David Wechsler Psychologist Date of Birth: 12.01.1896 Country: USA

Biography of David Wechsler

David Wechsler was an American psychologist, psychodiagnostician, and psychiatrist, best known as the creator of widely-used intelligence tests for adults and children. He received his education at City College of New York, earning a Master of Arts degree in 1916, and at Columbia University, where he obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1925.

From 1932 to 1967, Wechsler worked as the chief psychologist at Bellevue Psychiatric Clinic in New York City. He also served as a clinical professor at the Medical College of New York City from 1942 to 1970, and later became an honorary professor in 1970.

While intelligence tests during his time were initially developed for children and later adapted for adults by adding more difficult tasks of the same type, Wechsler created a test specifically for adults known as the Wechsler-Bellevue Scale. The first version of this scale, called the "Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale," was published in 1939 and quickly became the most widely used intelligence test in the United States. Wechsler combined various assessment methods in this test, many of which had been widely used before, but he introduced strict standardization procedures by implementing time limits and establishing normative scores – the average test performance for individuals of a specific age group.

Differing from the Stanford-Binet test, the tasks in Wechsler's test were not grouped according to age levels but instead organized into subtests arranged in order of increasing difficulty. Additionally, Wechsler merged verbal and performance intelligence tests into a single complex test, with separate calculation of IQ scores for verbal and action subtests. He defined intelligence as the global ability to act reasonably, think rationally, and cope effectively with life circumstances.

In 1955, Wechsler prepared a new edition of the adult test called the "Manual for the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale" (WAIS). In 1949, he developed a version of the test for children called the "Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children" (WISC), and in 1967, he created an intelligence scale for preschoolers and young school-age children known as the "Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence" (WPPSI). Wechsler suggested using his methods in psychiatric clinics for differential diagnosis based on the idea that intellectual functions can be selectively impaired in brain injuries and mental deviations. He also created a battery of tests to assess memory, known as the "Standardized Memory Scale for Clinical Use" (1945).

Wechsler conducted research on age-related changes in intelligence and memory. He also worked on developing his own modification of the "lie detector."