Stencil Design Test by Grace Arthur Ph.D.
The Stencil Design Test – a revolutionary non-verbal IQ test by Grace Arthur Ph.D.
The Stencil Design Test was created by Grace Arthur after many years researching non-verbal IQ testing in children and adults.
Mary Grace Arthur (1883-1967) was born in Minnesota, graduated from Hamline University in St. Paul in 1917, and worked as a psychologist in the Chisholm, Minnesota, public schools while pursuing a master’s degree (1918) and a PhD. (1924) at the University of Minnesota.
She was particularly interested in developing intelligence tests for children with limited verbal abilities in English such as the deaf, disabled and Native Americans. While studying for her master’s degree, she observed that additional non-verbal testing was required to assess children who didn’t have the required language skills for verbal tests.
She saw that on its own, the widely used Stanford-Binet IQ test was insufficient.
The Arthur Point Scale of Performance
Following on from this, for her Ph.D master’s thesis, she developed her performance ‘point scale’, a non-verbal testing set as a supplement to the highly verbalized Stanford-Binet tests. This was designed for people having language difficulties, hearing impairments and learning disabilities.
Prior to developing the Stencil Design Test, Grace Arthur used IQ testing tools created by other psychologists. The ‘Arthur Point Scale’ consisted of eight non-verbal IQ tests, each assessing different cognitive skills. Her collection of non-verbal testing devices looked something like this…
- Healy Pictures 1 / Healy Pictures 2
- 2-Figure Board
- Kohs Block Design Test
- Porteus Mazes
- Seguin Board
- Mare and Foal
- Knox Cubes
- Manikin Test (not shown)
Grace Arthur needed to ensure her non-verbal Arthur Point Scale was equivalent to the Stanford-Binet verbal IQ test: it was imperative that the same IQ scores were achieved whichever test the child took. To this end, her work consisted of detailed statistical analysis of all her children’s scores, until she was satisfied that the correlation was as precise as possible. In this way her tests, and the Stanford-Binet, were standardized to a new level, enabling clinical psychologists to use her tests alongside the Stanford-Binet with confidence.
She continued researching and testing non-verbal IQ tests and in the early 1930s she published her major works with the support of The Commonwealth Fund. In two comprehensive volumes, she presented in detail the history of the construction and standardization of her non-verbal scale.
As she said, these works demonstrated ‘that intelligence as measured by the Binet scales can also be measured without recourse to the two types of abstract material known as words and numbers’.
However, Grace Arthur still wasn’t satisfied with the Arthur Point Scale.
There were three problems:
- Firstly, the tests were too much geared towards younger children and those with learning disabilities.
- Secondly, the pictorial tests still had cultural bias restricting their use with children from other cultures.
- And thirdly, some of the test elements, most notably the Kohs Cubes Block Test, were seen as a fun puzzle game that the children liked to play, thus there was a learning or practice effect which skewed the scores.
Development of the Stencil Design Test
Around 1940, Grace Arthur came across a commercial product that showed promise as a design test that could solve these problems.
The product consisted of 81 colorful designs in the form of symmetrical patterns. Grace Arthur cut the designs apart, mounted them on 3×5 inch filing cards, and arranged and numbered them in order of estimated difficulty.
Along with these designs were 20 four-inch cards, some with solid colors and some with stencil patterns cut in them. These were numbered and a letter placed in each corner so that the cards used to copy a design could be indicated by number, and the position of the card could be indicated by use of the letter.
She tested these with a psychology class, timing how long it took them to complete the designs. These values were averaged for each of the 81 designs. On the basis of these results, the 81 designs were reduced to 62 by removing those which seemed to be least useful. These remaining 62 were divided into two parallel series of 31 each, and arranged in order of approximate difficulty.
Grace Arthur then gave her new non-verbal test to two master’s students, who between them evaluated their usefulness as an IQ test with children of normal intelligence between the ages of 5 and 15.
The students concluded that this test possessed value as an intelligence test but felt that the test as a whole was too difficult for the lower age levels.
The launch of the Stencil Design Test
A year after this study was published, Grace Arthur released the final version Stencil Design Test in two formats: one for people with normal color vision, and a second one, using black and white stencils, for those with visual impairments.
Professionally printed and using accurate die-cut stencils, her design tests successfully addressed the weaknesses identified in the preliminary study. The number of cards in the test was 12 stencils and 6 solid cards, in six easy to differentiate colors. There were 80 progressive designs to solve, from the simplest to the most complex.
Grace Arthur had found her alternative to the Kohs Block Design Test that could be used with individuals of higher intelligence and that didn’t contain any culturally sensitive material.
Stenciletto – the evolution of the Stencil Design Test into a shapes game for children.
Grace Arthur’s work spanned several decades of detailed research and led to a new understanding of intelligence. Her innovative Stencil Design Test is now in museums and psychological collections and no longer used for intelligence testing. However, an updated version of her work is now available as a shapes game for children. Although this game no longer tests intelligence, it can be used for teaching and learning critical thinking skills that are at the heart of intelligent behavior. The game is suitable for all ages and abilities, from children from 5 years to adult. You can learn more about the shapes game here:
Simple shapes game for children
Photo Credits
All photos published are Creative Commons License. More details about each non-verbal test can be found in the URLs.
1. Healy Test 1
Science Museum Group. Healy Pictorial Completion Test II. 2006-10
1. Healy Test 2
Science Museum Group. Healy Pictorial Completion Test I, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1918-1919. 2009-35
2. Form Board 2
Science Museum Group. Psychometric Test, Chicago, United States of America, 1905-1915. 1994-1255/24
3. Kohs Block Design Test
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/kohs-block-design-test-performance-1788330415
4. Porteus Maze
https://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/666415
5. Seguin Board
Science Museum Group. Intelligence test, Chicago, United States, 1915-1925. 1994-1255/25
6. Mare and Foal
Science Museum Group. ‘Mare and Foal’ picture completion test. 1996-277/80
7. Wooden Cubes Construction Test
Science Museum Group. Wooden cubes construction test, 1910-1930.. 1996-277/127
Stanford-Binet IQ Test 1937
Science Museum Group. ‘Form M Revised Stanford-Binet Scales’, IQ test, United States, 1937. 1996-277/118
Stencil Design Test 1
Faculty of Psychology. University of Madrid
https://patrimoniodigital.ucm.es/s/exposiciones/item/69170
REFERENCES
- Catherine Boulger and Grace Arthur, “An unpublished design test”, Journal of Consulting Psychology, Vol 8(1), Jan 1944, 31-32. American Association for Applied Psychology
- Arthur, M. G., “An Absolute Intelligence Scale: A Study in Method”, University of Minnesota Master’s Dissertation, 1918.
- Arthur, M. G. “A Group Point Scale for the Measurement of Intelligence”, University of Minnesota Ph.D. Dissertation, 1924.
- Arthur, M. G., “A Point Scale of Performance Tests I”, New York: Commonwealth Fund, 1930.
- Arthur, M. G., “A Point Scale of Performance Tests II”, New York: Commonwealth Fund, 1933.
FURTHER READING
Mary Grace Arthur: Expanding the Measures of Intelligence
http://kristinbloomberg.com/hamline-history/mary-grace-arthur/
Mary Grace Arthur: Pioneering Psychologist and Advocate for Equality in Education
https://therivetingrosies.com/?p=358