"A conversation between Charles Spearman, Godfrey Thomson, and Edward L. Thorndike: The International Examinations Inquiry Meetings 1931-1938": Correction to Deary, Lawn, and Bartholomew (2008).

Abstract

Even within "an appreciation of the fundamentally social nature of scientific activity" (Danziger, 1990, p. 3), it is unusual to read what key scientists actually said to each other, directly or in audience.Here we describe, structure, illustrate, and interpret the verbatim statements made by, and a detailed conversation that took place between, Charles Spearman, Godfrey Thomson, and Edward Thorndike within the Carnegie-funded International Examinations Inquiry meetings in 1931, 1935, and 1938.Unusually, there were transcriptions of all comments at these meetings, even of the smallest verbal utterance.The transcriptions offer a novel look at these researchers' theoretical and practical approaches to intelligence testing and its place in education.Aspects of Thomson's and Spearman's personalities are in evidence too, from this unique source.One particular conversation among the three leads to an important new insight about intelligence and intelligence testing.These conversations provide new and complementary information on a trio of leading intelligence researchers whose individual contributions and interactions with each other were seminal in the scientific study of human cognitive abilities. Spearman, Thomson and Thorndike at the International Examinations Inquiry 3The history of research in psychology, and in education, is a social and scientific history.Researchers are involved in a field of inquiry which, although it might take place in physically isolated laboratories or in private, professional spaces, is a connected field.Research takes place within "a pattern of social relations" (Danziger, 1990, p. 5) in which scientific norms are embedded, prominence and hierarchy are contained, frameworks of inquiry are recognized, and collaboration and argument flow.Danziger (1990) argues that the social relations of research extend beyond the place of production, and into a community which has to accept the validity of its work and into a professional environment of consumption and use by professionals and policy makers.Communication about field problematics, replication of findings and, particularly, on individual contribution and esteem, are an ever-present part of the production of the field.Much of this social element or social pattern of production is hard or impossible to reconstruct.It is rare to have a record of what scientists in a field actually said to each other.The International Examination Inquiry (IEI) meeting transcripts provide an exception (Monroe, 1931(Monroe, , 1936(Monroe, , 1939)).They reveal what three important researchers in the field of human intelligence differences-Spearman, Thomson and Thorndike-say about their work and its usefulness within the deliberations of a group of educationists.Outside of the setting in which the conversations were recorded, we provide some background, first to the individuals themselves, and second to the personal and professional relations between these three men. Spearman, Thomson and ThorndikeCharles E. Spearman's (1863Spearman's ( -1949

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 2 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.