The Spy Ring History Test

The Spy Ring History Test is described. It is one of several, similarly structured, mental tests intended to discriminate between individual cognitive styles, and individual tendencies to learn according to different plans and strategies for exploring or assimilating subject matter. Form II is typical and may be referenced as representative. The test are not meant to determine absolute levels of performance, learning rate, or retention, though there may be and, by hypothesis, there are relations between test scores indicating stylistic differences, and a respondents performance in specific tasks. The dimensions which have emerged as significant discriminators of style and strategy from studies of educationally sized learning refer to quite specific cognitive mechanisms and are most readily observed as features of continuing behavior and cognition. They are believed to have special relevance to such inherently complex and individualised activities as hypothesis formation and system design.