Table : Table 9.3 Thurstone’s Primary Mental abilities

Primary Mental Ability

Description

Verbal Word Fluency

Ability to solve anagrams and to find rhymes, etc.

Verbal Comprehension

Ability to understand words and sentences

Numerical Ability

Ability to make mental and other numerical computations

Spatial Visualization

Ability to visualize a complex shape in various orientations

Associative Memory

Ability to recall verbal material, learn pairs of unrelated words, etc.

Perceptual Speed

Ability to detect visual details quickly

Reasoning

Ability to induce a general rule from a few instances