Psychology I / Foundations of Intelligence
Practice question · Multiple choice

Binet built his test to identify children needing extra help, and warned against treating the score as a fixed capacity. Within twenty years it was being used for exactly that. What does the history illustrate?

Hints
  1. Ask what a number carries with it when it travels to a new user.
  2. Binet's stated purpose was intervention. What did a fixed-capacity reading license instead?
Show the answer

C. That a measure's purpose is not carried in the number

Why

A score is portable and its purpose is not. Binet's diagnostic tool became a sorting instrument for immigration restriction and sterilisation laws, against his explicit warning, which is why 'what will this measure be used for by someone who does not share my aims' is a design question, not an afterthought.

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