Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 6 Number 1, April 2005
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Handbook of understanding and measuring intelligence. Edited by Oliver Wilhelm and Randall W. Engle. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005. x, 542 p. ISBN 0-7619-2887-1 (hardback; $165.00).
Reviewed by
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
This book is meant to address unanswered questions in the area of intelligence research, and to highlight progress in the understanding and measuring of intelligence. The book provides an overview of the status quo regarding individual differences in intelligence, and also provides a comprehensive look at work still needing to be done in this field.
In the preface, the editors group certain chapters together, in order to illustrate the content of the book. Chapters 2, 6, and 17 discuss new constructs in the areas of emotional intelligence, critical thinking, practical intelligence, and situational judgment. Chapters 3-5 and 7 attempt to explain constructs such as mental speed, meta-cognition, intelligence variables, and controlled attention. The measurement of knowledge, and some of its challenges, is presented in Chapters 8 and 20, while the importance of the frontal lobes to intelligence is explained in Chapter 9. New research on the genetics of intelligence is presented in Chapter 10. Developmental psychology and recent advancements in this field are found in Chapters 11 and 12, while group differences in intelligence are focused on in Chapter 13. Chapter 14 and 15 deal with aspects of intelligence testing and its methodological fundamentals. The nature and importance of the general factor is discussed in Chapter 16, while concepts related to faceted models of intelligence can be found in Chapter 18. Chapter 21 focuses on reasoning ability, and Chapter 22 presents ideas surrounding working memory in intelligence. Learning disabilities, and the validity and implications of intelligence, are discussed in Chapters 23 and 24, respectively. Finally, two major researchers in this field provide discussions and historical understandings of intelligence in Chapters 25 and 26. These two final chapters look at the contributions of many intelligence experts, including Roberts, Markham, Matthews, and Zeidner; Conway; Heitz, Unsworth, and Engle; Kane: Oberauer; Wilhelm; Hertzog and Robinson; Ackerman and Beier; Hambrick; Pascual-Leone and Johnson; Lovden and Lindenberger; Swanson; Danthir, Roberts, Schulze, and Wilhelm; Ones, Viswesvaran, and Dilchert; Petrill; Schulze; Schmiedek; Stankov; Wittmann; Suss and Beauducel; Kyllonen and Lee; Henry, Sternberg, and Grigorenko; and Matthews, Zeidner, and Roberts. There is both an author and subject index at the back of the book.
Overall, this book contains a wealth of information on the historical practice, as well as current developments and new research, in the area of understanding and measuring intelligence. The handbook is a Who’s Who of current researchers and well-known experts in this field, and is an essential resource and reference book for psychologists, educational professionals, and other behavioral scientists.