Army Alpha and Beta tests

n. Two screening devices developed by psychologists for the U.S. Army to classify the large number of recruits who entered the service for World War I. The Army Alpha test was a verbal test of intelligence, and the Army Beta test was a nonverbal test of intelligence used for illiterate and non-English-speaking individuals. These tests were the first intelligence tests given to large groups of individuals (over 1,700,000), as opposed to the commonly used individual administrations of intelligence tests. The findings from this large normative sample fueled a great deal of interest in intellectual testing. The design of these tests provided some of the foundation (along with the Stanford-Binet and Bellevue intelligence scales) for later intelligence tests including the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale.     - DGa