“Thomson’s ‘Bonds’ or Spearman’s ‘Energy’: 60 Years On”, 1987 ():
The author examines the relative merits of:
the Binet-Thomson-Guilford theories of intelligence and
Spearman’s theory of intelligence as “energy”’. This latter was compatible with Galton’s concept of general primarily biological and genetically transmissible reality.
…On such a basis, we would expect reaction time measures to show very low correlations with good measures of g, such as the Wechsler test, and to have low loadings on a g factor derived from complex cognitive measures. The first of these predictions is clearly not borne out by the facts…It would be very difficult indeed to account for such high correlations in terms of Thomson’s theory of ‘bonds’…It is hardly arguable that a discrimination time test of the simple kind used makes use of more ‘bonds’ than general information, reading comprehension, or judgement tests! It would seem that these results are fairly decisive in leading to a rejection of Thomson’s theory.
…1987 have argued that: “results derived from the deaf and the blind individuals affected with Turner’s syndrome and Kleinfelter’s syndrome, and those with XXX aneuploidy all point to the anatomic or functional independence of some verbal and non-verbal abilities. The usual positive correlations between phenotypically different mental tests probably come from concurrently independent, but nonetheless similarly developing neural machinery”. Their evidence is another powerful argument against the Thomson theory.