An inspiring, informative affirmation of human potential combined with an overview of historical developments in...
Cognitive psychologist Kaufman (Psychology/New York Univ.; co-author: Mating Intelligence Unleashed: The Role of Mind in Sex, Dating and Love, 2013, etc.) describes how he overcame a learning disability and defied expectations despite doing poorly on IQ tests.
At the age of 3—after finally being cured of a series of ear infections that had impeded his hearing—the author was left with a central auditory processing disorder that slowed his understanding of speech. As a result, Kaufman was set on the special education track, where he remained until middle school, when he convinced his parents and teachers that he could succeed in a normal classroom. The author admits that children with learning disabilities need special help to develop alternative learning strategies and work at their own pace, but he is sharply critical of special ed classes that set the bar too low on achievement and use IQ tests to label children. Kaufman makes a convincing case that stereotyping students is not only unsupported by research, but also discriminatory. He emphasizes how lowered expectations of slow learners causes them to develop low self-esteem, diminishes their motivation and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, magnifying the effects of early learning disabilities—which, with proper education, can be overcome. In Kaufman’s case, cello lessons helped him maintain his self-esteem. The author aligns himself with evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker on the need to redefine intelligence more broadly. Coupling his own experience with that of Temple Grandin and Daniel Tammet, who describe how they think using images, he suggests that the development of expertise, associative thinking and pattern recognition are aspects of creative intelligence not revealed by IQ testing.
An inspiring, informative affirmation of human potential combined with an overview of historical developments in standardized tests, cognitive psychology and current research.Pub Date: June 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-465-02554-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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