Ability : a psychological study / by Victoria Hazlitt.

  • Hazlitt, Victoria, 1887-1932.
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Ability : a psychological study / by Victoria Hazlitt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    (see p. 33). His suggestion that there is no general factor seems to be very largely a jeu d'esprit and need not detain us. Since the publication of the Symposium on Intelligence, Prof. Spearman’s book on the same subject has appeared.1 For over twenty years Prof. Spearman has championed the view that there is a general factor in ability. In his introductory chapter he puts his view in the following words : “ The continued success of the same person throughout all varia¬ tions of both form and subject-matter . . . appears only explicable by some factor lying deeper than the phenomena of consciousness. And thus there emerges the concept of a hypothetical general and quantitative factor underlying all cognitive performance of any kind.” This general factor is’ taken tentatively by Prof. Spear¬ man to be the equivalent of energy or power. Each different cognitive operation is served by a specific factor peculiar to it, and Prof. Spearman suggests that this specific factor may be the correlate of the functioning of the specific neurons serving the particular kind of operation. He considers that general ability or intelligence cannot be defined in terms of any one psychological process, and he gives a very clear and searching criticism of the attempts that have been made to do this. One may readily agree that ability has not been satisfactorily defined in terms of psychological processes and still feel that Prof. Spearman’s own theory of a general energy working a number of specific engines is extraordinarily difficult. It would seem to involve the very type of localization of function that is being discredited,2 for such localization of sensory and motor functions as has been established is far too general in character to account for the special abilities that appear to exist (see below, p. 51 f.). Further,There is the objection that in adopting such a view one is basing the whole theory 1 Op. cit. 2 See Head, “ Speech and Cerebral Localization,” Brain, 1923, pp. 424-5.
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