6 Psyche Cattell

General Biography

Psyche Cattell was an American Psychologist who dedicated a majority of her career to focusing on childhood intelligence. Born on August 2, 1893, in Garrison, New York, she was the third of seven children (Sokal, 1991). There is little known about her mother Josephine Owen Cattell, but her father James McKeen Cattell was also a psychologist. Due to her father’s employment at Columbia University, Cattell did not attend school but was instead taught at home by graduate students of her father (Sokal,1991). She struggled with reading as a child and showed symptoms of dyslexia, although she was never formally diagnosed with it (Praeztel, 2005).

Despite her academic difficulties as a child, Cattell continued to work hard and pursue undergraduate education at the Sargent School for Physical Education. As a result of these academic struggles, Cattell received no financial support from her father and was forced to work as a research assistant during her time at university (Praetzel, 2005). Following her time at Sargent, Cattell spent 1919 to 1921 conducting statistical analyses which would be used in her father’s third edition publication of American Men of Science (Bazar, 2010). Cattell then went on to pursue further education at Cornell University but was unable to receive a formal degree because she had never obtained a high school diploma.

Eventually Cattell went on to study at Harvard where she received both her master’s and a Doctorate of Education in 1925 and 1927 respectively (Sokal 1991). During her time at Harvard, she worked at the Psycho-Education Clinic and made contributions to the Harvard Growth Study (Bazar, 2010). The work she conducted here was primarily focused on measures of childhood growth and calculating correlations between that and school standing (Bazar, 2010).

Following her graduation, she began working at Harvard University School of Public Health as a research fellow and was tasked with developing a test for infants and toddlers that would be capable of sufficiently evaluating the children’s mental and intellectual capacities (Praetzel, 2005). It was during this time that she began developing the Cattell Intelligence Test, which is an extension of the Stanford-Binet IQ test but geared towards infants and young children (Bazar, 2010). In 1936, Cattell ended her work with Harvard University and three years later, in 1939, she relocated to Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

In her time in Pennsylvania, she worked as Chief Psychologist at Lancaster Guidance Clinic and wrote articles on child eating problems and discipline (Praetzel, 2005). In 1940, Cattell published a book called The Measurement of Intelligence in Infants and Young Children, which introduced the Cattell Infant Intelligence Scale (Bazar, 2010). On top of her work at the Guidance Clinic, she also worked as a psychologist in the Lebanon County Mental Health Clinic from 1939 to 1942 (Sokal, 1991). While remaining busy with her jobs as a psychologist, she also opened The West End Nursery School, which was a daycare for children with a focus on developing intelligence in the early stages of life (Sokal,1991).

In 1963, at the age of 70, Cattell was forced out of the Guidance Clinic and began writing regular columns for the Lancaster New Era (Sokal,1991). During the time following the Guidance Clinic, she also published Raising Children with Love and Limits in 1972 (Praetzel, 2005). In 1974 at the age of 80, Cattell closed The West End Nursery School, which at this point had been renamed Cattell School, as well as discontinuing her column in the newspaper. Cattell was never married but she adopted two children, Hudson and Jowain in the 1930’s, and was one of the first unmarried women in the United States to adopt a child (Bazar, 2010). She spent the remainder of her life in Moravian Manor in Lititz, Pennsylvania where she died on April 17,1989 (Sokal,1991). Cattell was 95 years old when she passed away.

Important Achievements

Cattell, as an influential figure in psychology, accomplished many things in her life. According to Praetzel (2005), Cattell originally graduated with her Doctorate in education, making her the first woman to earn that degree. She was influenced to look into psychology through her father’s work and the psychology electives she took, where her interest in the development of children blossomed. Cattell created the Cattell Infant Intelligence Scale, which gave her incredible notoriety amongst researchers and clinicians alike, and it is still used today, though it is not the prime metric for testing intelligence (Bazar, 2010). This intelligence test tested children up to 30 months of age and utilized common household items, so it could be as generalized as possible (Praetzel, 2005). This test, according to Bazar (2010), contained 95 items, which were directed towards the different age groups. These groups included 2-12 months, every second month between 13-24 months, and 25-30 months (Bazar, 2010).

Cattell also opened the West End Nursery School in 1941, which had the primary focus of educating children at younger ages, and was the first of its kind (Bazar, 2010). The West End Nursery School, later named The Cattell School, was an incredibly large success, and only closed down when Cattell was 80 years old, according to Bazar (2010). In 1972, Cattell published Raising Children with Love and Limits, which was a novel that combined many ideas that were captured in her columns she contributed to the Lancaster New Era newspaper (Bazar, 2010). This column provided advice on areas of raising children in their early childhood, including handling a child’s jealousy of a new baby in a family and other common household issues that may arise (Praetzel, 2005).

Historical Context

Cattell’s work in the field of psychology was influenced by several factors, including her father, previous research published in her area of interest, and various war efforts. Similarly, Cattell’s work left an impact on the assessment of child intelligence as well as the lives of many children and families (Praetzel, 2005).

Cattell’s father, James McKeen Cattell, became the first professor of psychology at an American university in 1889, according to the American Psychological Association (2017). Cattell’s first educational experience took place at home, taught by her father’s students (Sokal, 1991). Catell also assisted her father in doing the statistical analyses for one of his publications titled American Men of Science (Sokal, 1991). Thus from an early age, Cattell and her sister were introduced to the communities of university and upper-level education. This experience led Cattell and her sister to enroll at Cornell University, however they were not eligible for formal degrees due to their lack of high school diplomas. Despite Cattell’s lack of formal early education, her probable learning disability, and the fact that she had no financial support from her father, Cattell was able to still pursue higher education (Bazar, 2010).

In the early 20th century, education started to become more regulated and required for children across the world, and governments needed a way to scientifically assess the learning abilities of children (Shiraev, 2015). In 1905, the Binet IQ test was developed as a method to assess intelligence. However, according to Praetzel (2005), Cattell recognized that this test did not adequately assess the intelligence of infants and toddlers. Because of this, Cattell’s task became to expand upon the Stanford-Binet IQ test in an attempt to make it more appropriate for assessing young children. This effort resulted in the Cattell Infant Intelligence Scale.

Cattell was not only influenced by Binet’s IQ test, but also by Jean Piaget’s publications. In 1920, Piaget published his research on child cognition, which brought about widespread interest in the study of cognition in children (“History of Psychology,” 2019). By this time, Cattell had experience with researching measurements of child growth within schools. According to Bazar (2010), in the later part of this decade, Cattell shifted her focus to measuring child intelligence, building upon the data she gathered from her research at Harvard. Because of the downfalls of the Binet IQ test and the influence of recent research on child cognition and development, Cattell continued to research child intelligence for several years, eventually culminating in her book, The Measurement of Intelligence in Infants and Young Children (Praetzel, 2005).

During the period in which Cattell was performing her research, the United States was experiencing several unique cultural and political changes. World War I was taking place as Cattell’s interest in research was developing, and the efforts of many American psychologists turned towards the war. In 1917, standardized intelligence tests that were in place at the time, such as Binet’s, were being used to classify Army members (“History of Psychology,” 2019). After World War I came to an end, the United States was heading towards the path of the Great Depression, and eventually the onset of World War II. During the time in which World War II was affecting the United States, Cattell was running her children’s school. Due to more women being employed out of the home during this time, the enrollment at the Cattell School increased significantly (Bazar, 2010).

In terms of the climate of the field of psychology at the time, the early 20th century was predominantly interested in Behaviorism, as John B. Watson published his “Psychology as Behavior” in 1913 (“History of Psychology,” 2019). Similarly, B.F. Skinner’s introduction of operant conditioning in 1937 had quickly gained attention, as did the beginnings of Gestalt Psychology in 1935. Another influence at the time was Sigmund Freud and his ideas on psychoanalysis (“History of Psychology,” 2019).

Towards the end of Cattell’s career, retirement laws in the United States forced her to retire at the age of 70 (Bazar, 2010). However, she did not cease to share her influence with others. She continued to write columns in her local newspaper, and she published another book in which she outlined solutions to common problems that children face (Praetzel, 2005). These writings as well as the Cattell Infant Intelligence Scale continued to influence others for many years, even beyond her death.

Several psychologists went on to create intelligence scales that were influenced heavily by Cattell’s work. One such psychologist was A.R. Gilliland, who developed the Northwestern Infant Intelligence Scale in 1948. Gilliland even measured his own test against Cattell’s to identify whether they yielded similar results (Gilliland, 1948). The revised version of the California First Year Mental Scale also took influence from Cattell. In this revised scale, An Infant Scale of Mental Development, Nancy Bayley borrowed heavily from and “adopted” items from the Cattell Infant Intelligence Scale (Stott, 1963).

Historical Impact

Cattell is known in psychology for her work studying the cognitive development of children. Although she opened a nursery school for children that operated for an extended period of time, her biggest impact in psychology was her development of the Cattell Infant Intelligence Scale in 1940 (Young, 2015). The development of this scale, which was based on the Stanford-Binet scale, allowed intelligence testing to be administered to children ages 2 to 30 months old as it was more tailored to this specific age group whereas previous tests did not contain activities that appealed to this age group’s interests (Young, 2015). The Cattell Scale was used for many years after its development, but its use began to decline when it was shown that “measurements of intelligence have extremely limited predictive power with respect to later childhood intelligence,” and eventually by the latter half of the 20th century the scale would no longer be used as the only way to evaluate infant intelligence (Young, 2015).

Although the Cattell Infant Intelligence Scale is no longer used today as the sole source for measuring infant intelligence, that does not mean that it did not have an impact in psychology and cognitive/ intelligence testing in children today. The cognitive assessments and Infant Scale developed by Cattell set a starting point for further research to develop on the topic of childhood intelligence testing. Cattell’s approach to intelligence assumed “that intelligence was more or less a unitary trait, and that development was nonhierarchical” (Shelton, 1989). It is because of this approach and the work of Cattell that research was able to be done on the opposite idea.

Piaget’s work was based on this opposite approach to Cattell’s in which he “viewed development as a series of hierarchical, qualitatively different stages, dependent on the infant’s interactions with his or her environment” (Shelton, 1989). The field of infant intelligence has come a long way since the work of Cattell and her development of the Cattell Infant Intelligence Scale, and although the field has moved beyond solely using her work, there is no doubt that it contributed tremendously to getting infant testing to where it is today.

References

American Psychological Association. (2017). Timeline. American Psychological Association. https://apps.apa.org/StaticContent/timeline-assets/timeline.html

Bazar, J. (2010). Profile of Psyche Cattell. In A. Rutherford (Ed.), Psychology’s Feminist Voices Digital Archive. Retrieved from https://feministvoices.com/profiles/psyche-cattell

Gilliland, A.R. (1948). The Measurement of the Mentality of Infants, Child Development, 19(3), 155-158. https://doi.org/10.2307/1125713

History of psychology: Timeline. Annenberg Learner. (2019). https://www.learner.org/series/ discovering-psychology/explorations/history-of-psychology-contemporary-foundations/

Praetzel, L. (2005). Psyche Cattell. Pennsylvania Center for the book. https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/literary-cultural-heritage-map-pa/bios/Cattell__Psyche

Shelton, T.L. (1989). The assessment of cognition/intelligence in infancy. Infants and Young Children, 1(3), 10- 25.

Shiraev, E. (2015). Chapter 1: Understanding Psychology’s History. A history of psychology: A global perspective. (pp. 2-29). SAGE Publications.

Sokal, M. M. (1991). Obituary: Psyche cattell (1893-1989). American Psychologist, 46(1), 72–72. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0085303

Stott, L. H., & Ball, R. S. (1963). Evaluation of infant and preschool mental tests. Merrill-Palmer Institute. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL14825053M/Evaluation_of_infant_and_presch ool_mental_tests

Young, J. L. (2015). Test or toy? Materiality and the measurement of infant intelligence. History of Psychology, 18(2), 103–118. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038862