Lewis Terman

Lewis Terman: Contribution to Psychology

Lewis Madison Terman, an American psychologist, was a proponent of intelligence measurement and testing. Terman also had a profound interest in giftedness. He became a pioneer of longitudinal research on gifted children, stemming from his belief that having high intelligence doesn’t make one an outcast but an asset to society.

Fig. 1 - Portrait of Lewis Terman.

Lewis Terman is known for his adaptation of Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon’s work. Terman would call his adaptation the Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale, introduced in his 1916 publication, The Measurement of Intelligence: An Explanation of and a Complete Guide for the Use of the Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale.

As one of the leaders in intelligence testing, Terman’s expertise helped expand psychological research and measurement of individual and group differences through the development of intelligence tests. Terman’s work helped shape the course of educational and cognitive psychology, influencing how we perceive intelligence and giftedness and how we approach teaching and learning in the classroom.

Lewis Terman: Achievements

Lewis Terman’s firm belief that mental tests measure intelligence and his innovative idea of adding an IQ score to his Stanford-Binet led to one of Terman’s most outstanding achievements. In the 1920s, Terman’s Stanford-Binet became the most popular intelligence test among other competitors’ revisions of the Binet intelligence scale.

Fig. 2 - Taking a test.

As Terman rose to prominence in the field of intelligence testing in America, he collaborated with other psychologists to administer tests to members of the armed forces. A modified version of the Stanford-Binet was used to determine whether a service member would advance in rank or be discharged immediately. About 1.75 million men took the test.

Following his role in the army testing program, Lewis Terman sought to introduce intelligence tests for grades 3 to 8 in schools, which he called National Intelligence Tests. Terman aimed to introduce the idea of grouping students based on similar ability levels. With a close partnership with the National Education Association, he helped develop school programs incorporating mental tests and monitoring different ability groups.

Terman had a philosophy wherein American society is divided into different social ranks based on their merits (e.g., giftedness). Thus, he also pushed for school achievement tests, the Stanford Achievement Test, thanks to his colleagues at Stanford. This test determines who is intellectually gifted so schools can hone them as potential leaders in society.

Lewis Terman’s Study of Giftedness

Lewis Terman took another step in turning his vision into reality through his longitudinal study, Genetic Studies of Genius: Mental and Physical Traits of a Thousand Gifted Children, in 1921. Terman’s research aims to see the individual differences between gifted children and children with average intelligence.

Fig. 3 - Girl reading books.

Terman’s study sample group comprised elementary and secondary students in public schools in California, where the majority were from the Bay Area, close to Stanford University. He and his team also asked teachers from these schools to identify gifted children among their students. Nominated candidates took the National Intelligence Test.

Afterward, those whose scores reached the top 10% took the Stanford-Binet test. The final selection of participants involved in the Standford-Binet test included only those whose IQ scores were at least 140 and above. They’ve had roughly 1,500 samples of gifted kids, most of whom were White, middle-class, and had parents with higher levels of education than the general population.

Granted by the Commonwealth Foundation and Stanford University a total of $50,000, Terman and his team decided on 16 categories of data to be collected from his gifted subjects.

Terman compared the abilities of his gifted participants to those of a control group of students from California schools of a similar age.

In his gifted children study, Terman found that those with high intelligence did not appear as how people usually portrayed them to be—weaklings, loners, or misfits. Terman’s study showed that these gifted children live as typically as other children, with their hobbies and interests. Those with high intelligence were superior academically and in terms of health, physical, and socioemotional development.

Terman’s gifted study continued, where he and his team followed the gifted children up to their midlife. Both intelligence and professional success continue to be significantly higher than the norm for college grads. The gifted sample also didn’t show many signs of serious mental issues, criminal behavior, or alcoholism. For the follow-up of Terman’s gifted subjects to late adulthood, Robert R. Sears succeeded Terman as head of research.

Lewis Terman: Theory of Intelligence

According to Lewis Terman, intelligence is the capacity to think about things abstractly.

Fig. 4 - A little girl who is excited to learn, pixabay.com

While Terman defined someone with very high intelligence as having “quick, understanding, insatiable curiosity, extensive information, retentive memory, early speech, unusual vocabulary, etc.” (Terman, 1925, p. 287).

Borrowing the suggested label, Intelligence Quotient or IQ, by William Stern, Terman calculated IQ using the Stanford-Binet by dividing the mental age by the chronological age, then multiplying by 100.

Terman believed that heredity, not environment or other factors, explains high intelligence. He carried this belief into his work as he advocated for intelligence tests, which he thought were a measure of innate ability. Terman advocated for intelligence tests because he believed in the importance of nurturing gifted children so that they could advance in their studies according to their aptitude rather than their chronological age.

However, Terman’s view on intelligence and mental abilities didn’t go unchallenged. Schooling was cited by George D. Stoddard and his team at the University of Iowa as having a significant influence on preschoolers’ and elementary students’ intelligence scores. They emphasized the role of environmental stimulation in increasing children’s intelligence, as such intelligence tests would not help predict long-term student outcomes.

Despite criticism, schools kept up the practice of mental testing among students; however, the civil rights movement presented a new challenge. Though he still held steadfast to his meritocratic vision of America, Terman eventually accepted that the family environment contributes to success among those with superior intelligence.

Lewis Terman: Experiment

Beyond differences in intelligence, Lewis Terman also explored differences in gender identity and marriage.

Masculinity and Femininity

Lewis Terman and Catharine Cox Miles introduced a test to measure masculinity and femininity. In 1936, they released a test called the “Attitude-Interest Analysis Test,” which consisted of 450 multiple-choice questions designed to assess a person's preferences for hobbies, interests, and reactions to stressful situations.

Lewis Terman put a lot of emphasis on conforming to the gender norms of the 1930s. This emphasis is shown in his test and his belief that gender differences need to be cultivated. This is to ensure that both men and women have roles that fit them in a society that is becoming more urban and industrialized.

Marital Happiness

In 1934, Lewis Terman conducted another study on married and separated San Francisco couples. Terman’s results went against the common belief that sexual chemistry was the most important factor in a happy marriage. Instead, he found that each partner’s personality and upbringing had a greater impact on the success of a marriage. Terman said that the key to a happy marriage is to accept your partner’s needs and your role in the marriage.

Lewis Terman: Quotes

“If I am remembered very long after my death, it will probably be in connection with my studies of gifted children [and] the construction of mental tests” (Terman, 1930a, p. 330).

“exceptionally superior intelligence occurs with greater frequency among boys than girls” (Terman, 1925, p. 54).

"The fact that superiority of the first born registers in childhood early as clearly as in the achievements of adult life suggests that the causes are to be sought in native endowment rather than in the environment and education" (Terman, 1925, p. 134).

. . . the desirability of more rapid advancement of the bright child. This is important. But grade skipping is far from an ideal or complete solution of the problem. The real need is for a differentiation of the curriculum and of methods such as will give to every child the type of diet from which he can derive the maximum nourishment. (p. 364)

Intelligence is chiefly a matter of native endowment. . . . In fact, the mathematical coefficient of family resemblances in mental traits, particularly intelligence, has been found to be almost exactly the same as for such physical traits as height, weight, cephalic index, etc. (p. 659)