THE MEASUREMENT OF LEARNING ABILITY

S ummary .— Intelligence tests are often assumed to predict a child's ability to learn, although they are seldom based on situations that directly involve any learning. A battery of nine group tests was devised for junior school children, each based on the learning of an unfamiliar task, and yielding six scores for successive stages of practice. These were applied to 8–9 and 10–11 year pupils, along with a number of more conventional tests, in order to find whether they added appreciably to the predictions of achievement derived from the previous year's work. As a measure of learning, residual gain was used, i.e., final scores holding initial scores constant. These residual gain measures were found to be largely specific in the younger group, though somewhat more consistent and more predictive in the older group. However, the tests differed considerably in their validities, and further work might produce more useful ones. There are considerable difficulties in finding tasks relevant to school progress which will also cover a wide range of ability, A stronger case might be made for using final scores, after a period of instruction and practice on new tests, as predictors.