Looking Down on Human Intelligence: From Psychometrics to the Brain

369 Pages·2000·3.097 MB·English

by  Ian J. Deary

Title Pages
University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
Looking Down on Human Intelligence: From
Psychometrics to the Brain
Ian Deary
Print publication date: 2000
Print ISBN-13: 9780198524175
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2008
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198524175.001.0001
Title Pages
Looking Down on Human Intelligence OXFORD PSYCHOLOGY SERIES Looking
Down on Human Intelligence
Editors
Nicholas J. Mackintosh
Timothy Shallice
Anne Treisman
James L. McGaugh
Daniel Schacter
Lawrence Weiskranz
1. The neuropsychology of anxiety: an enquiry into the functions of the septo–
hippocampal system (first edition)
Jeffrey A. Gray
Page 1 of 5
Title Pages
2. Elements of episodic memory
Endel Tulving
3. Conditioning and associative learning
Nicholas J. Mackintosh
4. Visual masking: an integrative approach
Bruno G. Breitmeyer
5. The musical mind: the cognitive psychology of music
John Sloboda
6. Elements of psychophysical theory
Jean-Claude Falmagne
7. Animal intelligence
Edited by Lawrence Weiskrantz
8. Response times: their role in inferring elementary mental organization
R. Duncan Luce
9. Mental representations: a dual coding approach
Allan Paivio
10. Memory, imprinting, and the brain
Gabriel Horn
11. Working memory
Alan Baddeley
12. Blindsight: a case study and implications
Lawrence Weiskrantz
13. Profile analysis
D. M. Green
14. Spatial vision
R. L. DeValois and K. K. DeValois
15. The neural and behavioural organization of goal-directed movements
Marc Jeannerod
16. Visual pattern analysers
Norma V. Graham
17. Cognitive foundations of musical pitch analysis
C. L. Krumhansl
18. Perceptual and associative learning
G. Hall
19. Implicit learning and tacit knowledge
A. S. Reber
(p.iii)
20. Neuropsychology of communicative behaviour
D. Kimura
21. The frontal lobes and voluntary action
R. E. Passingham
22. Classification and cognition
W. Estes
23. Vowel perception and production
B. D. Rosner and J. B. Pickering
Page 2 of 5
Title Pages
24. Visual stress
A. Wilkins
25. Electrophsyiology of mind
Edited by M. D. Rugg and M. G. H. Coles
26. Attention and memory: an integrated framework
N. Cowan
27. The visual brain in action
A. D. Milner and M. A. Goodale
28. Perceptual consequences of cochlear damage
B. J. C. Moore
29. Binocular vision and stereopsis
Ian P. Howard and Brian J. Rogers
30. The measurement of sensation
Donald Laming
31. Conditioned taste aversion
Jan Bures, F. Bermudez-Rattoni, and T. Yamamoto
32. The developing visual brain
Janette Atkinson
33. The neuropsychology of anxiety: an enquiry into the functions of the septo-
hippocampal system (second edition)
Jeffrey A. Gray and Neil McNaughton
34. Looking down on human intelligence
Ian J. Deary
(p.iv)
OXFORD PSYCHOLOGY SERIES NO. 34
(p.vi)
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research,
scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide in
Oxford New York
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Calcutta
Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong 
Istanbul
Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai
Page 3 of 5
Title Pages
Nairobi Paris São Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto 
Warsaw
with associated companies in Berlin Ibadan
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and in certain other countries
Published in the United States
by Oxford University Press, Inc., New York
© Ian J. Deary, 2000
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker)
First published 2000
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the
appropriate
reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproductions
outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights
Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
(Data available)
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
ISBN 0 19 852417 X
Page 4 of 5
Dedication
University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
Looking Down on Human Intelligence: From
Psychometrics to the Brain
Ian Deary
Print publication date: 2000
Print ISBN-13: 9780198524175
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2008
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198524175.001.0001
Dedication
(p.vii) To Ann, Elayne, Joanna, and Matthew
Epigraph
University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
Looking Down on Human Intelligence: From
Psychometrics to the Brain
Ian Deary
Print publication date: 2000
Print ISBN-13: 9780198524175
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2008
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198524175.001.0001
Epigraph
(p.viii) But that which Galen noteth more particularly, touching this, is, that Philosophie
and Phisicke, are the most uncertaine of all those wherewith men are to deale. And if this
be true, what shall we say touching the Philosophie whereof we now intreat, where with
the understanding, we make an anatomie of a matter so obscure and difficult, as are the
powers and faculties of the reasonable soule? In which point are offered so many doubts
and arguments, that there remains no cleare doctrine upon which we may relie.
(Huarte 1575, p. 70)
Prolegomenon
University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
Looking Down on Human Intelligence: From
Psychometrics to the Brain
Ian Deary
Print publication date: 2000
Print ISBN-13: 9780198524175
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2008
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198524175.001.0001
(p.ix) Prolegomenon
The theme of this book is the search for the origins of human intelligence differences in
terms of brain functioning. Each topic within the field is covered in an essay-type style.
That is permissible because the writer makes reference to the principal empirical reviews
of each field, and wrote some of them. Giving the reader the undigested mass of facts is
like a layperson being handed raw scores from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, or
the NEO-Personality Inventory-Revised; it's the interpretation of the disinterested
expert that one is paying for, not the raw materials, just as you want a builder to
construct a house and not dump the materials in piles on the site and leave you to
assemble them. In other areas of scientific endeavour, especially medical science, the be-
all and end-all of the topic is the meta-analysis; impressionistic judgement calls are
derogated. But many important decisions in our field demand such judgement calls. The
proximity between a test and a theoretical construct, whether or not an association is
large enough to be ‘interesting’, whether a line of investigation is worthwhile at all, what a
correlation between two samples of human behaviour (psychometric test score versus
putative information processing component) means; all these and more are the decisions
we make in our daily work.
The main discoveries and insights, historical and contemporary, are covered. The
Page 1 of 3
Prolegomenon
principal concern, however, is to show how an area of research has gone about its
business. So there is a particular interest in historical precedents of current research
fields. There is an emphasis on the way constructs are considered and how associations
are viewed. There is a focus on the place of theory and with the balance between
available evidence and allowable speculation. To be frank, there is a strong dislike of
theory such as it is manifest in the field, and a lot of the book is an appeal to go with the
data and to be quick to give up on so-called theory which, in psychology, is rarely the
well-aimed headlight that, at best, it can be in the physical sciences.
I wrote the book about the origins of psychometric intelligence differences because I
know about this area, but the book could have dealt with many topics in psychology that
are used for prediction and are also mysterious with regard to the origins of their
differences. Personality, some aspects of memory, attention, all might have been topics
about which a book with a similar structure and comparable concerns could have been
written. So don't be too smug when it is shown how little researchers in intelligence know
of the history of their topic, how poor are some of their data sets, how unsupportable are
some of their conclusions, and how little they have advanced in terms of process
understandings since the early 1900s. This is a book whose form and general points are
meant for the psychological everyman, and the criticisms apply beyond human intelligence
research.
(p.x) Some paragraphs ago I mentioned that the reader was paying for the voice of a
disinterested expert commentator. Disinterested voices are not legion in the field of
intelligence differences. And the reader must be warned that, since the rebirth of the
topic of information processing from the 1970s to date, there have been writers of books
and articles who view some facets of this area of research as near moribund and/or
fruitless (e.g. Ceci 1990; Lohman 1994) and some who see mostly promise (Matarazzo
1992; Brand 1996; Jensen 1998a). In addition, there are those who may be
characterized as honest brokers, people not hugely active empirically within the field but
who have reviewed the evidence and passed even-handed judgement. In this category
sit, for example, Brody (1992) and Mackintosh (1998), although Brody's spectacles have a
just-noticeable rose-sanguine tint and Mackintosh moves between choleric-yellow and
melancholic-blue lenses. With regard to this writer, there is a noticeable change from the
tiro medical undergraduate infected with Chris Brand's conquering enthusiasm (Brand
and Deary 1982). Scales have fallen from the eyes; procedures, samples, analyses,
constructs, theories, all have generated cause for complaint.
In the course of composing this series of related essays I abused the good nature of
many valued colleagues. Elizabeth Austin, Peter Caryl, Fergus Craik, Ted Nettelbeck,
Aljoscha Neubauer, Robert Plomin, and Lawrence Whalley provided valuable comments
on earlier drafts of chapters. My University of Edinburgh colleagues Peter Caryl and
Alasdair MacLullich contributed equal shares to the writing of Chapter 9. Janice
Sutherland translated Wolff's Latin in Chapter 2. Alan Bedford read through the entire
proof. Roy Welensky drew the figures. The conclusions and opinions hereinafter are mine.
Page 2 of 3
Prolegomenon
May 2000
I. J. D.