Charles Spearman

Spearman had an unusual background for a psychologist. In his childhood he was ambitious to follow an academic career. But first he joined the army as a regular officer of engineers in August 1883, After 15 years he resigned in 1897 to study for a PhD in experimental psychology. In Britain, psychology was generally seen as a branch of philosophy and Spearman chose to study in Leipzig under Wilhelm Wundt, because it was a centre of the "new psychology"—one that used the scientific method instead of metaphysical speculation. As Wundt was often absent due to his multiple duties and popularity, Spearman largely worked with Felix Krueger and Wilhelm Wirth, both of whom he admired.) he obtained his degree in 1906. He had already published his seminal paper on the factor analysis of intelligence (1904). Spearman met and impressed the psychologist William McDougall who arranged for Spearman to replace him when he left his position at University College London. Spearman stayed at University College until he retired in 1931. Initially he was the Reader and head of the small psychological laboratory. In 1911 he was promoted to the Grote professorship of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic. His title changed to Professor of Psychology in 1928 when a separate Department of Psychology was created. When Spearman was elected to the Royal Society in 1924 and synthesis of empirical work on ability. Spearman was strongly influenced by the work of Francis Galton. Galton did pioneering work in psychology and developed correlation, the main statistical tool used by Spearman. In statistics, Spearman developed rank correlation (1904), a non-parametric version of the conventional Pearson correlation, as well as both the widely used correction for attenuation (1907), and ''the earliest version of a 'factor analysis''' (Lovie & Lovie, 1996, p. 81). Spearman's life both began and ended in the city of London. He had three daughters, and a son who died in 1941 in Crete. ==Theory of intelligence==

A record of Spearman's views on g (and also those of Godfrey Thomson and Edward Thorndike) was made in the course of the Carnegie-sponsored International Examinations Inquiry Meetings. Here, Spearman gives a compact summary of his findings and theory of g:There was also another co-factor as proposed by Spearman that was special intelligence. The special intelligence was for individuals who accomplished high success results in the same tests. However, later Spearman introduced group factor that was particular to those correlations that were not a result of factor g or s. His ideas were in 1938 criticized on paper by psychologist Louis L. Thurstone who argued his own experiments showed that intelligence formed seven primary categories: numerical, reasoning, spatial, perceptual, memory, verbal fluency and verbal comprehension. Thurstone ultimately agreed with Spearman that there was a general factor among ability measures. Subsequently, Raymond Cattell supported a version of the general ability concept theorized by Spearman but highlighted two forms of ability, distinguished by their noegenetic properties: fluid and crystallized intelligence. As time progressed, Spearman increasingly argued that g was not, from a psychological point of view, a single ability but composed of two very different abilities which normally worked closely together. These he called "eductive" ability and "reproductive" ability. The former term comes from the Latin root "educere" – which means to "draw out" and thus refers to the ability to make meaning out of confusion. He claimed that to understand these different abilities "in their trenchant contrast, their ubiquitous cooperation, and their genetic interlinkage" would, for the study of "individual differences – and even cognition itself" – be "the very beginning of wisdom." Spearman felt that though g could be detected in any sufficiently-broad set of cognitive measures, he felt that the tests from which his g had emerged "had no place in schools" because they "deflected" teachers', pupils', parents' and politicians' attention from the business of education which, as the Latin root of the word implies, should be concerned with "drawing out" whatever talents a student may have. He presented a digest of his views in the entry "Abilities, general and special" in the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Spearman's model was influential, but was also critiqued by others, such as Godfrey Thomson. In particular the move from a psychological g to a biological g – that is a unitary biological mechanism or mechanisms has remained a matter of active research. Nonetheless, Thomson's disagreements with Spearman had more to do with methodology and epistemology than data or interpretations thereof. It was Thomson who authored Spearman's biographical memoir for the Royal Society. == Factor analysis ==

Factor analysis is a statistical test that is used to find relationships between multiple correlated measures and Spearman played a clear part in its development. Spearman coined the term factor analysis and used it extensively in analyzing multiple measures of cognitive performance. It was factor analytic data which led Spearman to postulate his original general and specific factor models of ability. Spearman applied mathematical procedures to psychological phenomena and moulded the outcome of his analysis into a theory – which has greatly influenced modern psychology. Factor analysis and its modern relations confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling underlie much of modern behaviour research. == References ==