August 15, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



223 



honest. Of course the child is ten years old 

 only in those respects covered by the tests. 

 And the striking results reported by Miss 

 Weidensall at Cleveland illustrate that there 

 are other mental factors, most important for 

 adaptation to life, that are not reached even 

 by the inclusive scope of the Binet tests. 



This fundamental weakness, one which is 

 shared very liberally with the remainder of 

 mental tests, seems to be that they are too much 

 concerned with processes that for want of better 

 nameF we sum up under intellectual capac- 

 ity and intelligence. External competence, not 

 to speak of subjective balance, depends also 

 upon the capacity to make the intellect effec- 

 tive in the vital activities. An important fur- 

 ther obstacle to making it thus effective arises 

 when accompanying feelings are such as to 

 make the proper reactions in any way disagree- 

 able or less agreeable than other reactions 

 which are less objectively adequate. 



It is difficult to estimate how much of the 

 significance in our present mental tests may 

 be lost through failure to attend to these 

 factors. Three persons go through the num- 

 ber-checking test; one in 140 seconds, the 

 other two in 100 seconds. But the check- 

 marks of the first two are all made in consecu- 

 tive order, at regular intervals, while the 

 third works erratically, skips back and forth, 

 marks now very fast, now very slow. Probably 

 this subject differs from the second far more 

 significantly than the second does from the 

 first. Any one might have the highest intel- 

 lectual standing. The regularity with which a 

 voluntary task is performed, the attentional 

 control over it, and its freedom from subjec- 

 tive interference is to my mind a far more 

 important thing to observe than the absolute 

 efficiency in some task but remotely connected 

 with really vital reactions. 



Tet most of our psychological tests pretend 

 to measure maximal capacities of some sort, 

 and this maximal capacity is taken to indicate 

 the subject's essential response to the test. It 

 is so in some simple tests, as those of the astig- 

 matism type; but when the test is more com- 

 plex, as the above-mentioned, gross efficiency 

 is the product of many factors that are to be 



interpreted only on the basis of other, more 

 analytical controls. This is only a part of 

 the subject's whole reaction to the test, and is 

 the less important part the less the test is 

 related to the struggle for existence. In these 

 tests it is not so important how much the sub- 

 ject does as what he does. The manner of 

 dealing with the situation represents the more 

 fundamental traits; four minutes of method 

 with Healy's puzzle box is better than two 

 minutes monkey-fashion. But because these 

 factors are exceedingly difficult to describe and 

 measure, the workers dealing with mental 

 tests, who as a class are occupied with large 

 masses of data gathered with relative per- 

 functoriness, are apt to pass them by. 



The adequate interpretation of mental tests 

 further requires that we understand their rela- 

 tion to the subject's emotional reactions. It 

 is interesting to know that you can methodic- 

 ally take up Healy's puzzle-box and open it in 

 fifty seconds; but it is far more important to 

 know whether, if you were caught in Healy's 

 puzzle-box, and expected your enemy at every 

 moment, you would preserve the same effective- 

 ness of your reactions towards it. In what 

 ways and to what extent is affective sensibility 

 manifested in the subject? How much does 

 the effectiveness of a performance depend upon 

 its position in the affective scale ? How to 

 measure this is what we are responsible for 

 finding out; though I venture to predict that 

 the answers, of which there will have to be 

 many, will come not so much in terms of a 

 capacity, like addition, or memory, as in terms 

 of a tendency, like the individuality of free 

 association responses, or the types in arrange- 

 ments of relative position scales. 



What has the author tried to do — how has 

 he done it, and — is it worth doing? This is 

 the framework on which we used to be told to 

 construct a review. And so in reviewing the 

 question of mental tests, it is endeavored to 

 indicate that their proper task is the measure- 

 ment of functions concerned in the mental 

 adaptation to life, and how they can best per- 

 form it through giving a well-proportioned 

 recognition to the intellectual, volitional and 

 affective spheres. How much it is worth doing 



