Measuring Intelligence
Facts and Fallacies

Provides new framework for measuring intelligence and addresses key controversies in the field.

David J. Bartholomew (Author)

9780521544788, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 26 August 2004

186 pages, 15 b/w illus.
22.7 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.311 kg

'… commendable for its thoughtfulness and good judgment.' Intelligence 33

The testing of intelligence has a long and controversial history. Claims that it is a pseudo-science or a weapon of ideological warfare have been commonplace and there is not even a consensus as to whether intelligence exists and, if it does, whether it can be measured. As a result the debate about it has centred on the nurture versus nature controversy and especially on alleged racial differences and the heritability of intelligence - all of which have major policy implications. This book aims to penetrate the mists of controversy, ideology and prejudice by providing a clear non-mathematical framework for the definition and measurement of intelligence derived from modern factor analysis. Building on this framework and drawing on everyday ideas the author address key controversies in a clear and accessible style and explores some of the claims made by well known writers in the field such as Stephen Jay Gould and Michael Howe.

1. The great intelligence debate: science or ideology?
2. Origins
3. The end of IQ?
4. First steps to g
5. Second steps to g
6. Extracting g
7. Factor analysis or principal components analysis?
8. One intelligence or many?
9. The bell curve: facts, fallacies and speculations
10. What is g?
11. Are some groups more intelligent than others?
12. Is intelligence inherited?
13. Facts and fallacies.

Subject Areas: Psychiatry [MMH], Psychology [JM]