60 THE FACTORS OF THE MIND

(£) Prediction in Vocational Psychology.—In vocational
psychology, as in educational psychology, there seems also
to be a confusion of two different problems. Here the first

for many years; and correlations between the performances of these and other
children at their first testing and their progress later on are given in detail.
Since the correlations are not perfect, it was never claimed that school
progress is " necessarily limited " by the indications of the tests.

Reyburn and Taylor (' Factorial Analysis and School Subjects: A
Criticism,' to appear in a forthcoming number of the Brit, J. Ethic. Psychol)
deal more particularly with special abilities and disabilities. Their criticism
is mainly directed against my article on ' The Relations of Educational
Abilities' (Brit. J. Educ. PsychoL, IX, pp. 45-70). They overlook the fact
that this paper was primarily concerned with a theoretical comparison of
factorial methods, and that the concrete results were cited solely by way of
confirmation of earlier statistical and clinical work (see opening paragraphs
of that article). They argue that " the schoolmaster . . . would gladly learn
of factors which would help him to estimate how the boy will do in some
other examination, and more particularly to control them and alter their
effects." They then treat these two problems—future prediction and im-
mediate treatment—as on the same footing. As regards prediction they
contend that " the interposed factors are an unnecessary complication : they
are not recognized in the further situations to which they are a guide," With
the first sentence I agree (with the reservations implied above in the text);
with the second sentence I disagree : in the subsequent histories of my cases
the factors are recognizable. As regards the treatment of individual children
and the c control and alteration * of their educational performances, the
writers argue that the statistical methods I have used can have little or no
value, because the resulting factors can be " psychologically and education-
ally significant only by accident." I should agree—if the correlated tests had
been chosen without reference to educational problems, e.g. if (as in some
• researches which the writers have in mind) they were practically a haphazard
collection. As it is, the tests were expressly selected to elicit those particular
types of disability that had already been observed in clinical work. The
writers finally conclude that, in view of the many alternative analyses that can
be made of the same table (for they do not admit that the group-factor
method and the general-factor method give equivalent results) " we doubt
whether a satisfactory analysis of school subjects can be made with the
available data," My reply would be that the " available data " do not
consist solely of the table of correlations with which they are concerned,
The ' available data' also include clinical studies of typical cases, experi-
mental attempts to * control and alter' educational disabilities by different
modes of teaching and training, etc. etc., such as are described in my book,
It is on the mutual illumination of both methods of approach that the
practical educationist relies. As I have repeatedly insisted, tests, even if
based on the most careful factorial work, " can still be but the beginning,
never the end, of the examination of the individual child " (Mental and
Scholastic Tests, p. xv; cf, The Backward Child, pp. 63