Biography of A.S. Otis, creator of the Otis Test

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I need urgently the biography of Otis. Anybody knws a place in internet where I can find it?

-- (jrzuchini@hotmail.com), January 20, 2002

Answers

I do not find an biography of him on line. There are bits and pieces of information here and there, however. Henry Minton notes (at http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Binet/commentary.htm) that he was a student of Lewis M. Terman. The minutes of a 1910 meeting of the Borad of Regent of the University of Nevada (I think) mentions one Arthus S. Otis (http://www.nevada.edu/board/minutes/1910/1910/19100820.htm). I am not certain that it is the same man.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), January 22, 2002.

His name was Arthur Sinton Otis. There's a picture of him in the Journal of Consulting Psychology, v. 5, (1941) p. 205. I don't know if there's any biographical information along with the portrait. The APA/Oxford Encyclopedia of Psychology (v. 5, p. 140) says that Arthur S. Otis was a student of Terman's and that his work with nonverbal tests of intelligence formed the basis of the Army Beta test, given to World War I recruits not literate in English.

There's a doctoral dissertation about Otis listed, with an absrtact, in Dissertation Abstracts International, Nov. 1992, p.1494. It's by Eleanor Jane Siegel, and titled "Arthur Sinton Otis and the American Testing Movement." You might also look for leads in standard general biography works, such as American Men of Science (now titled American Men and Women of Science), the National Cyclopedia of American Biography, the Dictionary of American Biography. None of this will be available on the internet, but should be available in most academic libraries or many public libraries.

-- Warren Street (warren@cwu.edu), January 22, 2002.


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