388 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE 



afloat, the utility of our relatively simple and inexpensive training 

 instrument that closely reproduced the coordinations of actual 

 service needs no emphasis. 



In the navy, precisely as in the army, the solution of one 

 problem almost inevitably led to the formulation of numerous 

 related problems. The task thus became endless and at the 

 same time intensely exacting as well as stimulating. In a 

 summary official report to the National Research Council 

 Lieutenant Commander Dodge writes as follows concerning 

 the relation of his study of problems of gun-pointing to other 

 tasks : 



In view of these reiterated suggestions, and in view of the wide 

 scope of the permission granted me by the Honorable Secretary 

 of the Navy to visit the fleet for analysis of the naval tasks, I 

 undertook to do for the plotting room what I have done for gun- 

 pointing. After observing the various tasks of the plotting room, 

 I tried to reduce them to their simplest psychological terms, then to 

 devise corresponding test methods, and finally to combine them 

 in a single form or blank that would disclose at a glance, without 

 elaborate computation, the relative fitness of the several recruits 

 for plotting room service. 



The tests finally recommended were : the ability to repeat 

 clearly by telephone, a series of ordinary commands that were re- 

 ceived by telephone, the ability to remember and repeat numerals, 

 to read a circular scale, to read a plotting scale and to lay off 

 distances to scale, together with neatness and accuracy in drawing 

 and sub-dividing simple geometrical figures. All these data, except 

 the telephone test, were arranged on a single blank which could 

 be estimated at a glance as good, medium, and poor. 



Again in an entirely different connection the psychologist's 

 skill was found serviceable in selecting men to be trained as 

 listeners for anti-submarine work. 



One of the minor but necessary tasks of the Training Section of 

 the Bureau of Navigation was to find properly equipped men for 

 the new Listeners' School without robbing other training schools 

 of their regular quotas. It was a relatively simple problem in the 

 economy of human material and personnel, but one for which 



