McFarland D.J. (ed.) General and Specific Mental Abilities

Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019. — 486 p.The history of testing mental abilities has seen the dominance of two contrasting approaches, psychometrics and neuropsychology. These two traditions have different theories and methodologies, but overlap considerably in the tests they use. Historically, psychometrics has emphasized the primacy of a general factor, while neuropsychology has emphasized specific abilities that are dissociable. This issue about the nature of human mental abilities is important for many practical concerns. Questions such as gender, ethnic, and age-related differences in mental abilities are relatively easy to address if they are due to a single dominant trait. Presumably such a trait can be measured with any collection of complex cognitive tests. If there are many specific mental abilities, these would be much harder to measure and associated social issues would be more difficult to resolve. The relative importance of general and specific abilities also has implications for educational practices. This book includes the diverse opinions of experts from several fields including psychometrics, neuropsychology, speech language and hearing, and applied psychology.DedicationList of Contributors
A Brief History of Theory and Testing of General and Specific Mental Abilities
General and Specific Intelligence Attributes in the Two-Factor Theory: A Historical Review
Cognitive Ability: Psychometric Perspectives on the Importance of General Mental Ability
Psychometric Issues Pertaining to the Measurement of Specific Cognitive Abilities
The Network Approach to General Intelligence
Process Overlap Theory: How the Interplay between Specific and General Mental Abilities Accounts for the Positive Manifold in Intelligence
PASS Theory of Intelligence: A Frozen Dinner or a Moving Feast?
An Overlap between Mental Abilities and Temperament Traits
Theoretical Challenges for Differentiating General and Specific Abilities
Within-Individual Variability of Ability and Learning Trajectories in Complex Problems
Modeling General and Specific Mental Abilities
Intelligence and Executive Function: Can we Reunite these Disparate Worlds?
Speannan's Law of Diminishing Returns and its Implications for Theories of General Intelligence and Intelligence Testing
Diminished 'g': Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence and Cognitive Abilities linked to Sensory Modalities
Auditory Processing Abilities and Disorders
Applications of Psychometric Methods to Neuropsychological Models of Speech and Language
The Use of Specific Cognitive Abilities in tbe Workplace