PSYCHOLOGY CLASS.

Shannon News, 1 August 1922, Page 3

PSYCHOLOGY CLASS.

IMAGINATION AND INTELLIGENCE,

At a meeting of the W.E.A. the tutor, Mr Mander dealt with the processes of imagination and intelligence.

In opening, the lecturer reminded his hearers that the words Imagination and Intelligence were used to describe certain mental processes. It was wrong, he said, to speak of imagination and “the” intelligence, as though they weer being thought of as mental organs, as things in themselves: they were processes, just in the same sense as evolution was a process.

Mr Mandetf then described the manner in which the ideas of which we are conscious, ideas which are originally obtained as perceptions through the senses, may be broken down in the sub-conscious into their component parts. “The sense-idea image) of a table, for example, is made up of such qualities as 'colour, shape and size; and when these qualities are combined in a certain way we get the perceived or remembered image of a table. But we can be conscious only of the - combination: we cannot form an idea of colour, shape or size by in self. Yet in the sub-conscious we can have concepts of colour, shape and size separately—although these concepts can never come into j consciousness. Each of these concepts must be represented in consciousness by some symbol, usually a word.

These abstract concepts are obtained, said the lecturer, by the conscious or unconscious comparison of ideas. All imagination and intelligence depends, then, upon our ability to make comparisons, to detect resemblances and differences. But when the concepts have been obtained th.e process of intelligent or imaginative thinking begins. For these concepts may then form fresh compounds, fresh concepts; or they may he re-combined to form fresh ideas which may be presented to consciousness as imagined sights and sounds. After discussing the former process, that of intelligent thinking, the lecturer gave illustrations of the way in which fresh ideas can be manufactured (imagined) by the combination of concepts from old ideas. “Imagine a fruit,” he said, “the size of a football, the shape of a lemon, 'green like grass, soft like a tomato. Now all the qualities which, when combined, make up this new idea, are derived from other ideas—the concept of shape from that of a lemon, and so on. All the: Taw materials,’ all the component parts, of any new (imagined) idea have to be obtained from old ideas which are already in the mind. All that imaginar tions means is the re-combination of the parts of old perceptions: there is j nothing new except the combination.” J The second part 'of the lecture was j devoted to a description of the methods adopted in the measurement of a person’s capacity for intelligent thought. This capacity does not continue to develop throughout life, nor is it by any means equal in all persons. On the contrary, just as men are naturally unequal in their physical natures, so are they naturally unequal in their mental capacities. The ordinary examinatons at the school and university do not, said the lecturer, give an accurate measurement of intellectual power; they are tests of intelligence and memory together. But the method of testing which he described, a method which had been standardised for many countries, gave a good indication'of'general intelligence irrespective of the amount of education or information. It was, as nearly as it could be made, a test, ot general intelligence, not of knowledge. ( '

The system was designed to show the general intelligence of an individual when compared with that of an average child of a given age. 'Thus an idiot aged forty might be shown to have an intellectual capacity equal to that of the average child of three. Another man of forty might be equal in intelligence to the average child of fourteen or sixteen. Or one child of six might prove to be equal in intelligence to the average child of eight.

“During the war, the United States Government had 1,70b,000 recruits for the army subjected to these tests, and the results were tabulated. These results were startling. They showed that of the men—men of all classes, of all occupations, of all sorts and descriptions—drafted into the United States army, the average intelligence was equal only to that of the average i child of thirteen and four months, j Seventy per cent of these American | citizens had levels of intelligence which were no higher than that of the average fourteen-year-old child; and ol' these 30 per cent were lower in intellectual development than the average child of eleven. Only twelve and a-half per cent (that is, only, one man in eight) has his intellectual powers developed beyond the 16-year-oid level; and only one person in twenty has developed beyond the ‘mental age’ of eighteen. “These results, which have been

borne out by trials on a smaller scale y. in other Countries, have a very im-.. y portant bearing upon 1 many of our. - social and economic problems. They show that, while the amount of information which we have may be increas- - ed throughput life, our power cd dealing intelligently with that information ~ does not continue to develop. Our intellectual powers usually cease' developing even before the body ceases growing. We may continue' to ac-y/. quire more knowledge; but we do not J continue to become more and t intelligent. “This raises many questions which we cannot discuss here. It emphasises the urgent necessity of giving full opportunity for those who have a high level Of intelligence to occupy the positions of responsibility and power in the State. It suggests, perhaps, that some way ought to be found of preventing men with the intellectual car . pacity of a thirteen-year-old child from’ getting into Parliament. If there is so little highly-developed intellectual ' power in the community, it is surely necessary to make full use of what ’■ there is.”