Treating the Pathology of Psychometries: An Example from the Comprehension of Continuous Prose Text

摘要

Few would argue that psychology has been as successful as the natural sciences in constructing measurement systems, yet this has not tempered the near universal claim of psychological measurement. As Haig and Borsboom note, the sustained nature of conceptual attacks from a small group of quantitative psychologists suggests a deep-seated disillusion with mainstream psychometry. The paucity of substantive theory is at the core of the criticisms made by Michell and Borsboom in this special issue. Without such theory, Michell argues that genuinely quantitative theories of psychological systems are unlikely to be developed, whereas Borsboom argues that the causal relations between psychological attributes and data cannot be ascertained. A brief sketch of a theory of continuous prose text comprehension is presented, and it appears to address the problems of quantity, substantive theory, and causality raised by Michell and Borsboom; thus it may be an example of how the pathology of psychometrics might begin to be treated.