L. L. Thurstone (autobiography)
作者: L. L. Thurstone / 49176次阅读 时间: 2011年12月02日
来源: www.brocku.ca
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Teaching

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In 1948 we had an unusual experience when both Thelma and I were appointed as visiting professors at the University of Frankfurt in Germany. Our group was the first one to go from the University of Chicago to Frankfurt. Our principal motivation for that enterprise was the opportunity to help, even in a very small way, to repair what is left after the physical and moral destruction in Europe. Our lectures and seminars in Frankfurt were scheduled on the first three days of each week so that we had every week end for visiting lectures at Marburg, Heidelberg, M�nster, and other places. We have never had more grateful students and colleagues. We brought American books and we were informed that these were the first books from outside Germany to reach their laboratories since before the war. We admired the efforts in reconstruction against terrific odds, including hunger, lack of supplies, and living quarters built by hand in the rubble.心理学空间REP"w1O-t

 

We have had a number of foreign students in our laboratory. These included Charles Wang and E. H. Hs� from China, who have been productive. Mariano Yela from the University of Madrid, Spain, who spent two years here, was one of our best students. From South Africa we have had three superior students. John Karlin remained in this country and is now on the staff of the Bell Telephone Company laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Mrs. Melany Baehr was sent here from South Africa by the National Bureau of Personnel Research. Mrs. Baehr's dissertation was written here for a doctor's degree that was awarded in South Africa. We have had similar cooperative arrangements about several other dissertations for degrees that were awarded in other universities. Mrs. Carol Pemberton came here from South Africa and is now completing work for the doctorate with a dissertation on the closure factors in relation to personality traits. According to our last information several years ago, Nicholas Margineau was still a political prisoner in Rumania.

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At the present time we have an exceptionally promising group in the Psychometric Laboratory. Among the advanced students are Thomas Jeffrey, who is in immediate charge of the Laboratory, Andrew Baggaley, Fred Damarin, Robert Fantz, William Harris, Ray Hartley, Thomas Johnson, Father Lawlor, John Mellinger, and Jonathan Wegener. In addition to these advanced students we have an exceptional group of Fellows: Professor Allen Edwards for the Social Science Research Council, Dr. Lyle Jones on a National Research Council fellowship, Dr. J. E. Birren on a Public Health Service fellowship, Jean Cardinet from Professor Pi�ron's laboratory in Paris, and Per Saugstad on a fellowship from Norway. As this manuscript is being written, Dr. Horacio Rimoldi is preparing to go to Uruguay on a new professorship.

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The graduate students of psychology who have a major interest in research will probably find it advantageous now, as in the past, to serve an apprenticeship in teaching. To teach is probably still the best way to master one's subject and to recognize its major research possibilities. When I was promoted to a professorship at Chicago in 1927, I was offered the opportunity to devote full time to research without teaching obligations. I chose instead a program that implied the teaching of one course each quarter, and I still believe that was a wise decision, partly because it has enabled me to keep in touch with promising talent among graduate students and to select associates in my laboratory. The research men who are completely divorced from teaching are often isolated professionally unless they have served for some years in active teaching before withdrawing to their laboratories. Seldom is a young man destined to professional recognition if he withdraws from teaching immediately after the completion of the doctorate.

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Psychological measurement is generally regarded as a field of specialization, but this is an unfortunate circumstance. Those who specialize in this field often regard mathematical statistics as their basic subject matter and the result is that they often forget psychological theory and problems. It would be more fortunate if the quantitative aspects of psychology were treated as integral parts of psychological theory and experimental procedure. Psychological measurement theory would not then be relegated to separate courses. It would be part of psychological subject matter in social psychology, the cognitive functions, personality theory, learning and forgetting, the sensory and perceptual functions, and the rest. It is a challenge to develop further the quantitative aspects of psychology itself. Mathematical statistics is a useful tool but it is an entirely different subject. It is in no sense a substitute for psychological measurement theory which is part of psychological science.

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This biography has been concerned primarily with the development of psychological ideas that have guided my work. But all of my time has not

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(321) been at the office and laboratory. Our family has lived in the same house for twenty-four years, and much of our interest has centered there. Our oldest son, Robert (23), has just been graduated in electrical engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology; Conrad (20) is completing the second year in medicine at the University of Chicago; and Fritz (18) is completing the sophomore year in physics at California Institute of Technology. Our policy has been to encourage their projects in a basement machine shop and electronics laboratory, the grinding of telescope reflectors, and the assembly of their own television set, a bedroom radio station that barely left room for a bed, and many other enterprises. For many years we have spent long vacations in a summer colony, Wabigama, on Elk Lake near Traverse City, Michigan. That unusual group of twenty families of scientists and professional men have individual cottages on the lake, and we have had an unusual experience in community living with one of the most friendly groups we have ever known. The boys have had the experience of knowing well these men and their families in the informal life of that summer colony, a privilege that they appreciate the more as they reach maturity. Summers have been more than vacations. They have been rich episodes in living, including fishing, fly-tying, rod-making, sailing, house construction, work in the woods and orchard, outboard motors, and help in all the emergencies. Outside of my own connection at the University, the associations in Wabigama have had the most important impact on our family.

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Thelma has the outstanding achievement in our family in managing an active household at the same time that she was professionally active. She has been a partner in every research project in the Psychometric Laboratory. For many years she was in the laboratory daily, helping to plan the projects, supervising most of the test construction, and participating especially in the psychological interpretation of results. In 1948 she left this work to become director of the Division of Child Study in the Chicago Public Schools. This report should really have been written as a biography for both of us.www.psychspace.com心理学空间网

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«探索性因子分析法 89 塞斯顿 | Louis L. Thurstone
《89 塞斯顿 | Louis L. Thurstone》
LOUIS LEON THURSTONE1887-1955 BY J. P. GUILFORD»
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