The abilities of man : their nature and measurement / by C. Spearman.

  • Charles Spearman
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The abilities of man : their nature and measurement / by C. Spearman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    304/474 page 290
    more what might naturally have been expected a priori ; for in general, the degree of functional unity corresponds fairly well with the degree of apparent likeness. When two kinds of memory resemble each other only in the bare fact of both involving retentivity, the correlation arising from this cause is little if at all above zero. In pro¬ portion as the likeness between them is augmented by resemblance of material—for instance, by both being sensory, or by both being verbal—the correlation becomes more and more marked. With eduction, on the other hand, all this is quite otherwise. The correlation arising from it can be very large even between operations that are extremely un¬ like (see ch. xi.). And the correlations, large or small, which exist between extremely unlike operations are no whit increased by virtue of introducing resemblance between them—until this resemblance becomes very close indeed. In such manner is afforded from another angle a striking corroboration of the result reached in the earlier part of this chapter ; this is that the g manifested in eduction has nothing in common with the retentivity manifested in ac¬ quiring dispositions. And an explanation is at once afforded by the theory that the g measures something of the nature of an energy. For certainly this can have no power of retention. But nothing could be more natural, on the other hand, than that such a power should be possessed by the engines.
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