Journal of Educational Psychology 1980, Vol. 72, No. 1,21-44 Human Abilities Revealed Through Auditory Tests Lazar Stankov University of Sydney Sydney, Australia John L. Horn University of Denver Established findings from studies of visual, musical, and speech perception abilities were used to guide the construction of auditory ability tests. Forty- four measures based on these tests were obtained from a sample of 241 adult males. Correlation and factorial analyses were used to indicate structural in- terrelationships and relationships with education, musical experience, general intelligence, .and age. The results indicated separate capacities for Auditory Verbal Comprehension, Auditory Immediate Memory, Temporal Tracking, Auditory Cognition of Relationships, Discrimination Among Sound Patterns, Speech Perception Under Distraction/Distortion, and Maintaining and Judg- ing Rhythm. Theory, Rationale, and Purpose The principal purpose of this study is to provide indications of the ways in which el- ementary auditory abilities are organized. The study derives from a substantive theory of fluid (Gf) and crystallized intelligence (Gc; as propounded mainly by Cattell, 1971; and Horn, 1970, 1976, 1978a, 1978b), and from the design/analytic metatheory of a simple structure factor analysis (originating with Thurstone, 1947). Variables and subjects were selected and analyses were conducted, in accordance with these two theoretical stances, the major objective being one of indicating simple structure factors among auditory performances. Gf/Gc theory derives from a number of considerations of evidence pertaining to physiological/neurological functioning, achievement in relation to social class and related determinants, age differences in in- The major financial support for this study was pro- vided by the Army Research Institute, Grant DAHC 19-74-G-0013, and the National Science Foundation, Grant GB-41452. Some of the write-upof the work was done under support from National Institute of Aging Grant 1R01AG00583-01. Requests for reprints should be sent to Lazar Stankov who will be at the Department of Psychology, Yale University, 11 A Yale Station, New Haven, Ct. 06520, until September 1980. After that date he can be reached at the Department of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. They can also be ob- tained from John L. Horn, Department of Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado 80210. tellectual performances, and structural in- terrelationships among abilities, as well as several other bits of evidence and plausibility argument. Fairly complete statements of the current shape of the theory can be found in several easily accessible sources (Horn, 1978a, 1978b, 1979; Horn & Donaldson, in press), so only the general features of the theory and the details that are most pointedly related to the rationale for the present study need be reviewed here. As noted, one of the major features of the theory pertains to the structural interrela- tionships among the abilities of intelligence. This feature is relevant to the present study. It involves the notion that the major pro- cesses involved in intellectual abilities are organized at different levels. There are two ways in which the idea of levels is used in the theory. Level enters in one way from consider- ation of results from studies of the inter- correlational, principally factor-analytic, studies of intellectual performances. Al- though there are many problems in arriving at a definitive summary of the results from this work (cf. Horn, 1976), the evidence is fairly consistent in indicating (a) a rather large number of primary-level patterns of organization among performances on diverse tests and (b) organization among the pri- mary-level abilities in terms of a relatively small number of second-level principles (Cattell, 1971; Guilford & Hoepfner, 1971; Hakstian & Cattell, 1974; Horn, 1968,1970, Copyright 1980 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-0663/80/7201-0021$00.75 21