378 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— J. 



Mr. R. Knight. — How animals behave. 



Most people believe that some animals, like dogs, cats, horses, elephants 

 and monkeys, have minds of a sort. But this belief is a precarious inference, 

 not a fact which we directly observe. Scientists, like Kohler and Lloyd 

 Morgan, who attempt to justify it, usually argue, not from physiological 

 similarities between men and animals, but from observations of animal 

 behaviour. They urge that some of the responses of animals to new 

 situations, and to training, are such as could arise only from mental activity. 

 In this way Kohler tries to show that chimpanzees possess ' insight,' and 

 Lloyd Morgan to persuade us that some animals enjoy not only sensation 

 and perception but also retrospection, reflection, and forethought. This 

 method of reasoning, however, is full of pitfalls, and a critical examination 

 of the crucial examples put forward by those who believe in animal minds 

 makes it plain that they are inconclusive. And, on the contrary, recent 

 experiments in the training of animals, carried out in the Department of 

 Comparative Psychology in Aberdeen University, showed once again how 

 comprehensive trial-and-error is in animal behaviour, how large a part is 

 played by conditioned reflexes, how adequate is the Pavlovian thesis, and 

 how easily animals can acquire an entirely undeserved reputation for 

 intelligence and other mental characteristics. 



Afternoon. 

 (Section meeting in two divisions.) 



Division i. 



Joint Discussion with Section L (Educational Science) on Industrial 

 psychology and psychological selection in York (Dr. V. Moorrees ; 

 Dr. Northcott; Dr. C. W. Kimmins; Sir Richard Gregory, 

 Bart.) :— 



Dr. V. Moorrees. — Some aspects of psychology as applied at the Cocoa 

 Works in York. 



Dr. Northcott. — A statistical note on the results of psychological 

 selection at the Cocoa Works, York. 



During the years 1923-31 inclusive, 1,287 individual girls have been 

 engaged by Rowntree & Co., Ltd., after psychological tests. Of these, 

 122 or 9*5 per cent, proved inefficient and were dismissed. Analysing 

 these 122, we find 58 were engaged on the responsibility of the Employment 

 Department, without the concurrence and in some cases against the advice 

 of the psychologist. The remainder were recommended but proved to be 

 failures, 21 of them on grounds mainly of character and temperament, the 

 others being straight contradictions between forecast and result. Before 

 the application of psychological tests, 19 '5 per cent, were proved, on the 

 experience of 2,002 girls engaged in 1919-22, to be misfits. Psychological 

 selection has practically halved the number of misfits, and, judged purely 

 by degree of variance between forecast and workroom results, has been 

 right in 95 per cent, of instances. 



Mr. J. A. Fraser. — Incentives to learning an industrial process . 



A study was made of five groups of workers engaged in learning a pattern- 

 assembling process under industrial conditions. The groups commenced 



