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This book brings together eminent and emerging scholars to present cutting-edge research on diverse conceptions of giftedness and talent from a range of international perspectives. It covers classical views, emphasizing IQ, but also seeks to move the academic debate on from the common exclusive emphasis on IQ-based skills. In each chapter the contributors address both theoretical advances and practical applications for administrators, teachers, and parents. The editors conclude by integrating the different points of view and showing ways in which major ideas, even when given different names, can be integrated to provide a holistic and integral viewpoint on giftedness and talent. This book will appeal to students and scholars of creativity, giftedness and gifted education; as well as to practitioners, teachers and education policymakers.

DR. T. PERCY NUNN IN THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY.—“In the book before us, Prof. Spearman claims nothing less than to have supplied psychology with a body of principles comparable with the first principles of physics. It is a large claim, even though confined to the psychology of cognition, and if substantiated will secure for its author an enviable place in the history of science....A work which, whatever place it may ultimately assume, is unquestionably one of signal importance....A very remarkable and perhaps epoch-making book.”THE HON. BERTRAND RUSSELL IN THE NATION AND THE ATHENAEUM.—“A sober and learned, but thoroughly readable discussion....The book is valuable for its wide knowledge, its lucid discussions, and its thoroughly scientific spirit.”THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT.—“The whole work is excellent, a model of lucid exposition.”PROF. C. W. VALENTINE IN MIND.—“This volume gives us in convenient compass not only the essential conclusions of some of Prof. Spearman's valuable researches but a very remarkable additional contribution to the psychology of cognition.”THE DAILY NEWS.—“One of the most important works on psychology we have had for some time....A sound and brilliant piece of exposition.”THE SUNDAY TIMES.—“A book of the highest value.”

As the pace of change increases and new business structures evolve, finding and harnessing people's talent is becoming ever more important. From Talent Management to Talent Liberation presents a thoughtful and practical approach to talent. It provides compelling evidence for the limitations of talent management practice and offers talent liberation as an alternative approach. Talent Liberation is positioned through five premises that draw on the agile movement to provide a fundamental reappraisal of the talent agenda. These premises are then applied through a range of strategic and tactical tools such as the Talent Compass. By combining academic research, thought leadership and practical experience, this book will stimulate fresh thinking. Readers will be inspired to take action, using the simple tools to liberate more of the talent in their organisation and their teams. Leaders, HR professionals and individuals will benefit from the relevant insights shared here.

Skill Acquisition and Training describes the building blocks of cognitive, motor, and teamwork skills, and the factors to take into account in training them. The basic processes of perception, cognition and action that provide the foundation for understanding skilled performance are discussed in the context of complex task requirements, individual differences, and extreme environmental demands. The role of attention in perceiving, selecting, and becoming aware of information, in learning new information, and in performance is described in the context of specific skills.A theme throughout this book is that much learning is implicit; the types of knowledge and relations that can profitably be learned implicitly and the conditions under which this learning benefits performance are discussed. The question of whether skill acquisition in cognitive domains shares underlying mechanisms with the acquisition of perceptual and motor skills is also addressed with a view to identifying commonalities that allow for widely applicable, general theories of skill acquisition. Because the complexity of real-world environments puts demands on the individual to adapt to new circumstances, the question of how skills research can be applied to organizational training contexts is an important one. To address this, this book dedicates much content to practical applications, covering such issues as how training needs can be captured with task and job analyses and how to maximize training transfer by taking trainee self-efficacy and goal orientation into account.This comprehensive yet readable textbook is optimized for students of cognitive psychology looking to understand the intricacies of skill acquisition.

Choice Recommended ReadPsychological research into human intelligence and abilities presents us with a number of difficult questions: Are human abilities explained by a single core intelligence or by multiple intelligences? How should abilities be assessed? With tests unlike the problems which people normally have to solve, or with practical problems closer to those encountered in life, school and work? Do ability tests predict how a person will behave? If so, can they predict whether a person will succeed at school and at work? Intelligence and Human Abilities critically evaluates research evidence from the past 100 years to consider these and other issues. It shows that, despite the apparent contradictions in this research, the evidence in fact supports one coherent model, a fact which has clear implications for researchers, educators and test-users.This clear and engaging text provides an up-to-date evaluation of what the empirical evidence tells us about the number, nature and origins of human abilities. It will be essential reading for students and practitioners of psychology and education, and also for users of ability tests such as applied psychologists and personnel managers.

The research on human expertise and complex skill acquisition that Wlliam G. Chase performed in the decade between publication of the classic chess studies he conducted with Herb Simon in 1973 and his untimely and tragic death has proven profoundly influential and enduring. Its impact spans disciplines that include Psychology, Computer Science, Education, Cognitive Neuroscience, Medicine, and Human Factors. It has contributed significantly to the emergence of Cognitive Engineering and has led to significant applications in the areas of training and instruction and knowledge-based'intelligent'computational systems. Its influence can be seen in current discussions of intelligence, heritability, intellectual potential, and achievement found in the contemporary popular press. The chapters in this volume document the enduring scientific contributions of William G. Chase to current knowledge and understanding of human expertise and skill acquisition and applications his work has supported. It will be of interest to those researching, studying, and working in the multiple fields that were greatly influenced by Chase's work.

Skill and knowledge retention is a major issue and concern in learning and skill acquisition, especially when trained or acquired skills (or knowledge) are needed after long periods of nonuse. The goal of this book is to summarize and advance the thinking of critical issues related to skill retention and decay in the context of individual and team training on complex tasks. This volume will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the fields of industrial and organizational psychology, human factors, organizational behavior, and human resources management.

How does the brain represent number and make mathematical calculations? What underlies the development of numerical and mathematical abilities? What factors affect the learning of numerical concepts and skills? What are the biological bases of number knowledge? Do humans and other animals share similar numerical representations and processes? What underlies numerical and mathematical disabilities and disorders, and what is the prognosis for rehabilitation? These questions are the domain of mathematical cognition, the field of research concerned with the cognitive and neurological processes that underlie numerical and mathematical abilities. TheHandbook of Mathematical Cognition is a collection of 27 essays by leading researchers that provides a comprehensive review of this important research field.

This volume presents fascinating new theoretical perspectives and empirical findings on the life-span development of talent. It shows how talents are the result of the acquisition of a sequence of skills and how the acquisition of these skills is facilitated by changes in the individual's environment. It explores to what degree the development of high intelligence or achievement is similar to the development of specific domains such as personality, morality, painting, musical performance, or professional skills. It questions whether the development of talent observed for specific groups is similar to individual cases and how the different numbers of highly talented women and men in several domains are to be explained.

This is Volume III of thirty-two in the Developmental Psychology series. Initially published in 1917, in this book an attempt has been made to discuss practical aspects of special abilities and disabilities, to offer in detail methods of attacking problem-cases, and to present various types, both (a) of particular disabilities in those who have normal general ability and (b) of particular abilities in those who are below normal in general capacities.

This book describes the first comprehensive experimental research program on an individual who exhibits exceptional memory. Rajan Mahadevan, the subject of these investigations, won a place in the Guinness Book of Records for reciting pi to 31,811 decimal places, can learn matrices up to size 20 X 20, and can produce memory spans above 60 for digits. Utilizing the methodology and theories of modern cognitive psychology, the authors systematically investigated Rajan's memory skills. A wide range of experiments and tests were conducted with Rajan and four control subjects. These include memory span tests for digits and letters, memory for various kinds of non-numeric information, tests of working memory, learning and retention of numeric matrices, memory and visual searches of the digits of pi, and lexical decision tasks with the digits of pi. The authors describe how they came to understand the way Rajan stored and now retrieves the decimal digits of pi, how he learns and retrieves matrices, and how he encodes and retrieves digits in a memory span task. Although his strategy for memorizing and retrieving digits is unique in the literature on people with extraordinary memory, the authors show how their investigations of Rajan contribute to our understanding of memory.

One of developmental psychology's central concerns is the identification of specific'milestones'which indicate what children are typically capable of doing at different ages. Work of this kind has a substantial impact on the way parents, educators, and service-oriented professionals deal with children; and, therefore one might expect that developmentalists would have come to some general agreement in regard to the ways they assess children's abilities. However, as this volume demonstrates, the field appears to suffer from a serious lack of consensus in this area. Based on the premise that identifying relevant issues is a necessary step toward progress, this book addresses a number of vital topics, such as: How could research into fundamental areas (such as the age at which children first acquire a sense of self or learn to reason transitively) repeatedly yield wildly diverse results? Why do experts who hold to radically different views appear to be so unruffled by this same divergence of professional opinion? and, Are there grounds for hope that this divergence of professional opinion is on the wane?

In the following pages I have attempted to summarize our knowledge regarding individual differences, more specifically those aspects of it which bear on the limits and range of human capacities, and to draw such inferences from the data available as the facts seem to warrant.Both the facts and the generalization may afford the reader some surprise, the former because many of the data collected will be treated in an unfamiliar way, the latter because the conclusions are for the most part at variance with current opinions on the subject. The reader will at all times be able to verify the facts by referring to the original sources from which they were taken. As regards the conclusions, the only suggestion I can make is that in evaluating them he lay aside, for the time being, any previous opinion he may have held, and seek to come to some conclusion himself in the light of the facts presented. I believe this effort will be amply repaid because the implications of some of the conclusions have, it seems to me, rather important bearings on a number of social questions with which thinkers all over the world are at present attempting to grapple. Outstanding among these, perhaps, are the status of democracy, the problem of technocracy in relation to human efficiency, and now, in a larger sense, the suggested attempts at social reorganization on the basis of abilities and needs as contrasted to geographical distributions and caste systems. I have not, myself, attempted to answer any of these questions, but I believe the material contained in this book should enable those who are concerned with them to approach the subject in a more scientific and, I might add, also in a more hopeful way.

With essentially the same basis as the 1971 Abilities, Their Structure, Growth and Action, this new volume reflects the developments of subsequent years.

This book is about human abilities and the ways in which people acquire and extend them. It contains many useful facts about people's learning and the mental processes that make it possible. Chapter one looks at the kinds of events that create learning, and identifies some important general principles of human learning. Chapter two examines the capabilities that children gain in their early years. They acquire a number of basic capacities that they can draw upon throughout life. These include language, reading, and numerical abilities. The acceleration of early abilities is also considered. Chapter three raises a number of intriguing questions about abilities. What exactly are they? What are their most important charactersitics? How can different capabilities and items of knowledge become joined to one another? The answers are surprisingly different from what common sense predicts.; Chapter four Considers The Important Contributions Of Motivation. A Person Has To Have good reasons for engaging in learning activities. Motivation supplies incentives for doing whatever is necessary in order to make learning happen. Chapter five investigates more advanced attainments. It looks at the effects of practising and other ways in which individuals extend their expertise. The use of memory aids and learning techniques is examined. Other topics include the influence of intelligence, creativity, the possible roles of innate gifts and talents, and child prodigies and geniuses. The best way to apply discoveries concerning learning and the acquisition of abilities is to use them for our own daily activities. Chapter six addresses the question of how to learn and study more effectively. It introduces ways of reading more effectively, and gives advice on improving writing skills and studying for exams. The aim here is to help the reader to succeed better at gaining needed capabilities.

This volume brings together many of the leading researchers on human intelligence and cognition to address issues including definition, measurement, and instructional design. Its publication is a result of the Inaugural Spearman Seminar recently held at the University of Plymouth -- a seminar that is slated to become a regularly scheduled event providing a major international forum for the presentation of work on human abilities. To properly inaugurate this series, scientific experts in this field were asked to reflect on various issues raised but not resolved in Charles Spearman's classic work, The Abilities of Man: Their Nature and Measurement, published in 1927. As a result of this approach, the book offers a unique overview of the way in which the study of human abilities has developed since 1927, and of current positions in the field. It offers exhaustive discussions on: • the nature of cognitive abilities and intelligence -- a review of how the factor analytic approach to abilities which grew out of Spearman's work has developed, thoughts regarding the contribution of a cross-cultural perspective, and an elucidation of some of the conceptual issues which often cloud discussions of ability; • different aspects of the contribution of cognitive psychology to our understanding of abilities -- the relationship between Spearman's g and working memory, links between attention and cognitive style, and the area of spatial abilities; • recent developments in latent variable and item response modeling; and • applied issues -- the argument that little predictive value can be gained in occupational selection from measuring abilities other than Spearman's g, and the question of aptitude treatment interactions in education.