OF THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL 95 



It was made a subcommittee of the Research Council in 

 November, 1918. Under the chairmanship of Harold E. 

 Burtt, the committee, whose other members were W. R. 

 Miles and L. T. Troland, undertook the selection and de- 

 velopment of mental and physiological tests which promised 

 a priori to be indicative of aptitude for flying. Various exist- 

 ing forms of apparatus were adapted for the tests and several 

 new forms were devised and constructed. Although the pri- 

 mary Intention was to proceed purely empirically to deter- 

 mine which tests were indicative of flying ability, it was also 

 proposed to undertake the development of tests bearing on 

 the mental and physiological state of the aviator during 

 flight. 



The evaluation of tests by trial on cadets at the Army 

 Aviation Ground School, Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 

 nology, was begun early In June, 1917. 



The following tests were given: 



1. Patellar reflex with two stimuli in succession, a gradually de- 



creasing interval between stimuli. 



2. Electrical threshold. 



3. Cardiograms and records of respiration while reclining and while 



"chinning" oneself. 



4. Finger movement; first and second fingers moving together as 



rapidly as possible through an uncontrolled distance. 



5. Swaying; standing with a helmet beneath smoked paper. 



6. Visual acuity; Ives gratings. 



7. Memory test (Dodge's); words exposed one letter at a time. 



8. Inhibition of winking reflex. 



9. Eye reactions to light; moving from fixation point to a spot of 



light which appears. 



10. Speed of eye movements. 



11. Ocular pursuit movements; following pendulum. 



12. Reversed maze; tracing it visibly and then invisibly and rotated. 



13. Association reaction with crucial words involving fear, falling, 



etc. 



14. Motor learning; learning a fixed series of reactions with two 



alternatives by trial and error. 



15. Auditory difi'erence threshold with loud standard similar to the 



sound of a motor. 



16. Distance and velocity estimation; moving target passes across 



