دانلود کتاب Spatial Ability: Its Educational and Social Significance

At first sight it would appear to be a highly technical survey of the statistical findings of certain mental tests. But the conclusions which the author draws from his careful weighing of the evidence have very important implications for current educational policy. It is high time, therefore, that educationists should take the trouble to acquaint themselves with this technical evidence, to ponder on it. Briefly stated, Dr. Macfarlane Smith's thesis is that British education, particularly that given in grammar schools, while stressing the development of general or all-round intelligence, has over-valued the verbal type of ability at the expense of its psychological opposite---spatial ability. The Crowther Report, Sir Charles Snow and many other public figures have, of course, urged the claims of mathematical, technical and scientific education, together with Britain's need for technologists and scientists. But few of such advocates possess any scientific knowledge of the nature of these abilities they wish to encourage, what is their common essence, nor how this essence is related to other abilities or to temperamental traits and Personality qualities. Nor are they, perhaps, sufficiently aware that our current system of selection for secondary and university education actively discriminates against the pupil or student who is most likely to be talented in these directions.

Dr. Macfarlane Smith outlines a large body of work on spatial, performance, mechanical and other non-verbal tests and shows th.t there is a major underlying factor or type of ability which is best defined as the capacity to perceive and hold in mind the structure and proportions of a form or figure, grasped as a whole. This view reconciles the somewhat divergent results of British and American workers, since the latter have often used less appropriate multiple-choice tests involving recognition of details rather than perception and reproduction of complex wholes. There is ample evidence of the usefulness of such tests in selection for technical courses and training, for geometry and art. But in addition a comprehensive survey of work on mathematical aptitude indicates that, apart from general (preferably non-verbal) intelligence tests, the most predictive tests are also those of the spatial factor. In contrast, mechanical arithmetic tests give very little indication of future mathematical or scientific ability (hence Crowther's advocacy of 'numeracy' is psychologically misleading). It would seem that the perception of form is a general characteristic of the abstract thinking involved in mathematics and science, as distinct from the verbal thinking involved in most school subjects.

A good deal of interesting work is surveyed, also, on defects in spatial ability associated with brain injury, cerebral palsy and leucotomy; and a discussion of the relations of this ability to types of attention (analytic vs synthesis) and to EEG brain waves throws further light on the neurological and mental processes involved. Finally the author makes a strong case for some relation between the ability and temperamental qualities akin to introversion, masculinity and initiative. The lack of understanding between the scientist and the humanist probably arises from the fact that their modes of thinking are intimately bound up with their whole personality organization.