A Study of the Cavd Intelligence Examination

In Thorndike's recent volume, The Measurement of Intelligence, he describes in detail the construction of a new scale for measuring intel lect, or as he prefers to call it, a segment of intellect. This scale, briefly called CAVD, consists of tasks involving sentence-completion (C), arithmetic problems (A), vocabulary (V), and directions (D), the last test requiring the reading and comprehension of sentences and paragraphs. Forty composite tasks?10 each, of C, A, V, and D?are placed at each of the 17 levels of difficulty ranging in equal steps from level A to level Q, or from a difficulty-level that an individual whose mental age is 3 years can just succeed with (i.e. 50 percent correct) to one that only 1/5 of college graduates can succeed with. Besides fur nishing a more extensively graduated range of difficulty than any other intelligence scale, the test also permits, for the first time, measurements from an empirically determined zero of intellect. Thus it is superior to the usual intelligence examination since individuals may be compared with respect to absolute ability in the functions measured by the scale. Except for certain preliminary studies chiefly concerned with the construction and standardization of the CAVD scale, there are no pub lished data on the relationship of this test to measures of school achieve ment. This is largely because the scale is, as yet, not generally available. So far, too, only one form has been constructed. The present study was planned with the idea of adding somewhat to our knowledge of the CAVD by computing correlations between the upper five levels (M, N, 0, P, Q) and college grades in the various re quired freshmen subjects. Incidentally, it was hoped that some light might be thrown upon the constitution of that segment of intellect measured by CAVD by an examination of the intercorrelations of its parts, as well as the relation of these parts to college grades. Our experimental subjects were 338 freshmen girls in the Brooklyn Branch of Hunter College, New York City, to whom, with the co operation of the Dean and Staff, the upper five levels of CAVD were