Abstract
HE popular descriptions of a person as ‘clever with his hands,’ or ‘clever with his head,’ raise some intricate problems for physiology and psychology, and in the sphere of applied science, for education, industry, and sport. For the latter vague phrase the concept of ‘intelligence’ has been substituted, with substantial empirical support. Tests of intelligence give results which correlate highly with each other. For the former phrase, attempts to substitute the concept of ‘motor ability’ (strictly speaking, of motor capacity) have met with unforeseen and interesting difficulties. For while there seems ample evidence for the existence of a ‘general intelligence, the results of simple tests for isolated motor performances as far as possible excluding intelligence, show extremely low or even negative correlations with each other. Results along these lines corroborating earlier work by Wissler have been obtained by F. A. C. Perrin and Bernard Muscio. Moreover, in these investigations there seems to be no support for a belief in the correlation between simple motor abilities and ‘intelligence.’
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PEAR, T. Recent Studies of Skilled Performances, with Reference to the Transfer of Training1. Nature 119, 906–907 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/119906b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/119906b0