Carnegie Institute of Technology
In 1915 Walter Bingham interviewed graduate students at Chicago to find assistants for the newly established Division of Applied Psychology at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. He was assembling his staff for that important and interesting new development. He asked me about psychological research. I told him about my interest in the galvanic reflex and its possibilities for experimental psychology. With some hesitation I also told him about my interest in the psychological problems concerned with melody. At that time I was considering writing a master's thesis on the Hindu ragas, in which the melody covers a very small pitch excursion so that occidental standards of tonality are not involved. The psychological problem is then to determine, if possible, what constitutes the perceptual unity
(301) of such a melody. I had no idea at the time that Bingham was himself interested in such problems, that he had worked with Stumpf and von Hornhostel, and that he was interested in collections of phonograph records of exotic music. When I received a telegram from Bingham appointing me to an assistantship with an annual stipend of one thousand dollars, I was probably more pleased than I was twenty-three years later when I was promoted to a distinguished service professorship at Chicago.
Bingham's venture was to establish the first department of applied psychology in this country. The work was challenging at every turn and, while the orientation was always toward practical applications of psychology, there was a generous interest in theoretical problems. It was a privilege for a graduate student to be closely associated with the staff which included, besides Bingham, Walter Dill Scott, Clarence Yoakum, G. M. Whipple, E. K. Strong, Kate Gordon, W. W. Charters, and J. B. Miner. Bingham once told me that I was a good assistant but that I was not dependable in looking after details. He was right. After the first year as assistant, I was told about President Hamerschlag's comment that I had not made enough of an impression. Nevertheless, I received a reappointment for a second year as assistant in 1916. In 1917 I received a doctorate in psychology at Chicago and, after that, promotions in rank and salary came annually. Before I left Carnegie, I had a full professorship and was chairman of the department of psychology. It has often seemed strange that I did not undertake any fundamental theoretical problems during the seven years at Carnegie. Such interests must have been incubating without my realizing it because, when I later came to Chicago in 1924, such work seemed to get under way with a great deal of pressure.All of our objective psychological test material at Carnegie was made available for the Army in the First World War. My own assignment was to work in the trade-test division in Newark, New Jersey, in the design of objective methods of appraising the oral trade tests. My main contribution in that assignment was the key-word principle for scoring oral trade tests. I wrote a memorandum[3]on the key-word principle for Beardsley Ruml, who was director of the Newark trade-test office. There was a lot of discussion in our staff in Newark as to whether the key-word principle would be feasible, but it was given a field trial with favorable results. A large number of oral trade tests for army use were then designed on the key-word principle.[4]In the application of this principle, the examiner asks a question which he reads from the manual. If the respondent uses any of the specified words
(302) that are listed as key-words, then the respondent is given credit for the question. In this manner the examiner can give a preliminary screening of the candidates without himself knowing anything about the trades involved. The same principle was applied to picture tests in which the respondent answered questions concerning the numbered or lettered parts in pictures of trade equipment and processes.
One publication, written at Carnegie, was a short monograph on The Nature of Intelligence (1924). It was published in the International Library of Psychology, Philosophy, and Scientific Method in London. The monograph was the result of ideas initiated by Professor Mead's lectures at Chicago. Professor Mead's lectures in social psychology probably had a greater influence on my psychological thinking than any other course. It certainly had nothing to do with the social psychology of 1950. I became interested in focal consciousness as representative of the incomplete act. I tried to relate the concepts of the incomplete act with the concepts of intelligence. I tried to show that the degree of intelligence is associated with the degree of incompleteness of the act at which it becomes focal in consciousness. The more incomplete the act, the greater is the range of possible overt expression. If the act becomes focal in consciousness at a very incomplete and abstract stage of development, then the conscious choices control a wide range of overt resolution. The less intelligent act approaches completion before it becomes focal in consciousness and therefore it controls a very narrow range of possible overt expression. This interpretation of intelligence is sometimes listed in the textbooks as one of the numbered theories that students are expected to memorize. I have never seen a textbook summary of this theory which is intelligible to me.
The department of applied psychology flourished for eight years at Carnegie, but in 1923 it was no longer in favor and the research activities in applied psychology were discontinued. In these early days of applied psychology, Walter Bingham's group at Carnegie made substantial contributions towards the eventual acceptance of applied psychological research.www.psychspace.com心理学空间网
