As W. Labov has passed away, I came across a comment reposting this screenshotted request, along with the paper in question:
https://betsysneller.github.io/pdfs/Labov1966-Rabbit.pdf
The paper is quite a rollercoaster, ranging from describing of disturbingly racist ideas about native Hawaiian and Black children that some scientists still pushed at the time (1970!*), to Labov's own disarmingly cute and humane solution to the issue of testing children's language abilities.
Edit: *1970 - according to the article itself, which is apparently based on Labov's 1970 talk; however, the URL suggests that the article was published in 1966, which is contradictory. I'll try to find out where and when this was actually published...
Edit 2: It looks like it is from 1970, from Working Papers in Communication, vol. 1 (Honolulu: Pacific Speech Association). It is surprising that a recently published book also claims that it's from 1966, probably the authors got the file from the same URL with the wrong year.
Edit 3: The original Twitter thread: https://xcancel.com/betsysneller/status/1516848959284678656
I had a similar sort of experience myself (probably lots of people did) when I was at a psychiatric hospital, I was a kid, 15 or 16 or so. I had to solve some exams for what I guess was like two hours, and I was going crazy by the end, exhausted and losing focus. And based on that crap they were supposed to rate my cognitive abilites and emotional state. Thankfully I simply didn't return there, no consequences, but it's terrifying to think that some kids' futures and whole lives were determined by such bullshit, and even more, as the article shows, that it could act as quasiscientific legitimisation of racism.
I wonder at what point do people forget how they were as kids?
That's insane. Who in there right mind could think anybody would perform well in that sort of stressful situation?