Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Traditional views of abilities have viewed them as internal properties of the organism. The views presented in this book, in contrast, view abilities as inhering in the interaction between minds and the contexts in which they are found. Some of the greatest psychologists of all time, such as Piaget and Vygotsky, have recognised the importance of person-context interaction to the development of intelligence, and even fervent hereditarians have recognised the extent to which when genotypes are expressed phenotypically, there is a reaction range that can limit or enhance the extent to which the genotype is expressed in the environment. The book is divided into three main parts. Part I, focusing on academic tasks, Part II, focusing on everyday tasks, and Part III, containing general perspectives.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Part I Academic Tasks
• 1 Abilities in academic tasks
• 2 Novelty and intelligence M. K. Gardner
• 3 The effects of context on cognition: postcards from Brazil
• Part II Everyday Tasks
• 4 The role of problem interpretations in understanding the development of everyday problem solving
• 5 The case of cognitive ability testing for job selection
• 6 Leader intelligence, interpersonal stress, and task performance
• Part III General Perspectives
• 7 When minds meet: interactions, coincidence, and development in domains of ability
• 8 From intelligence to knowledge construction: a sociogenetic process approach
• 9 PRSVL: an integrative framework for understanding mind in context

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This collection takes as its theme the truism that, in any situation, thinking is affected by many internal and external factors. The essayists provide somewhat Byzantine schematics enumerating every possible factor that might affect thinking. Although this may seem an interesting conceptual exercise, there is little here of practical value. Sternberg identifies five factors that affect thinking (characteristics of the person, social roles, situation, values of the individual and of the organization, and luck--abbreviated PRSVL). Though it appears self-evident that these factors may influence intellectual performance at any given time, such "models" lack predictive validity. All things considered, these models do not provide better tools for making predictions of intellectual ability than the standard techniques already in use--such as IQ testing. Sternberg's introduction gives one example that clearly demonstrates the deficiencies of the argument presented here: a student does poorly on an exam, not because of lack of ability, but because the batteries ran out in the student's calculator. Thus any given performance does not necessarily yield an accurate reflection of total ability--a straw man argument. The issue in probabilistic science is the determination of which variables actually have a high degree of predictive validity across a wide range of circumstances rather than attempting to predict absolutely what is going to happen at any given moment. Upper-division undergraduates; graduate. F. Smolucha; Moraine Valley Community College