Intelligence assessment

Abstract: This new edition of what has long been a standard work will call for examination by all who are technically concerned with the measurement of intelligence functions. Much new material is added, the general presentation continuing nomothetic rather than idiographic. Case material is included in the chapters on diagnosis and on counseling. The theoretical position remains about the same. Administration and scpring directions are given elsewhere and there is accordingly no need to be concerned here with matters of procedural detail. This review deals rather with the place of the Wechsler scales among the various instruments for the evaluation of mental abilities in the local culture. In its primary function, the clinical appraisal of adult intelligence through the normal range, it has little competition. Probably its greatest usefulness lies in appraisals near a lower borderline when medicolegal issues are involved; it is, of course, "standard operating procedure" for adult psychopathological conditions of all sorts. In the absence of clinical issues its functions tend to be taken over by group tests, whose much greater economy compensates for the qualitative losses. There are circumstances, especially at extreme upper levels, where a multiple-choice group technique may be preferred in a clinical situation; but in such cases it is imperative that any multiple choice test be brigaded with a projeetive method, the Rorschach test being the natural one for this purpose. This is less important with a Wechsler scale, owing to its open-end features; though theie will be more demands on the perceptiveness of the examiner than can well be made explicit in a manual of administration. One cannot help wondering if and how far this perceptiveness entered into the gratifying results cited from Holt and Luborsky (p. 232). This reviewer has shared in the skepticism Wechsler mentions, about the discriminativeness of the Wechsler scales at such levels as the BOOK REVIEWS