Herman H. Spitz

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Herman H. Spitz is an American psychologist known for his work measuring intelligence among those with developmental disability. He was director of the E.R. Johnstone Training and Research Center until he retired in 1989.

He studied concepts such as mental age, ^[1] the abilities of autistic savants, ^[2] With his colleague Edward R. Johnstone he co-authored a survey of attempts to raise intelligence among people with mental retardation. ^[3] He reported on programs like Head Start and the Carolina Abecedarian Early Intervention Project which advocated the early education of poor children. ^[4] Through use of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, he reported that the Flynn effect of massive intelligence quotient gains in a single generation in many nations only applied to people in the average intelligence range. ^[5] He also looked at the hereditarian hypothesis for general intelligence factor by examining Weschler subtest patters among mentally retarded test-takers. ^[6]

In 1994 he was one of 52 signatories on "Mainstream Science on Intelligence," an editorial written by Linda Gottfredson and published in the Wall Street Journal, which defended the findings on race and intelligence in The Bell Curve. ^[7]

[edit] References

^ Spitz HH (1982). Intellectual Extremes, Mental Age, and the Nature of Human Intelligence. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly v28 n2 p167-92 Apr 1982
^ Spitz HH (1995). Calendar calculating idiots savants and the smart unconscious. New Ideas in Psychology
^ Spitz HH (1986). The Raising of Intelligence: A Selected History of Attempts to Raise Retarded Intelligence. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
^ Spitz HH (1992). Does the Carolina Abecedarian Early Intervention Project Prevent Sociocultural Mental Retardation? Intelligence v16 n2 p225-37 Apr-Jun 1992
^ Spitz HH (1989). Variations in Wechsler Interscale IQ Disparities at Different Levels of IQ. Intelligence v13 n2 p157-67 Apr-Jun 1989
^ Spitz HH (1988). Wechsler Subtest Patterns of Mentally Retarded Groups: Relationship to "g" and to Estimates of Heritability. Intelligence v12 n3 p279-97 Jul-Sep 1988
^ Gottfredson, Linda (December 13, 1994). Mainstream Science on Intelligence. Wall Street Journal, p A18.