personal adaptability that success in this kind of work would be for
them impossible. The wooden, mechanical, matter-of-fact and unresponsive
personality is as much out of place in the psychological clinic as the
traditional bull in the china shop. It would make an interesting study
for some one to investigate, by exact methods, the influence on test
results of the personality of different examiners who have been equally
trained in the methods to be employed and who are equally conscientious
in applying them according to rules.

On the whole, differences of this kind are probably not very great among
experienced and reasonably competent examiners. Adaptability grows with
experience and with increase of self-confidence. After a few score tests
there should be no serious failure from inability to get into _rapport_
with the child. Even in those rare cases where the child breaks down and
cries from timidity, or perhaps refuses to answer out of embarrassment,
the difficulty can be overcome by sufficient tact so that the
examination may proceed as though nothing had happened.

If the examiner has the proper psychological and personal equipment, the
testing of twenty or thirty children forms a fairly satisfactory
apprenticeship. Without psychological training, no amount of experience
will guarantee absolute accuracy of the results.

THE AVOIDANCE OF FATIGUE. Against the validity of intelligence tests it
is often argued that the result of an examination depends a great deal
on the time of day when it is made, whether in the morning hours when
the mind is at its best, or in the afternoon when it is supposedly
fatigued. Although no very extensive investigation has been made of this
influence, there is no evidence that the ordinary fatigue incident to
school work injures the child's performance appreciably. Our tests of
1000 children showed no inferiority of results secured from 1 to 4 P.M.,
as compared with tests made from 9 to 12 A.M.

An explanation for this is not hard to find. Although school work causes
fatigue, in the sense that a part of the child's available supply of
mental energy is used up, there is always a reserve of energy sufficient
to carry the child through a thirty-to fifty-minute test. The fact that
the required tasks are novel and interesting to a high degree insures
that the reserve energy will really be brought into play. This
principle, of course, has its natural limits. The examiner would avoid
testi