This article discusses the issues of the basic processes underlying intelligence, considering both historical and contemporary perspectives. The attempt to elucidate basic processes has had, at best, mixed success. There are some problems with pinpointing the underlying basic processes of intelligence, both in theory and as tested, such as what…

To understand why education as a field has not incorporated intelligence, we must consider the field's history and culture. Accordingly, in this cross-disciplinary collaboration between a political scientist who studies institutions and a psychologist who studies intelligence, we outline how the roots of contemporary American Educational…

The relations between the developing mind and developing brain are explored. We outline a theory of intellectual development postulating that the mind comprises four systems of processes (domain-specific, attention and working memory, reasoning, and cognizance) developing in four cycles (episodic, realistic, rule-based, and principle-based…

Mindset theory is an achievement motivation theory that centers on the concept of the malleability of abilities. According to mindset theory, students tend to have either a growth mindset or a fixed mindset about their intelligence; students with a growth mindset tend to believe that intelligence is malleable, whereas students with fixed mindsets…

Differentiated instruction (DI) is a complex conceptual model and philosophy that is implemented in many traditional classroom settings. The primary focus of DI is to personalize the learning process by taking into account individual differences among students' varied levels of readiness, interest and learning profile. Varied assessments are used…

Research in the field of mental chronometry and individual differences has revealed several robust regularities (Jensen, 2006). These include right-skewed response time (RT) distributions, the worst performance rule, correlations with general intelligence ("g") that are more pronounced for RT standard deviations (RTSD) than they are for RT means…

Many theories of giftedness either explicitly or implicitly acknowledge the role of genetic influences; yet, empirical work has not been able to establish the impact that genes have specifically on gifted behavior. In contrast, a great deal of research has been targeted at understanding the etiology of individual differences in general and…

The premise behind intelligence preferences and learning styles is that students learn in different ways and that teaching and learning would be more effective if students could explore content in ways that work best for them. In this article, the author talks about the place of learning preferences in supporting student success. The author also…

This article addresses the question of what language proficiency (LP) is, both theoretically and empirically. It does so by making a distinction, on one hand, between "basic" and "higher language cognition" and, on the other hand, between "core" and "peripheral components" of LP. The article furthermore critically examines the notion of "level" in…

Increasing interest in multiple forms of nonacademic intelligences in addition to the well-established intelligent quotient (IQ) to explain individual success has triggered a need for clear establishment of the theoretical and empirical connection among these constructs. As such, this article explores the interrelationship that exists among three…

Despite its avowed goal of understanding individual behavior, the field of behavior analysis has largely ignored the determinants of consistent differences in level of performance among individuals. The present article discusses major findings in the study of individual differences in intelligence from the conceptual framework of a functional…

Explores the traditional model of fixed individual differences in intelligence and suggests that a more flexible and optimistic view of human capabilities is one that sees abilities as a form of developing expertise. Outlines five key elements of a model of developing expertise. (SLD)

In this article we describe the nature of attention deficit disorders (ADDs) within an individual differences model of abilities. In so doing, a model-based explanation for the sources of learning and performance difficulties among individuals identified with ADDs is provided. Earlier models of ADDs are discussed, and the proposed loci of ADDs…

When a considerable amount of reading is done in different courses by high school students, this presents a problem for struggling readers. Reading is a favorite way of learning for students possessing verbal intelligence, (See Gardner, 1993), but a goodly number of high school students do not possess this as an important intelligence. Thus, the…

To meet diverse student needs, a Minneapolis K-8 school began individual goal-setting conferences with parents about 10 years ago. In 1991, teachers reformatted goal setting to reflect Harold Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences involving intrapersonal, interpersonal, world-understanding, linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily…