David Wechsler
Romanian-American clinical psychologist and test author
Romanian-born American psychologist, chief psychologist at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital from 1932 to 1967, who created the Wechsler-Bellevue test and the adult and child intelligence scales that followed from it.
Why this person matters
Wechsler built tests to serve clinical work with adults at Bellevue and replaced the mental-age quotient with a deviation score that compares a person with peers. He argued that intelligence includes personality traits and emotional states. His scales became standard in clinics and schools.
Main contributions
Wechsler-Bellevue and later scales
He published the first standardised adult intelligence test in 1939. The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children followed in 1949 and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale in 1955.
Deviation IQ
Instead of computing a mental age as the Binet tests did, he compared an individual with their peer group. This allowed for abilities that change with age.
Broader view of intelligence
He viewed intelligence as the abilities needed to succeed in life, including personality traits and emotional states, and held that educational, cultural and socioeconomic factors must be considered.
Context and limits
Wechsler himself held that his tests were useful only alongside other clinical measurements and that traditional tests were unsuitable for uneducated or foreign-born adults. Anne Anastasi later argued that no intelligence test can be fully culture free. The sources read do not review test bias or other wider critiques of IQ testing, so this profile does not either.
In your introductory course
Thinking, language and intelligence.His scales are the standard examples of modern IQ tests in intelligence chapters, and the deviation IQ is how scores are still reported.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 7.5. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1932
He became chief psychologist at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital.
- 1939
He published the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale.
- 1949
He published the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children.
- 1955
The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale appeared.
Sources
- Encyclopedia.com, Wechsler, DavidReference work. Reference article inspected.
- Wikipedia, David WechslerReference work. Reference article inspected.