Intelligence Test Desk Reference (ITDR): The Gf-Gc Cross-Battery Assessment

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Summary: A new era in intelligence testing
Review: Kevin S. McGrew and Dawn P. Flanagan propose that current intelligence testing practices are based in outdated models of cognitive abilities. As a result, test results interpretation is often ambiguous, incomplete, impossible or useless. As an alternative, the authors present an integrated Cattell-Horn-Carroll model of intelligence. This is really the most comprehensive and empirically supported psychometric theory of intelligence currently available and the theory around which intelligence tests should be interpreted. You will know, for example, what Wechsler verbal and performance IQ really measure or how global IQ scores obtained from different batteries actually arise from combining different abilities and are thus hardly comparable. The presentation is exceptionally clear and gives all the information necessary to correctly understand the applications that follow.

First, the CHC model is used to analyze the major individually administered intelligence batteries. This is the Desk-Reference part of the book and shows the psychometric characteristics of all subtests in the batteries in a particularly clear and visual way. If only for this part, the book must be on the desk of all psychologists who wish to make sense of the intelligence tests they apply.

Second a cross-battery approach to intellectual assessment and interpretation is defined and operationalized. This is sure to become a major landmark in intelligence testing. From now on, psychologists, educators and other mental health professionals have a set of practical guidelines for conducting actual assessments based on the CHC model and interpreting results in a meaningful and potentially more useful way. It must be emphasized that the guidelines describe a really feasible, perhaps even an easy, procedure.

To most of us frustrated by the continued absence of sound theory based tests and uncomfortable with having to invent interpretations which we know are of no utility, this book could hardly be more welcome. It is thus only fortunate that it has been followed by another one specifically focused on the Wechsler scales (The Wechsler intelligence scales and Gf-Gc theory, by Dawn P Flanagan, Kevin S. McGrew and Samuel O. Ortiz). Also, the book connects with a previous and important one (Contemporary intellectual assessment, edited by Dawn P. Flanagan, Judy L. Genshaft and Patti L. Harrison). The reader might consider having, reading and using the set of three as a trilogy which updates current intelligence theory and practice and sets the stage for the immediate future.

I strongly recommend that the interested reader uses Amazon's personal notification service so as not to miss any new book by these authors. We are witnessing the birth of a new era in intelligence theory and testing.