Florence Goodenough

Florence Laura Goodenough (August 6, 1886 – April 4, 1959) was an American psychologist and professor at the University of Minnesota who studied child intelligence and various problems in the field of child development. She was president of the Society for Research in Child Development from 1946 to 1947. She is best known for publishing the book Measurement Of Intelligence By Drawings, where she introduced the Goodenough Draw-A-Man test (now the Draw-A-Person Test) to assess intelligence in young children through nonverbal measurement. She is noted for developing the Minnesota Preschool Scale. In 1931, she published two books, titled Experimental Child Study (with John E. Anderson) and Anger in Young Children, which analyzed the methods used in evaluating children. She wrote the Handbook of Child Psychology in 1933, becoming the first known psychologist to critique ratio IQ.

Early life Florence Laura Goodenough was born on August 6, 1886 to Alice Gertrude Day and Linus North Goodenough in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. She was the youngest child, with two brothers and six sisters. Her family was involved in farming. She was homeschooled and received the equivalent of a high school diploma.

Academic career Goodenough received her primary education at home until attending Millersville Normal School. This school had few options of careers for women, and she picked teaching. In 1908, Goodenough graduated from Millersville Normal School with a Bachelor of Pedagogy. There is not much documentation of her time at Millersville; however, it is known that after earning her degree, she moved on to teach at the University of Minnesota from 1912 to 1919. Hollingworth was a psychologist and Goodenough's mentor. In 1921, Hollingworth recommended Goodenough to Lewis Terman to become a research assistant. It was during her time in public schools when she actually conducted a majority of her data. Goodenough earned her PhD in psychology in 1924, from Stanford University. She then became a professor of psychology from 1931 to 1947. She published the test in Measurement of Intelligence (1926), including detailed accounts of procedures, scoring, and examples. Goodenough's objective was to analyze John B. Watson's assertion that newborns were primarily only capable of three different emotions: rage, fear, and love. She gathered forty-one participants, ranging from infancy through seven years old, and trained the parents to use event sampling and track the outbursts of anger they saw in their children. However, Goodenough was forced to retire early because she developed chronic diabetes and began to go blind and deaf. During this period, she spent summers in New Hampshire and Lisbon, and her winters in Lakeland, Florida.

IQ testing Goodenough revised and invented tests for children. She studied exceptional children, child psychology, and anger and fear in children throughout her career. She published her first book: The Measurement of Intelligence by Drawings in 1926 which introduced her thoughts and ideas of children's IQ testing. In this book, Goodenough presented her IQ test for preschoolers called the Draw-A-Man test. The test evaluates subjects based on the way they choose to draw a person. Goodenough was widely recognized for the test, which functions as a nonverbal measure of intelligence. This test was initially geared towards children ages two through 13. The Draw-A-Man test eventually developed into a Draw-A-Woman Test due to critics believing many females would not necessarily be able to identify with a male.

The Draw-A-Man test measures children's' cognitive development levels. There has been no validation of the procedure as a personality test, or indeed as a test of anything other than cognitive development levels. In particular, research shows that the Draw-A-Man test does not measure IQ.

Academic work and contributions

Director of research for the Rutherford & Perth Amboy public schools (1920–1921)

Research assistant in Psychology under Lewis Terman, Stanford University (1921–1925).

Assistant Professor under John E. Anderson (1925–1930)

Published her first book- The Measurement of Intelligence by Drawings (1926)

Published the Draw-a-Man test (1926)

Published Anger in Young Children and the Measurement of Mental Growth (1931)

Published Minnesota Preschool Scale (1932)

Full time professor at the University of Minnesota (1931–1947)

President of the National Counsel of Women Psychologists (1942)

President of the Society for Research in Child Development (1946–1947).

Timeline

1886: Born in Honesdale, Pennsylvania 1908: Bachelor of Pedogogy (B.Pd.) earned from Normal School in Millersville, Pennsylvania. 1920: B.S. from Columbia University under Leta Hollingworth. Director of Research in the Rutherford and Perth Amboy New Jersey public schools. Began to document the effects of environment on intelligence test scores. 1921: M.A. earned from Columbia University under Leta Hollingsworth. First began working with Lewis Terman at Stanford University. 1923: Published The Stanford Achievement Test. 1924: PhD Philosophy earned from Stanford University under Lewis Terman. Worked at Minneapolis Child Guidance Clinic. 1925: Appointed assistant professor in the Institute of Child Welfare at the University of Minnesota. 1926: Published her first book: The Measurement of Intelligence by Drawings (Introduction to Draw-A-Man test). 1931: Published The Measurement of Mental Growth. Published Anger in Young Children. Goodenough set out to evaluate J. B. Watson's claim that newborns were initially only capable of three emotions: rage, fear and love, by comparing children's anger in infancy and in childhood. The book reported findings that children show anger at bath time, physical discomfort, and by age four, social relations were the greatest source of anger. 1947: Appointed Professor Emeritus until her death in 1959. 1949: Published Mental Testing: Its History, Principles, and Applications. 1956: Published Exceptional Children. Died from a stroke at the age of 73.

Works Goodenough, F. L. (1905). Measurement of intelligence by drawings. Yonkers-on-Hudson, NY: World Book Company. Goodenough, F. (1926). A new approach to the measurement of intelligence of young children. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 33, 185–211. Goodenough, F. L. (1931). Anger in young children. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Goodenough, F. L. (1934). Developmental psychology: An introduction to the study of human behavior. New York, NY: Appleton-Century Crofts. Goodenough, F. L. (1949). The appraisal of child personality. Psychological Review, 56, 123–131. Goodenough, F. L. (1949). Mental testing: Its history, principles, and applications. New York, NY: Rinehart. Goodenough, F. L., & Anderson, J. E. (1931). Experimental child study. New York, NY: Century. Goodenough, F. L. (1956). Exceptional children. New York, NY: Appleton-Century Crofts.