The tests so far described, because they have to be given to each subject individually, require a great deal of time from the trained examiner, and tests are also needed which can be given to a whole group of people at once. For persons who can read printed directions, a group test can easily be conducted, though much preliminary labor is necessary in selecting and standardizing the questions used. Group testing of foreigners, illiterates, and young children is more difficult, but has been accomplished, the directions being conveyed orally or by means of pantomime.

The first extensive use of group intelligence tests was made in the American Army during the Great War. A committee of the American Psychological Association prepared and standardized the tests, and persuaded the Army authorities to let them try them out in the camps. So successful were these tests--when supplemented, in doubtful cases, by individual tests--that they were adopted in the receiving {277} camps; and they proved very useful both in detecting those individuals whose intelligence was too low to enable them to learn the duties of a soldier, and those who, from high intelligence, could profitably be trained for officers.

The "Alpha test", used on recruits who could read, consisted of eight pages of questions, each page presenting a different type of problem for solution. On the first page were rows of circles, squares, etc., to which certain things were to be done in accordance with spoken commands. The subject had to attend carefully to what he was told to do, since he was given each command only once, and some of the commands called for rather complicated reactions. The second page consisted of arithmetical problems, ranging from very simple at the top of the page to more difficult ones below, though none of them went into the more technical parts of arithmetic. One page tested the subject's information on matters of common knowledge; and another called for the selection of the best of three reasons offered for a given fact, as, for example, "Why is copper used for electric wires? Because--it is mined in Montana--it is a good conductor--it is the cheapest metal." Another page presented disarranged sentences (as, "wet rain always is", or "school horses all to go"), to be put straight mentally, and indicated on the paper as true or false.

Many group tests are now in use, and among them some performance tests. In the latter, pictures are often employed; sometimes the subject has to complete the picture by drawing in a missing part, sometimes he has to cancel from the picture a part that is superfluous. He may have to draw a pencil line indicating the shortest path through a maze, or he may have to continue a series of marks which starts off according to a definite plan. The problems set him under each class range from very easy to fairly difficult.{278}