SCOTT, WALTER DILL: A Fourth Method of Checking Results in Vocational Selection. (Journal of Applied Psychology, 1917, Vol. I, pp. 60-66.)

Various checks have been devised for testing the adequacy of a vocational selection method. One method is to compare rank in the tests with a "firm rank," secured from collective estimates by employers. A second method is to have experienced men or "ringers" take the tests with the applicants, and observe if their performance in the tests shows them to be relevant. A third check, and the most adequate, is that of vocational accomplishments, and consists in comparing the test performance with the rank afterwards achieved in actual work. The fourth method is described under the name of “applicants-experts" method, and consists in a comparison of scores made by applicants with scores made by men of known capacity. Essentially, it is a refinement of the "ringer" method, and its advantage is that, in proportion to its reliability, the results are relatively soon available.

GUILLET, CEPHAS: A Study of the Memory of Young Women. (Journal of Educational Psychology, 1917, Vol. VIII, pp. 65-84.)

The results of the investigation suggest to the author the comparative futility of formal memory training." Even if possible, it is hardly worth while. The teacher should attend rather to training the understanding and judgment and the powers of linguistic expression in the pupil. "Once a child has been gotten to express an idea clearly in his own words, he is guaranteed against forgetting it." The teacher should aim at presenting culture material in such a way that it will enter into vital relation with the child's immediate mental complex. At present, many facts and details are drilled upon pupils while still devoid of all fruitful meaning to them. Their effort is out of all proportion to the value of the matter presented; it should wait for maturer years, when it can be more profitably assimilated.

MULLAN, E. H.: Mental Status of Rural School Children. (Public Health Reports, 1916, Reprint No. 377, pp. 16.)

A total of 3793 children was studied. The routine Binet procedure was supplanted by a briefer sifting process. The tests used for this purpose were the Knox cube, repetition of digits and arithmetical problems. In the first, four cubes were used with the lower, and five with the upper grade children. Patterns and statistical tables are quoted. Two trials were given for the repetition of each series of digits, and if the child failed on seven, many further trials were made on this number. Above 12 years, failure here was a frequent symptom of mental deficiency. The arithmetical problems were of the concrete type. These sifting tests occupied four or five minutes. It is concluded that while mental deficiency cannot be diagnosed by the Binet scale alone, it forms an excellent means for finding out about the child through the medium of incidental observations. Five-tenths of 1 per cent of the children examined were found

feeble-minded to the degree of requiring institutional care, and an additional 1.3 per cent are assigned as probably belonging to this group. The survey also suggests that epilepsy is a more prevalent disease than has been hitherto supposed.

TERMAN, LEWIS M., and others: A Trial of Mental and Pedagogical Tests in a Civil Service Examination for Policemen and Firemen. (Journal of Applied Psychology, 1917, Vol. I, pp. 17-29.)

The pedagogical examination consisted of Trabue completion tests, the Thorndike oral reading test, samples of handwriting rated by the Ayres scale, a very efficient spelling test devised by Otis, and some tests of arithmetical processes. Thirty candidates were examined individually by the abbreviated Stanford scale, and later with the pedagogical tests in groups. A distribution of the IQ's has its mode at 80-84. The quartiles are 78 and 91. It was actually recommended that candidates with IQ below 80 be rejected. A table of inter-correlations is given of the 10, the various pedagogical tests and salary. Salary correlates best (61) with IQ; the IQ correlates best (81) with arithmetical reasoning, this being also the highest correlation in the table. The correlation on chronological and mental age was -.05, and that of age with completion ability and arithmetical reasoning was -.07 and .03, respectively. It is remarked that the salary to be paid the men placed on the eligible list (median IQ 89) is considerably higher than that paid the average California teacher (1Q usually above 110).

BAIRD, JOHN WALLACE: The Legibility of a Telephone Directory. (Journal of Applied Psychology, 1917, Vol. I, pp. 30–37.)

The essential aim of the investigation was to determine the time required to find a telephone number from four arrangements of page. The test pages were mounted in a special booklet. A given name was read or shown to the subject, who repeated it, and then proceeded to find the telephone number. There was measured the time elapsing between the opening of the booklet on the announcing of the telephone number. Average times in the four arrangements of page were found as 10.36, 10.69, 10.14 and 9.28 seconds, respectively. This last is with a leaded four-column page. A telephone directory thus printed is not only the most legible, but is about 20 per cent reduced in bulk over the previous style. The average finding time for the most practiced group of subjects was 6.46 seconds and for the least practiced, 15.20 seconds.

THORNDIKE, EDWARD L.: Reading as Reasoning: A Study of Mistakes in Paragraph Reading. (Journal of Educational Psychology, 1917, Vol. VIII, pp. 323-332.)

It is intended to show that reading is an elaborate procedure, involving a weighing of each of many elements in a sentence, the selection of certain of their connotations and the rejection of others, and the cooperation of

many forces to determine final response. This is illustrated in having a short paragraph read and then calling for answers to questions involving a knowledge of its content. In correct reading: (1) Each word produces a correct meaning; (2) each such element of meaning is given a correct weight in comparison with others; (3) the resulting ideas are examined and validated in relation to the mental set or adjustment for which the reading was done. Reading may be wrong or inadequate: (1) Because of wrong connections with the words singly; (2) over-potency or underpotency of elements; (3) failure to treat the ideas produced by the reading as provisional, and so to inspect and welcome or reject them as they appear. Understanding a paragraph is like solving a problem in mathematics. It consists in selecting the right elements of the situation and putting them together in the right relations, and also with the right amount of weight or influence for each. While the work of judging and applying doubtless demands a more elaborate and inventive control of mental connections, the demands of mere reading are also for the active selection which is typical of thought.

The vice of the poor reader is to say words to himself without actively making judgments concerning what they reveal. Reading aloud or listening to reading aloud may leave this vice unaltered or even encouraged. Perhaps it is in their outside reading of stories and in their study of geography, history and the like, that many school children really learn to read.

MOORE, HENRY T.: Laboratory Tests of Anger, Fear and Sex Interest. (American Journal of Psychology, 1917, Vol. XXVIII, pp. 390-395.) The plan of the experiments was to measure the effectiveness of emotional disturbance in terms of delay in the solution of a problem given just prior to the introduction of the emotional stimulus. The problems were in mental multiplication, whose normal times and limits of variation were previously determined. The tests for anger were meant to involve: Anger at an unjust accusation; anger at bodily annoyance at the hands of another person; anger at having been prevented from carrying out a called-for task. Fear stimuli were concerned with snakes, personal attack in the dark, electric shock and falling. Sex stimuli were with photographs of nudes. Other stimuli of a sensory repulsive character and situations involving embarrassment were employed. It is concluded that the individual variations in the above tests are sufficient to permit the ranking of subjects in respect to the amount of interference created by a given emotion. The fear stimuli caused the most powerful disturbances. Anger and embarrassment caused much less disturbance. Negative results appeared with sex interest and repulsion. A negative correlation of 48 appeared between the effects of anger and fear.

HULL, CLARK L.: The Formation and Retention of Associations Among the Insane. (American Journal of Psychology, 1917, Vol. XXVIII, PP. 419-435.)

As the conclusions are summarized, considerable impairment of the power of forming associations is found in constitutional inferiors, dementia præcox and general paralysis cases. It is much more marked in paretics of a given degree of dementia than in the other two types. No disturbance of retentiveness is found in any of the three types. The “fluctuation span” of the pathological subjects was found to be about twice as great as the normal.

JONES, EDWARD S.: The Woolley Test Series Applied to the Detection of Ability in Telegraphy. (Journal of Educational Psychology, 1917, Vol. VIII, pp. 27-34.)

The test series was studied in connection with the telegraphic skill of 22 boys, this skill being derived from the judgments of teachers of the rank of each individual in the group. The type of ability called for in telegraphy seems fairly well correlated with ability in certain psychological tests. When six of these records are taken together, their correlation with the judgment of ability is as high as 81. The correlation of the initial and final rankings of the individual teachers was somewhat less than this. By immediate testing with certain selected tests, it seems that more can be known of future telegraphic ability than by judgments of individual teachers after four months of contact with the pupils.

Substitution test measurements and the recognition test indicate no clos relationship with telegraphic ability; the opposites test and sentence tes measurements, on the other hand, give a high correlation with telegraphi ability as estimated. “It is impossible to predict in advance what tests wi. correlate highly with special kinds of abilities."

MUSCIO, BERNARD: The Influence of the Form of a Question. (British Journal of Psychology, 1916, Vol. VIII, pp. 351–389.)

This is a study in the psychology of testimony. Binet's and Lipmann's studies are reviewed, with a summarizing of Lipmann's classification of forms of question. The attempt is made to investigate the influence upon the answers of: (1) The "direction" of the question, whether subjective or objective; (2) the use of articles (definite or indefinite). A moving picture film, requiring 25 to 28 seconds to reel off, was the method of stimulus. About an hour was spent in the questionnaire for each exposure. The subjects numbered 56, 21 women and 35 men, mostly university graduates or students. It is found that certain forms of questions are less reliable, e. g., those containing a negative or the definite article. "There is little to choose between subjective-direction and objective-direction questions considered as instruments for the discovery of truth. Never

theless, their answers exhibit great differences, and it is in the interest of justice that these differences should be recognized." Illustrations are given from court-room procedure.

PINTNER, RUDOLF, and Toops, HERBERT A.: A Chart for Rapid Computation of Point Scale Scores. (Journal of Delinquency, 1917, Vol. II, pp. 209-210.)

The authors give in tabular form the coefficient of mental ability represented by any performance in the Yerkes point scale at any age. An additional column gives the corresponding mental ages. It is an exceedingly useful piece of work, eliminating much of the time wasted in arithmetical computations incidental to intelligence examinations. Apparently the same thing should be done for the Stanford Revision, using the unit of two months' credit in place of the Yerkes "point."

PINTNER, RUDOLF: A Mental Survey of the School Population of a Village. (School and Society, 1917, Vol. V, pp. 597-600.)

There were tested 154 children from the grades of a village with 913 inhabitants. Five group-tests were used: Rote memory for concrete words, digit-symbol, symbol-digit, word building, and easy opposites. The performance in the tests is evaluated in terms of percentile ability for each age. The median percentile score of the five tests is used as the mental index of the child. An estimation of the mentality of the entire school and of each grade is thus possible. The school tested appears slightly below normal, having many backward children, and comparatively few bright ones