Understanding the Mind by Measuring the Brain: Lessons From Measuring Behavior (Commentary on Vul et al., 2009)

Throughout the history of psychology, the path of transforming the physical (muscle movements, verbal behavior, or physiological changes) into the mental has been fraught with difficulty. Over the decades, psychologists have risen to the challenge and learned a few things about how to infer the mental from measuring the physical. The Vul, Harris, Winkielman, and Pashler article (2009, this issue) points out that some of these lessons could be helpful to those of us who measure blood flow in the brain in a quest to understand the mind. Three lessons from psychometrics are discussed.