The Validity of Aptitude Tests in Personnel Selection

Ghiselli, Edwin Ε.

doi:10.1111/j.1744-6570.1973.tb01150.x

Cited by 284 publications

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“…Electronic mail may be sent via Internet to tim.salthouse@psych.gatech.edu. of established reliability and span a broad range of cognitive abilities, the general phenomenon of negative relations between age and Type A or fluid cognition can be considered quite robust.Performance on tests of cognitive ability is also a meaningful target or criterion phenomenon because cognitive batteries have proven useful for prediction and assessment outside of the laboratory and in nonacademic settings (e.g., Ghiselli, 1973;Hunter & Hunter, 1984). A focus on cognitive test performance therefore provides a relatively parsimonious linkage to realworld activities.…”

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The processing-speed theory of adult age differences in cognition.

Salthouse¹

1996

Psychological Review

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316

3,677

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A theory is proposed to account for some of the age-related differences reported in measures of Type A or fluid cognition. The central hypothesis in the theory is that increased age in adulthood is associated with a decrease in the speed with which many processing operations can be executed and that this reduction in speed leads to impairments in cognitive functioning because of what are termed the limited time mechanism and the simultaneity mechanism. That is, cognitive performance is degraded when processing is slow because relevant operations cannot be successfully executed (limited time) and because the products of early processing may no longer be available when later processing is complete (simultaneity). Several types of evidence, such as the discovery of considerable shared age-related variance across various measures of speed and large attenuation of the age-related influences on cognitive measures after statistical control of measures of speed, are consistent with this theory.The purpose of the current article is to describe, and discuss the evidence relevant to, the processing-speed theory of cognitive aging phenomena. The fundamental assumption in the theory is that a major factor contributing to age-related differences in memory and other aspects of cognitive functioning is a reduction with increased age in the speed with which many cognitive operations can be executed (Salthouse, 1985b). In this article, discussion of evidence relevant to the theory is restricted to the adult portion of the life span, but the basic mechanism may be relevant across the entire life span because similar ideas have been proposed by Kail (e.g., 1986Kail (e.g., , 1991Kail & Park, 1992) regarding the development of cognitive functioning during childhood.Because the success of a theory cannot be evaluated if the goal one hopes to achieve is never clearly specified, I begin by briefly describing the phenomenon that the present theory is intended to explain. Some of the best-documented findings in the literature on aging and cognition are the age-related differences in Type A (Hebb, 1942) or fluid (Cattell, 1943;Horn, 1982;Horn & Cattell, 1963) cognition, which include a wide variety of measures of memory, reasoning, and spatial abilities. The relations between age and cognition have been well documented since the earliest mental testing of adults (e.g., Foster & Taylor, 1920;Jones & Conrad, 1933), and they are readily apparent in the results from the standardization data in psychometric and neuropsychological test batteries (e.g., see Salthouse, 1991c, chap. 2, for a review). Because the samples for the standardization data in these test batteries are typically large and representative, and because the performance measures are Preparation of this article was supported by National Institute on Aging Grant R37 AG06826.1 would like to thank John Dunlosky, Julie Earles, Dan Fisk, Leah Light, Ulman Lindenberger, and David Madden for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.Correspondence concerning this article sho...

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confidence: 99%

The processing-speed theory of adult age differences in cognition.

Salthouse¹

1996

Psychological Review

4,771

316

3,677

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“…Over the last 80 years, industrial psychologists have conducted hundreds of studies, involving hundreds of thousands of workers, on the relationship between productivity in particular jobs and various predictors of that productivity. They have found that scores on tests measuring competence in reading, mathematics, science, and problem solving are strongly related to productivity on the job (Ghiselli, 1973).2 Figure 1 compares the percentage effect of mathematical and verbal achievement (specifically a difference of three grade-level equivalents in test scores or .7 GPA points, on a 4 point scale) on the productivity of a clerical worker, on wages of male clerical workers (Taubman & Wales, 1975), and on the wages of young women who have not gone to college (Kang & Bishop, 1984;Meyer, Other potential sources of information on effort and achievement in high school are transcripts and referrals from teachers who know the applicant. Both are under-used.…”

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confidence: 99%

Why the Apathy in American High Schools?

Bishop

1989

Educational Researcher

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“…In particular, prevailing skepticism concerning the use of personality measures in selection marked the 1960's and 1970's. Doubts largely stemmed from inconsistent validity evidence, as well as lack of consensus regarding the underlying structure of personality or appropriate performance criteria (Ghiselli, 1973;Guion & Gottier, 1965;Schmidt, Gooding, Noe, & Kinch, 1984). The Five Factor Model's (i.e., Big Five) emergence as a widely accepted taxonomy of normal personality in the ensuing decades has helped address many of the skeptics' concerns.…”

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confidence: 99%