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Mental tests and fossils
Author(s) -
Littman Richard A.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/jhbs.20044
Subject(s) - creatures , psychology , test (biology) , ball (mathematics) , field (mathematics) , archaeology , history , ecology , mathematics , biology , mathematical analysis , natural (archaeology) , pure mathematics
This article investigates the origins of the intelligence test item known as the Ball and Field in Lewis M. Terman's Stanford Revision of the Binet‐Simon Intelligence Scale. The question was initially raised by the resemblance of paleontological ocean bed floor tracings left by ancient creatures to the responses produced by children given the Ball and Field Test. A version of the Ball and Field Test was invented by Clifton F. Hodge, one of Terman's graduate school instructors who devised it as a result of his observations about how birds and other animals navigated and found their way. He then tested how humans and children located hidden objects and found that, in many ways, animals and humans used similar strategies for getting home or finding objects. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.