Yet practically they appear as two independent traits,
and therefore it remains important to know that, if we can find one of
them, we may be sure that the other will exist there too. Inasmuch as
the one of the two traits may be easily detected, while the other may
be hidden and can be found out only by long careful tests, it would be
valuable, indeed, for the employment manager to become acquainted with
such correlations as the psychologist may discover: as soon as he
becomes aware of the superficially noticeable symptom, he can foresee
that the other disposition is most probably present. To give an
illustration: in the interest of such measurements of correlations we
have studied in the Harvard laboratory the various characteristics of
attention and their mutual dependence.[18] We found that typical
connections exist between apparently independent features of
attention. Persons who have a rather expansive span of attention for
acoustical impressions have also a wide span for the visual objects.
Persons whose attention is vivid and quick have on the whole the
expansive type of attention, while those who attend slowly have a
narrow field of attention, and so on. Hence the manifestation of one
feature of attention allows us to presuppose without further tests
that certain other features may be expected in the particular
individual.
The problem of attention, indeed, seems to stand quite in the centre
of the field of industrial efficiency.
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