ability test scored from a drawing. It shows how young children were assessed before Wechsler's battery offered separate verbal and performance IQs.
Raven's version for children aged 5 to 11, from two years earlier. It relies on a single non-verbal format, where the WISC samples twelve different tasks.
Also from 1949, but deliberately free of words and schooling. The WISC's verbal scale measures exactly the knowledge and language the Culture Fair test leaves out.