Customer Reviews

IQ and Human Intelligence

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Masterful survey of the latest theoretical and experimental literature on the measurement of human intelligence at all levels from the sensorimotor to the cognitive. Very balanced discussion of controversial issues and superb bibliography. Mackintosh's thoughtful use of diagrams and tables of numerical data in addition to carefully phrased verbal explanations suggests that he is a whole-brain learner and is very helpful in aiding the reader's understanding of complicated issues. This book sets the new standard for general textbooks about IQ testing and has been adopted for the IQ testing course at several top universities. Every person who has ever paid for an IQ test or decided how to educate someone based on an IQ test should read this book at the earliest opportunity.

CAMBRIDGE PSYCHOLOGY SUPREMO DARES NOT MENTION The g Factor

The long-expected work on IQ from the Professor of Psychology at Cambridge, Nicholas J. Mackintosh, has now appeared in bookshops (IQ and Human Intelligence, Oxford University Press, 1998, ?UK20). Anything new? Nothing at all!

Mackintosh's environmentalism consists in grabbing at the lifebelt tossed by James Flynn: something environmental must have been going on even though no-one knows what it was and even though a full range of individual differences in IQ has persisted.

Mackintosh doesn't reckon that IQ correlates at more than -.50 with Inspection Time or at more than -.30 with Reaction Time. -- Hardly surprising when most of the research Mackintosh uses involves only testees of above-average IQ! (Mental speed is a less important determinant such IQ variance as remains in studies dominated by university-level subjects.)

What about breaking up the g factor? Well, this is much to be desired, thinks Mackintosh. But when it comes to the details, he loses his nerve: 'social intelligence' in particular proves too much for him; so, while happy to think that 'spatial ability' might count for a bit more than at present, Mackintosh goes little further than acknowledging Cattell's distinction between 'fluid' and 'crystallized' intelligence.

Nor does arch-ratman Mackintosh have any educational proposals to show for his years of poking around in IQ. Merely, more research is necessary....

Mackintosh's thinking on the black-white race difference shows no response at all to eighty years in which:
environmentalists have failed to provide an explanation;
the B-W difference has been securely pinned to the g factor (and thus to a difference well known to be largely heritable);
adoption of Black children into middle-class White homes has done nothing to reduce the race difference in IQ by age 17;
IQ's non-enironmental link to myopia has been confirmed;
and brain size has turned out to correlate as high as .40 with IQ.

Addressing sociologist Bob Gordon's work of 1997, showing Black crime to be exactly as predicted from IQ, Mackintosh concludes his book bleating that it is 'entirely unreasonable' to believe in genetic factors just because environmental factors have not delivered the goods.

Any mention of The g Factor (Wiley DePublisher, 1996) from the UK professor who once commended the book in Nature? Not a word! Though Mackintosh tutored Brand for a year at Oxford -- and Brand still has Mackintosh's [very dangerous] coffee grinder -- the work of ostracism has been complete.

Mackintosh admits in the preface that he will not try to hide his opinions. And he doesn't, not on topics as controversial as the heritability of intelligence and racial differences in IQ scores. (Whether his conclusions are correct is, of course, up to the reader to decide.) His constant aim to search for data behind all claims will greatly serve students (and professors) who read the book, especially in a time when evidence is ignored in favor of political propaganda.

Basically to the point. I highly recommend this book for those interested in the basics of IQ analysis.

Mark Taylor