J.—PSYCHOLOGY. 237 
suggestive set of tests has been recently applied, by one American investi- 
gator, to a group of boy-scouts, and, by another, to groups of delinquent 
and non-delinquent children. 'The child is required to trace mazes with 
his eyes shut; to fill up and correct completion-tests with the key 
temptingly handy on the back; to state how much he knows of various 
topics, with the prospect of earning a box of confectionery if he obtains 
full marks. The measure is the number of times he cheats or over- 
states, and the results correlate with independent estimates of moral 
character to the extent of .42.** Sometimes (as in the last research) the 
examinee is also given a syllabus of questions relating to his own 
character: ‘ What kind of amusements do you prefer? Do you get 
on well with teachers and with other children? Would you like to 
wear jewellery and fine clothes? What do you think about when you 
are alone? What would you do if a lot of money were left you?’ As 
a rule, however, an indirect technique is far preferable to a direct. The 
moral test is, as it were, to be camouflaged in the guise of a test of 
intelligence or information. |The optional question-paper is full of 
possibilities in this direction. Every teacher knows how, in examina- 
tions on languages or mathematics, the routine worker chooses the 
mechanical questions, while the more enterprising select the problems 
and the riders; the cautious prefer the prepared texts, the adventurous 
the unseen translations. It is an interesting exercise to collect a set 
of picture postcards, artistic, humorous, or informative, and to request 
the child to arrange them in order of preference or merit. The influence 
of special interests, working quite unconsciously if the cards have been 
chosen with care, is nearly always obvious. 
Few, however, would as yet pretend that such tests have more than 
an experimental interest. As Terman has put it: ‘ The reliability and 
validity of tests for moral traits have proved lower than an optimist 
might have hoped for. But the correlations obtained are quite as high 
as those yielded by the early intelligence tests of fifteen or twenty years 
ago. And this is no small achievement.’ *” 
Conclusion. 
Here, then, are the main items in the programme of the mental 
examiner. Here is my sketch of the skeleton of the mind. 
Having tested all that he can test, having measured all measurable 
capacities, having passed in review all available data that throw light 
upon the rest, the psychologist must in the end bring his mixed materials 
together in one synoptic survey. He must reconstruct the mind dis- 
sected. The most expedient way of doing this is to plot out what is 
known in this country as a ‘ psychogram,’ and elsewhere as a ‘ mental 
profile.’ The various findings are to be charted diagrammatically upon 
some uniform and comprehensive scale. If he takes for his unit the 
percentile or the standard deviation, there is no capacity, no tendency, 
%t Voelker, ‘ The Functions of Ideals and Attitudes.’ Col. Univ. Contrib. Ed. 
zs)’ Cady, ‘The Estimation of Juvenile Incorrigibility, Journ. Deling. Mon. 
923). 
52 Preface to Cady’s paper, loc. cit. sup., p. 4. 
