GENERAL INTELLIGENCE
*37
Were very quiet and steady. One of them, by the way, we
discovered by her attempt to do the hard-directions test.
She stumbled along until she got to the direction: “Tell
where the sun rises, in the east or in the west?” She
pondered over this for a while, and then remarked: “That’s
a hard one.” “Why, don’t you know where the sun rises?”
asked the examiner. “No. I used to know but I forgot,”
Was the answer. Yet we found that this g : rl had the
ability to do something and do it well.
Mr. W: But how about the higher grades of intelligence?
Miss N: There again we find that no matter how high a
person’s general intelligence may be, it does not follow
that he will be especially intelligent in a certain kind of
w ork. For instance, another girl who took the test I
jUentioned came to the same question and put down as
"er answer: “The sun does not rise, but the earth revolving
around its axis makes it seem as if it came up in the east.”
this girl was a high-school graduate and above the average
ltl intelligence, but she did not make good at the clerical
"'ork for which she was hired.
Mr. L: But how about the tests which you have been
S ly ing? Don’t you test for intelligence?
Miss H: Yes, Mr. Lambert, but not for general intelligence.
We give tests of different kinds for different
Purposes; of one kind for inspectors, tests of a quite differe
ut kind for assemblers, and tests of still another kind for
er ks, and so on. Why, even our clerical tests, which we
uegan giving to all clerks, soon proved to be too general,
ur instance, we used to place a good deal of emphasis on
Unity in the filing tests, but we soon found that many
f r ks could do the work expected of them very well
hhout being good in filing. The same thing happened
