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Analysis
- Gallaudet University Press
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Analysis Kenneth 1. Epstein This analysis of the papers in part 8 considers the fundamental question, What techniques of cognitive assessment are the most useful in assessing the hearing-impaired learner and why? This analysis begins with a. brief overview of some important historical events that helped to shape the measurement of cognitive potential. It then considers some of the recent thinking outside the field of deafness about what measurement experts should be doing. Finally, it relates the results reported in this volume to the history and the hopes for the future in the area of cognition and deafness. Historical Review Mental measurement has a relatively short but fascinating history. One can trace that history to attempts to create a biological rationale for white supremacy or to studies designed to find the relationships between intellectual functioning and such physical characteristics as brain weight or cranial capacity. However, the history that is most relevant to the measurement of intelligence as a psychological construct does not begin until the turn of this century. Boring (1950, pp. 570-571) listed nine laboratories in the United States and Europe that were beginning to experiment with psychological tests of intellectual functioning during the 1890s. In 1904, Alfred Binet began a study for the French Minister of Public Education to identify children who were not successful in normal classrooms, so that special educational programs could be established to help them. Binet's work is especially interesting because of its empirical nature and its practical objective. In 1909, he developed batteries of short, everyday types of tasks that he believed to involve basic processes of reasoning such as "direction (ordering), comprehension, invention, and censure (correction )" (cited in Gould, 1981, p. 149). That approach is decidedly atheoretical; and, there is no search for a basic human characteristic. We also see no attempt to build a theory of intelligence. "One might almost say, 'It matters very little what the tests are so long as they are numerous'" (Binet, 1911, cited in Gould, 1981, p. 149). Gould (1981, p. 155) summarized Binet's approach by identifying three principles for the use of his tests. 1. The scores are a practical device; they do not buttress any theory of intellect. They do not define anything innate or permanent. We may not designate what they measure as intelligence or any other reified entity. 2. The scale is a rough empirical guide for identifying mildly retarded 156 and learning-disabled children who need special help. It is not a device for ranking normal children. 3. Whatever the cause of difficulty in children identified for help, emphasis shall be placed upon improvement through special training . Low scores shall not be used to mark children as innately incapable. Binet's principles seem remarkably modern to us today. They could have been written by an advocate of the proper use of mental tests in response to the kind of criticism of testing that has been heard recently, and they fit very well with the philosophies expressed in this volume. An historical perspective is important as we analyze the measurement of cognitive potential of hearing-impaired individuals because of the mistakes that occurred between Binet's time and today. We should review the mistakes and abuses of the past and try to avoid repeating them. This history is fully described in Steven Jay Gould's book, The Mismeasure of Man (1981). The important point for this analysis is that most of the work on mental testing has been based on two assumptions. The first is that intelligence is something real and tangible, similar to some material object. The second is that one's share of intelligence is governed primarily by heredity. In other words, we may differ with respect to how well we use the intelligence we have, but we each have a set amount. It is only a small leap from the belief that intelligence is a stable entity to the extremist conclusion that the genetic pool can be improved by preventing individuals with only minimal amounts of it from reproducing. Given these assumptions, one can also see the logic of restricting educational opportunities to those individuals with enough intelligence to benefit from it. Otherwise, time and resources would be wasted. As Charles Spearman said in 1927 as part of the rationale for the English 11 + tests, "If once, then, a child of 11 years or so has had his relative amount of g measured in a really accurate manner, the hope of teachers and parents...