SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— J. 379 



Dr. Shepherd Dawson. — Psj-chological tests have so far played no very impor- 

 tant part in education in Great Britain. Tlieir use has hardly passed the experi- 

 mental stage. Practically the only tests that have proved useful are the inteUigence 

 tests. The others are little more than laboratory curiosities. 



This is due partly to the difficulty of finding suitable tests and partly to failure to 

 consider the essential purpose of a test. As every test aims at diagnosing capacity or 

 natural mental endowment, and yet is obviously in itself a test of ability, i.e. of what 

 the examinee can do at the time of the test, it is necessary to ask how a test of ability 

 can become a test of capacity. There are several possibilities. First, if one could be 

 certain that a test was new to all the examinees, one might assume that success at it 

 was determined by natural capacity : but it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to find 

 such tests. Again, the examinees might be given complete training and then tested. 

 For practical purposes of prognosis, except where the training can be accomplished 

 in a very short time, such a test would be useless, but it would be valuable for checking 

 the results of otiier methods. Finally, the test might be of such a kind that it could 

 be assumed that all the examinees had had equal training or equal opportunities of 

 training. This is the principle on which the Binet tests have been constructed. The 

 reliabUity of these methods will have to be compared by repeating the same tests on 

 the same people at different chronological ages, and making a statistical analysis of 

 the results, for only in this way can one find whether it is natural capacity, as distinct 

 from acquired ability, that is being tested. 



Some work has been done in this direction in regard to intelhgence tests ; it is very 

 incomplete, but sufficient to produce the conviction that the inteUigence quotient, 

 which is commonly regarded as a measure of capacity, is approximately constant. 



Although there is still very much to be done to put psychological tests on a 

 scientific footing, their practical usefulness is beyond question : in this respect mental 

 testing is like a good deal of medical practice, it provides a suitable opportunity for 

 forming a fairly reliable opinion of an individual's potentialities. We can look 

 hopefully toward the time when the diagnosis of children's capacities will form an 

 essential part of our educational system, for the work of both teacher and pupil can be 

 adequately judged only if one knows the latter's achievements. 



Thursday, July 25. 



Dr. Victoria Hazlitt. — Children's Thinking : Some Experimental 

 Results in relation to Recent Theories. 



Dr. Margaret Macfarlane. — Training the Mentally Unfit. 



Mr. H. E. 0. James. — Transfer of Training. 



Friday, July 26. 



Presidential Address by Mr. F. C. Bartlett, on Experimental Method 

 in Psychology. (See JJ. 187.) 



Prof. H. F. Verwoerd." — A Contribution to the Experime7ital Investigation 

 of Testimony. 



Dr. C. S. Myers, C.B.E., F.R.S.^^ New Interpretation of Adaptation. 



JOHANNESBURG. 



Wednesday, July 31. 



Prof. E. Eybers. — The Bloemfontein Psycho-educational Clinic : a brief 

 statement of its activities and findings. 



Mr. J. D. Sutherland. — Speed in Intelligence. 



The study of speed in the intelligent reaction has been suggested by Prof. E. G. 

 Boring as the most likely mode of attack on the systematic investigation of th& 



