The question 'What is intelligence?' may seem simple to answer, but the study and measurement of human intelligence is one of the most controversial subjects in psychology. For much of its history, the focus has been on differences between people, on what it means for one person to be more
intelligent than another, and how such differences might have arisen, obscuring efforts to understand the general nature of intelligence. These are obviously fundamental questions, still widely debated and misunderstood. New definitions of intelligence and new factors affecting intelligence are
frequently being described, while psychometric testing is applied in most large industries.
IQ and Human Intelligence provides a clear, authoritative overview of the main issues surrounding this fascinating area, including the development of IQ tests, the heritability of intelligence,
theories of intelligence, environmental effects on IQ, factor analysis, relationship of cognitive psychology to measuring IQ, and intelligence in the social context. The clear, accessible style and numerous explanatory boxes make this the ideal text for advanced undergraduate and graduate students
in psychology.
1. The early development and uses of IQ tests
2. Psychometric theories of intelligence
3. The search for cognitive processes underlying components of IQ: Gs or speed and efficiency of information processing
4. Verbal, spatial and fluid abilities: Gc, Gv and Gf
5. Associative
learning, working memory and executive control
6. Intelligence and the brain
7. Theories of g
8. The stability of IQ and the rise and fall of intelligence
9. The predictive validity of IQ - and its limits
10. Is this all? Multiple aspects of intelligence
11. Heritability:
Kinship studies and single genes
12. The environment: secular changes and social class
13. Group differences
14. Sex differences
15. Epilogue
For Instructors: Figures from the book - available to download
For Students: Hyperlinks to primary literature articles cited in the and 'Further Reading' sections of the book
Nicholas Mackintosh is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Experimental Psychology, Cambridge University, having been Head of the Department from 1981 to 2002, and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1987 and has been Visiting Professor at
the Universities of Pennsylvania, California (at Berkeley), Hawaii, New South Wales, Bryn Mawr College, Universite de Paris (Sud), and Yale University. He has authored several books, including The Psychology of Animal Learning, Conditioning and Associative Learning , and Cyril Burt: Fraud or
Framed.
