THINKING BETTER

by David & James Greene Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 10, 1981

Tricks of the trade for better reasoning and decision-making--with applications to everything from IQ tests to solving Hamlet's suicide dilemma. The psychologist authors claim that instead of scoring 110 on IQ tests (or the equivalent score on similar tests), we will now shoot up to 160 and have life's pathways opened to us. To that end they gleefully reveal the principles on which their fellow-psychologists base the tests. In the verbal arena, for example, the word analogy problems are reduced to eight possible classes of relationships (""GOOD is to HARPOON as ILLUMINATE is to ?""). Memory is enhanced when you remember series of numbers in groups of threes, rather than as individual, unrelated numbers. And language is learned faster if you use a complicated series of visualization cues (or so they contend). We are told that we have individual styles in learning and problem-solving (either we proceed methodically or give it the grand sweep), which we should enhance to be more successful in those directions. And we're given all the steps needed to form Knowledge Networks, Solution Trees, Decision Trees, etc.: information just sprouts up everywhere. But it doesn't feel like thinking; it feels like lifting weights.

Pub Date: Jan. 10, 1981

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Rawson, Wade--dist. by Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1981

Categories: NONFICTION