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Louis Leon Thurstone

December 01, 2023

Louis Leon Thurstone (29 May 1887 – 29 September 1955)[1] was an American pioneer in the fields of psychometrics and psychophysics. He conceived the approach to measurement known as the law of comparative judgment, and is well known for his contributions to factor analysis.[2][3] A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Thurstone as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with John Garcia, James J. Gibson, David Rumelhart, Margaret Floy Washburn, and Robert S. Woodworth.[4]

Louis Leon Thurstone
Born(1887-05-29)29 May 1887
Chicago, Illinois
Died29 September 1955(1955-09-29) (aged 68)
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Alma materUniversity of Chicago
Cornell University
Known forMultiple factor analysis
Intelligence testing
Law of comparative judgment
SpouseThelma Thurstone
Scientific career
FieldsPsychometrics
InstitutionsUniversity of Chicago
L. L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory (University of North Carolina)
Doctoral advisorJames Angell
Doctoral studentsLedyard Tucker

Background and history edit

Thurstone was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Swedish immigrant parents. His family returned to Stockholm, Sweden, when he was eight years old, before returning to the United States in 1901, settling Jamestown, New York.[5] Thurstone originally received a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University in 1912. Thurstone was offered a brief assistantship in the laboratory of Thomas Edison. In 1914, after two years as an instructor of geometry and drafting at the University of Minnesota, he enrolled as a graduate student in psychology at the University of Chicago (PhD, 1917). He later returned to the University of Chicago (1924–1952) where he taught and conducted research; among his students was James Watson, who co-discovered the structure of DNA.[6] 1952, he established the L. L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[7][8]

Factor analysis and work on intelligence edit

Thurstone was responsible for the standardized mean and standard deviation of IQ scores used today, as opposed to the Intelligence Test system originally used by Alfred Binet. He is also known for the development of the Thurstone scale.[9]

Thurstone's work in factor analysis led him to formulate a model of intelligence centered on "Primary Mental Abilities" (PMAs), which were independent group factors of intelligence that different individuals possessed in varying degrees. He opposed the notion of a singular general intelligence that factored into the scores of all psychometric tests and was expressed as a mental age. In 1935 Thurstone, together with EL Thorndike and JP Guilford, founded the journal Psychometrika and also the Psychometric Society, going on to become the society's first president in 1936. Thurstone's contributions to methods of factor analysis have proved valuable in establishing and verifying later psychometric factor structures, and have influenced the hierarchical models of intelligence in use in intelligence tests such as WAIS and the modern Stanford-Binet IQ test.[10]

The seven primary mental abilities in Thurstone's model were verbal comprehension, word fluency, number facility, spatial visualization, associative memory, perceptual speed, and reasoning.

Contributions to measurement edit

Despite his contributions to factor analysis, Thurstone (1959, p. 267) cautioned: "When a problem is so involved that no rational formulation is available, then some quantification is still possible by the coefficients of correlation of contingency and the like. But such statistical procedures constitute an acknowledgement of failure to rationalize the problem and to establish functions that underlie the data. We want to measure the separation between the two opinions on the attitude continuum and we want to test the validity of the assumed continuum by means of its internal consistency". Thurstone's approach to measurement was termed the law of comparative judgment. He applied the approach in psychophysics, and later to the measurement of psychological values. The so-called 'Law', which can be regarded as a measurement model, involves subjects making a comparison between each of a number of pairs of stimuli with respect to magnitude of a property, attribute, or attitude. Methods based on the approach to measurement can be used to estimate such scale values.[11]

Thurstone's Law of comparative judgment has important links to modern approaches to social and psychological measurement. In particular, the approach bears a close conceptual relation to the Rasch model (Andrich, 1978), although Thurstone typically employed the normal distribution in applications of the Law of comparative judgment whereas the Rasch model is a simple logistic function. Thurstone anticipated a key epistemological requirement of measurement later articulated by Rasch, which is that relative scale locations must 'transcend' the group measured; i.e. scale locations must be invariant to (or independent of) the particular group of persons instrumental to comparisons between the stimuli. Thurstone (1929) also articulated what he referred to as the additivity criterion for scale differences, a criterion which must be satisfied in order to obtain interval-level measurements.[12]

Awards and honors edit

Thurstone received numerous awards, including: Best Article, American Psychological Association (1949); Centennial Award, Northwestern University (1951); Honorary Doctorate, University of Göteborg (1954). Thurstone was President of American Psychological Association (1933) and first President of the American Psychometric Society (1936).[13] He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1937,[14] the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1938,[15] and the American Philosophical Society in 1938.[16]

Selected works edit

  • The Nature of Intelligence (London: Routledge. 1924)
  • The Effect of Motion Pictures on the Social Attitudes of High School Children Ruth C. Peterson & L.L. Thurstone, MacMillan, 1932
  • Motion Pictures and the Social Attitudes of Children Ruth C. Peterson & L.L. Thurstone, MacMillan, 1933
  • The Vectors of Mind. Address of the president before the American Psychological Association, Chicago meeting, September, 1933 ( Psychological Review, 41, 1–32. 1934)
  • The Vectors of Mind (Chicago, IL, US: University of Chicago Press 1935)
  • Primary mental abilities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1938)
  • Multiple-Factor Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1947)
  • The Fundamentals of Statistics (MacMillan: Norwood Press. 1925)

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ Stout, Dale (February 2000). "Thurstone, Louis Leon (1887-1955), psychologist". American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1400635. (subscription required)
  2. ^ L.L. Thurstone (Indiana University)
  3. ^ E. G. Boring; H. S. Langfeld; H. Werner; R. M. Yerkes, eds. (1952). (PDF). A History of Psychology in Autobiography. Vol. IV. Worcester, MA: Clark University Press. pp. 295–321. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 June 2010.
  4. ^ Haggbloom, Steven J.; Warnick, Renee; Warnick, Jason E.; Jones, Vinessa K.; Yarbrough, Gary L.; Russell, Tenea M.; Borecky, Chris M.; McGahhey, Reagan; Powell III, John L.; Beavers, Jamie; Monte, Emmanuelle (2002). "The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century". Review of General Psychology. 6 (2): 139–152. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.6.2.139. S2CID 145668721.
  5. ^ Adkins, Dorothy C. (1964). "Louis Leon Thurstone: Creative Thinker, Dedicated Teacher, Eminent Psychologist". In Frederiksen, Norman; Gulliksen, Harold (eds.). Contributions to Mathematical Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winson. pp. 1–40.
  6. ^ Isaacson, Walter (2021). The Code Breaker. Simon & Schuster. p. 392. ISBN 978-1-9821-1585-2.
  7. ^ Swedes in America (Benson, Adolph B.; Naboth Hedin. New York: Haskel House Publishers. 1969)
  8. ^ L. L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory (University of North Carolina)
  9. ^ Horst, P. (1955). "L. L. Thurstone and the Science of Human Behavior". Science. 122 (3183): 1259–60. Bibcode:1955Sci...122.1259H. doi:10.1126/science.122.3183.1259. PMID 13274085.
  10. ^ . Individual Differences Homepage. Archived from the original on 13 December 2003.
  11. ^ Louis Leon Thurstone 1887–1955 (J. P. Guilford O National Academy of Science. 1957)[1]
  12. ^ Louis Leon Thurstone Biography (LoveToKnow, Corp.)
  13. ^ L.L. Thurstone (Human Intelligence)
  14. ^ "Louis Leon Thurstone". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 10 February 2023. Retrieved 6 March 2023.
  15. ^ "Louis Thurstone". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 6 March 2023.
  16. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 6 March 2023.

Sources edit

  • Martin, O (1997). "Psychological measurement from Binet to Thurstone, (1900–1930)". Revue de Synthèse (in French). 118 (4): 457–93. doi:10.1007/BF03181359. PMID 11625304.
  • Thurstone, LL (1987). "Psychophysical analysis. by L. L. Thurstone, 1927" (PDF). The American Journal of Psychology. 100 (3–4): 587–609. doi:10.2307/1422696. JSTOR 1422696. PMID 3322058.
  • Gulliksen, H (1968). "Louis Leon Thurstone, experimental and mathematical psychologist". The American Psychologist. 23 (11): 786–802. doi:10.1037/h0026696. PMID 4881041.
  • Wolfle, D (1956). "Louis Leon Thurstone, 1887–1955". The American Journal of Psychology. 69 (1): 131–4. PMID 13302517.
  • Horst, P (1955). "L.L. Thurstone and the science of human behavior". Science. 122 (3183): 1259–60. Bibcode:1955Sci...122.1259H. doi:10.1126/science.122.3183.1259. PMID 13274085.
  • Andrich, D. (1978). "Relationships Between the Thurstone and Rasch Approaches to Item Scaling". Applied Psychological Measurement. 2 (3): 451–462. doi:10.1177/014662167800200319. S2CID 120407672.
  • Thurstone, L. L. (1927). "A law of comparative judgement". Psychological Review. 34 (4): 278–286. doi:10.1037/h0070288.
  • Gordon, Kate; Smith, Thomas Vernor, eds. (1929). Essays in Philosophy: by Seventeen Doctors of Philosophy of the University of Chicago. Chicago: Open Court. OCLC 257229209.
  • Thurstone, L. L. (1974). The Measurement of Values. Vol. 61. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. pp. 47–58. doi:10.1037/h0060035. ISBN 978-0-226-80114-8. OCLC 5723850. PMID 13134416. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)

External links edit

  • The Vectors of Mind 1934

December 01, 2023
louis, leon, thurstone, 1887, september, 1955, american, pioneer, fields, psychometrics, psychophysics, conceived, approach, measurement, known, comparative, judgment, well, known, contributions, factor, analysis, review, general, psychology, survey, published. Louis Leon Thurstone 29 May 1887 29 September 1955 1 was an American pioneer in the fields of psychometrics and psychophysics He conceived the approach to measurement known as the law of comparative judgment and is well known for his contributions to factor analysis 2 3 A Review of General Psychology survey published in 2002 ranked Thurstone as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century tied with John Garcia James J Gibson David Rumelhart Margaret Floy Washburn and Robert S Woodworth 4 Louis Leon ThurstoneBorn 1887 05 29 29 May 1887Chicago IllinoisDied29 September 1955 1955 09 29 aged 68 Chapel Hill North CarolinaAlma materUniversity of Chicago Cornell UniversityKnown forMultiple factor analysis Intelligence testingLaw of comparative judgmentSpouseThelma ThurstoneScientific careerFieldsPsychometricsInstitutionsUniversity of Chicago L L Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory University of North Carolina Doctoral advisorJames AngellDoctoral studentsLedyard Tucker Contents 1 Background and history 2 Factor analysis and work on intelligence 3 Contributions to measurement 4 Awards and honors 5 Selected works 6 See also 7 References 8 Sources 9 External linksBackground and history editThurstone was born in Chicago Illinois to Swedish immigrant parents His family returned to Stockholm Sweden when he was eight years old before returning to the United States in 1901 settling Jamestown New York 5 Thurstone originally received a master s degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University in 1912 Thurstone was offered a brief assistantship in the laboratory of Thomas Edison In 1914 after two years as an instructor of geometry and drafting at the University of Minnesota he enrolled as a graduate student in psychology at the University of Chicago PhD 1917 He later returned to the University of Chicago 1924 1952 where he taught and conducted research among his students was James Watson who co discovered the structure of DNA 6 1952 he established the L L Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 7 8 Factor analysis and work on intelligence editThurstone was responsible for the standardized mean and standard deviation of IQ scores used today as opposed to the Intelligence Test system originally used by Alfred Binet He is also known for the development of the Thurstone scale 9 Thurstone s work in factor analysis led him to formulate a model of intelligence centered on Primary Mental Abilities PMAs which were independent group factors of intelligence that different individuals possessed in varying degrees He opposed the notion of a singular general intelligence that factored into the scores of all psychometric tests and was expressed as a mental age In 1935 Thurstone together with EL Thorndike and JP Guilford founded the journal Psychometrika and also the Psychometric Society going on to become the society s first president in 1936 Thurstone s contributions to methods of factor analysis have proved valuable in establishing and verifying later psychometric factor structures and have influenced the hierarchical models of intelligence in use in intelligence tests such as WAIS and the modern Stanford Binet IQ test 10 The seven primary mental abilities in Thurstone s model were verbal comprehension word fluency number facility spatial visualization associative memory perceptual speed and reasoning Contributions to measurement editDespite his contributions to factor analysis Thurstone 1959 p 267 cautioned When a problem is so involved that no rational formulation is available then some quantification is still possible by the coefficients of correlation of contingency and the like But such statistical procedures constitute an acknowledgement of failure to rationalize the problem and to establish functions that underlie the data We want to measure the separation between the two opinions on the attitude continuum and we want to test the validity of the assumed continuum by means of its internal consistency Thurstone s approach to measurement was termed the law of comparative judgment He applied the approach in psychophysics and later to the measurement of psychological values The so called Law which can be regarded as a measurement model involves subjects making a comparison between each of a number of pairs of stimuli with respect to magnitude of a property attribute or attitude Methods based on the approach to measurement can be used to estimate such scale values 11 Thurstone s Law of comparative judgment has important links to modern approaches to social and psychological measurement In particular the approach bears a close conceptual relation to the Rasch model Andrich 1978 although Thurstone typically employed the normal distribution in applications of the Law of comparative judgment whereas the Rasch model is a simple logistic function Thurstone anticipated a key epistemological requirement of measurement later articulated by Rasch which is that relative scale locations must transcend the group measured i e scale locations must be invariant to or independent of the particular group of persons instrumental to comparisons between the stimuli Thurstone 1929 also articulated what he referred to as the additivity criterion for scale differences a criterion which must be satisfied in order to obtain interval level measurements 12 Awards and honors editThurstone received numerous awards including Best Article American Psychological Association 1949 Centennial Award Northwestern University 1951 Honorary Doctorate University of Goteborg 1954 Thurstone was President of American Psychological Association 1933 and first President of the American Psychometric Society 1936 13 He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1937 14 the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1938 15 and the American Philosophical Society in 1938 16 Selected works editThe Nature of Intelligence London Routledge 1924 The Effect of Motion Pictures on the Social Attitudes of High School Children Ruth C Peterson amp L L Thurstone MacMillan 1932 Motion Pictures and the Social Attitudes of Children Ruth C Peterson amp L L Thurstone MacMillan 1933 The Vectors of Mind Address of the president before the American Psychological Association Chicago meeting September 1933 Psychological Review 41 1 32 1934 The Vectors of Mind Chicago IL US University of Chicago Press 1935 Primary mental abilities Chicago University of Chicago Press 1938 Multiple Factor Analysis Chicago University of Chicago Press 1947 The Fundamentals of Statistics MacMillan Norwood Press 1925 See also editL L Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory Law of comparative judgmentReferences edit Stout Dale February 2000 Thurstone Louis Leon 1887 1955 psychologist American National Biography New York Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 anb 9780198606697 article 1400635 subscription required L L Thurstone Indiana University E G Boring H S Langfeld H Werner R M Yerkes eds 1952 L L Thurstone PDF A History of Psychology in Autobiography Vol IV Worcester MA Clark University Press pp 295 321 Archived from the original PDF on 1 June 2010 Haggbloom Steven J Warnick Renee Warnick Jason E Jones Vinessa K Yarbrough Gary L Russell Tenea M Borecky Chris M McGahhey Reagan Powell III John L Beavers Jamie Monte Emmanuelle 2002 The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century Review of General Psychology 6 2 139 152 doi 10 1037 1089 2680 6 2 139 S2CID 145668721 Adkins Dorothy C 1964 Louis Leon Thurstone Creative Thinker Dedicated Teacher Eminent Psychologist In Frederiksen Norman Gulliksen Harold eds Contributions to Mathematical Psychology New York Holt Rinehart and Winson pp 1 40 Isaacson Walter 2021 The Code Breaker Simon amp Schuster p 392 ISBN 978 1 9821 1585 2 Swedes in America Benson Adolph B Naboth Hedin New York Haskel House Publishers 1969 L L Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory University of North Carolina Horst P 1955 L L Thurstone and the Science of Human Behavior Science 122 3183 1259 60 Bibcode 1955Sci 122 1259H doi 10 1126 science 122 3183 1259 PMID 13274085 Louis Leon Thurstone 1887 1955 Individual Differences Homepage Archived from the original on 13 December 2003 Louis Leon Thurstone 1887 1955 J P Guilford O National Academy of Science 1957 1 Louis Leon Thurstone Biography LoveToKnow Corp L L Thurstone Human Intelligence Louis Leon Thurstone American Academy of Arts amp Sciences 10 February 2023 Retrieved 6 March 2023 Louis Thurstone www nasonline org Retrieved 6 March 2023 APS Member History search amphilsoc org Retrieved 6 March 2023 Sources editMartin O 1997 Psychological measurement from Binet to Thurstone 1900 1930 Revue de Synthese in French 118 4 457 93 doi 10 1007 BF03181359 PMID 11625304 Thurstone LL 1987 Psychophysical analysis by L L Thurstone 1927 PDF The American Journal of Psychology 100 3 4 587 609 doi 10 2307 1422696 JSTOR 1422696 PMID 3322058 Gulliksen H 1968 Louis Leon Thurstone experimental and mathematical psychologist The American Psychologist 23 11 786 802 doi 10 1037 h0026696 PMID 4881041 Wolfle D 1956 Louis Leon Thurstone 1887 1955 The American Journal of Psychology 69 1 131 4 PMID 13302517 Horst P 1955 L L Thurstone and the science of human behavior Science 122 3183 1259 60 Bibcode 1955Sci 122 1259H doi 10 1126 science 122 3183 1259 PMID 13274085 Andrich D 1978 Relationships Between the Thurstone and Rasch Approaches to Item Scaling Applied Psychological Measurement 2 3 451 462 doi 10 1177 014662167800200319 S2CID 120407672 Thurstone L L 1927 A law of comparative judgement Psychological Review 34 4 278 286 doi 10 1037 h0070288 Gordon Kate Smith Thomas Vernor eds 1929 Essays in Philosophy by Seventeen Doctors of Philosophy of the University of Chicago Chicago Open Court OCLC 257229209 Thurstone L L 1974 The Measurement of Values Vol 61 Chicago The University of Chicago Press pp 47 58 doi 10 1037 h0060035 ISBN 978 0 226 80114 8 OCLC 5723850 PMID 13134416 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a journal ignored help External links editThe Vectors of Mind 1934 History of L L Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Louis Leon Thurstone amp oldid 1177239872, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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