Primary Mental Abilities

Abstract

This publication is the opening number of a series which the Psychometric Society proposes to issue. It reports the first large experimental inquiry, carried out by the methods of factor analysis described by Thurstone in The Vectors of the Mind ¹. The work was made possible by financial grants from the Social Science Research Committee of the University of Chicago, the American Council of Education, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The results are eminently worthy of the assistance so generously accorded. Thurstone’s previous theoretical account, lucid and comprehensive as it is, is intelligible only to those who have a knowledge of matrix algebra. Hence his methods have become known to British educationists chiefly from the monograph published by W. P. Alexander⁸. This enquiry has provoked a good deal of criticism, particularly from Professor Spearman’s school ; and differs, as a matter of fact, from Thurstone’s later expositions. Hence it is of the greatest value to have a full and simple illustration of his methods, based on a concrete inquiry, from Professor Thurstone himself.