MAN AND MIND

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 101, 1 May 1930, Page 19

MAN AND MIND

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE

SOME OF THE TESTS

THE OLD "BUMP"

READEK

(By E. B. MacGregor Walmsley.) LONDON, Slat March. The excellent tests used by the National Institute of Industrial Psychology for giving vocational advice1 to young folk and for selecting those applicants best equipped for a specific job, are of two principal kinds. Those known as tests of general intelligence are to be worked out on printed forms, with pen or pencil. They require a good fund of general knowledge, and a plentiful endowment •of ''..' God's greatest gif t—eommohsense." .In some of the American unversities they are tending to supplant the time-honoured matriculation, where grave injustice may be wrought on the unsuspecting by an eccentric examiner. The other type of "performance tests" are intended to make demands on manual dexterity as well as on intelligence. The subject may be asked to fit into their places a number of parts which have been omitted from pictures; to fit, with the fewest moves, pieces of varied geometrical form into slots in a board;, to play a match-game, sticking the matches into holes in a block without dropping any, and the like. Specialists in various fields criticise these tests for several reasons. A New Zealand teacher, come to London for his Ph.D., talks of them as < " empirical. " The secretary,,, of the Medical BcsearclCCouncil, feels they are , not scientific in the sense that they furnish a definite analysis of mental ability. The Institute itself frankly recognises that such' views are well taken. All it can do is to try to make a sort of. cross-section of the mentality which shall take but little time, yet shew a recognisable resemblance to "the performance of the subject, day in and day out,, during months or years of his life. While the subject is busy with his problems, the examiner is quietly observing his reactions and trying to estimate his temperamental qualities on a rating scale, from which a profile may be drawn' up. Psychologists the ■world over are .coming to realise that facility of response 1. does not tell the whole story. As far/back as the war, ■when the 'American professors were making ready their famous army tests, one of the most eommensensible among' them called for a "testing of 'the tests." They agreed to.try them 'on all present. Result: At the top stood a learned 'doctors-He was followed with a long list of> stenographers. At the bottom came the i'est of the wise men. Quoth the obnoxious one: "Now, gentlemen, according to your own" tests, these girls ought to.be your officers, and you men. their,' privates.'' So began the search' of the elusive yet vital factors of personality. In ever-widening circles this has led, into a veritable I wilderness. One of the Institute's research workers went to America two years ago, and came' back the other day with an astonishing bag of psychological curiosities which she displayed for two hours, and left her audience bewildered. A mountain of labour ,to bring forth a ridiculous jnouse. THE RIDDLE OF PERSONALITY. ■ Dr.. William M'Dougal, who was taken '.from England by Harvard, and is 'now at Duke•';University, has made one of the-most ambitious recent attempts to solve, the riddle of personality. Inspired, perhaps, by the seven primary colours of the spectrum, he postulated seven primary instincts. With the most dexterous permutations and combinations, he found them alto r gether' inadequate to account for. the infinite, variations of the human personality^ So he ; has gradually added to > them in successive revisions of his "Social Psychology,?,' until now. he lists some thirteen, with a further halfdozen of which he is doubtful. Many of his ideas show such'a singular resemblance to" those of Dr. Francis J. Gall, who wrote a century earlier, that some reader's have questioned the source of his inspiration. He gavo assurance that he was wholly unacquainted with Gall's epoch-making " Anatomy ■ and ■Physiology of tho Brain and Nervous System. "It would appear that such Jack of familiarity vis: not confined to Professor M'-DougalU—due, perhaps, to. the high price: of the work' (£4O), its rarity, .and the want of a translation from the French. M'Dougall hasbepn followed closely' by ■' Professor Cyril Burt (University- of London), psychologist to the London County Council and author of: " The Young Delinquent." '■;■'■:'■■-— . ;::,'^.: ■; ' .', ' '■' BRAIN-CELL FUNCTIONS. .Dr. Joseph R. Buchanan, of Boston, on 'the other.'hand, sets out with the basic assumption that each brain-cell with its'connecting fibre has a function peculiar to itself, no other being precisely like it. Consequently there are as many modes of expression as there are fibres—-millions upon millions. In action, of course, bundles of tfenj work together, just as in the'submffine cable the electric impulse traversed a- strand of finer threads. . For practical convenience, we may make arbitrary groupings of these brain cells into masses or ''centres." And we',can please ourselves \ as to, the number we adopt, for we are limited only by our ability to perceive fine shades of difference in conduct, and by the capacity of our language for, expressing them. Buchanan adopts some 170, but a more obtuse, observer might be content with 10, while a keener one. might" demand a thousand. Indeed, the American, Professor L. L. Bernard, has compiled la. list embracing many thousands of "instincts." . . ' I . I Dr. Francis J. Bell, who more than a century ago, discovered that different areas of the cortex hav ; e different mental; functions, placed their number, provisionally at -27, while .admitting that his work was imperfect. His pupil, Dr. Spurzheim, who coined the term 'phrenology," and a motley crowd of disciples, have run the number up to between 40 and 50. As forecast by the great Scotsman, George "Combe,; the prostitution of Sail's discoveries by unscientific readers of character has alienated professional opinion, so that today few men of repute have given serious attention to the monumental research work of Gall. Many of his most striking discoveries have been quietly appropriated by later scientists, who merely reflect the glory of the master mind. Thuß,.the motor-speech centre, known as Broca's Convolution, was one of the most firmly established of all Gall's discoveries. CORTEX UNDER THE MICROSCOPE. Dr. Buchanan has made a critical examination of the work of Gall and his pupil, Spurzheim. He finds that several of their" attempted localisations will not pass his rigid tests. In every way, by measurement, by observation, and by study of the life history, he has tried to v verify or disprove tho older work. As his great contribution to the science of mind, he has presented us with a coherent system of anthropology, which corrects the errors, closes the gaps, and rounds out the philosophy of the discoveries. Tho late Alfred Eussell Wallace deplored the neglect of Gall's discovery as the crowning blunder of tho nine-

teenth century, and expected that our present century, with rarer insight^ will recognise its priceless value. The first steps have been taken. '^ In "The Matrix of the Mind," Dr.Frederick Wood-Jones, sometime Pro-fessor-of Anatomy at the University of London, announces that a sifting of the evidence from the thousands of head wounds in tho Great War, confirms this impprtant conclusion: the cortex, or outer layer of grey matter of the brain,] is capable, of microscopic differentiation into some 40 areas, each, presumably, with a function of its own. Professor Wood-Jones adds weight to the painstaking work of Dr.1 Bernard Hollander, of London, who has searched the medical literature of the world for illustrative examples. In their hundreds does he marshal them. His kindness enables a critical review. Many must be passed over as too vague. To be of value, the exact peculiarities of the patient 'a thought and behaviour must be set forth in detail, together with the precise nature and seat of injuries brought to light by post-mortem examination; . ■ Considering the, difficulties, we are fortunate in still having some 205 cases, which prove, as definitely as can be proved by evidence of this sort, that Buchanan is not wrong^n any of the 39 localisations on which we can focus this clinical evidence. We may fairly infer that the: remaining 130 of his cerebral centres .are described with substantial correctness. • ■ '.-'.-' FOG AND MIRE TO SUNSHINE. By adopting his arrangement,, we are freed at once from the follies of the old " bump" readers, and from the flounderings of the newest intelligence testers. A symposium conducted- by a scientific journal drew from a score~ of noted professors of psychology as many different definitions of intelligence: Thus did one confess: "Intelligence is" what the tests-measure." ' Lacking chart and compass, many. a brave psychological craft has piled up in fan-: tastic masses of wreckage. Think of the "mis-behaviourism" of "Watsonianity," the Gestalt School, the psychonic theory, the mechanistic hypothesis, extreme Freudianism, and other illbalanced movements.. True, each, has contributed something to otir general atoek of knowledge. But for the serious purposes of life—giving,;voeational counsel to • the young,: getting along with our family and 'associates,, and healing the sick, we need a^ mental forJ mula as unvarying as that for waternever anything but H2O. The ultimate recognition of Gall's fundamental work, as revised by Buchanan, tested by.Hol-i lander, weighed by Wood-Jones, j and advocated by Wallace, will lead us out of the metaphysical clouds, the testers^ fog, and the behaviourists' mire, into the^glorious sunshine of a mental philosophy that shall lighten our darkness •and make plain our sonship with the Great One in whom-we live, and move, and have our being. . " :