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Flanagan, D. P., & Harrison, P. L. (Eds.). (2005). Contemporary Intellectual Assessment--Theories, Tests, and Issues.

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Flanagan, D. P., & Harrison, P. L. (Eds.). (2005). Contemporary Intellectual Assessment--Theories, Tests, and Issues (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press (667 pp., $75.00 hc, ISBN: 1-59385-125-1).

Dawn Flanagan and Patti Harrison have edited the second edition of Contemporary Intellectual Assessment. This revision was well timed, as the last 15 years or so produced a flurry of new or restandardized intelligence tests, several of which implement major changes in the theoretical approaches to assessment. In the new edition, Flanagan and Harrison address many of these recent developments and include relevant chapters by primary authors of several major tests. The editors also present a series of chapters describing assessment issues for children of various ages, disability categories, and giftedness. Flanagan and Harrison clearly intend this volume to be used as a textbook and general reference book for undergraduates and graduate students studying assessment theory and as a source of continuing education for practitioners, university trainers, and researchers.

The volume is arranged in six sections. Part I presents a historical overview of intellectual assessment. Part II is concerned with contemporary trends and includes chapters on revised, updated, and emerging theoretical models of testing. Part III addresses some interpretive approaches that relate to the current theoretical models of intelligence. Part IV includes chapters that describe the latest editions of several test batteries. Part V addresses the use of intelligence tests with various subpopulations. Finally, Part VI addresses issues related to the reliability and validity of current test batteries, with a focus on the implications regarding the use of normative-based assessment in an era of standards-based educational reform.

Since most readers of the Roeper Review will be interested in assessment of children who are potentially gifted, I present only a cursory overview of some sections and chapters, and I elaborate on relevant chapters and sections. I invite the reader to examine the introductory chapters on the history of intelligence assessment and the history of test interpretation. In the subsection in the first chapter, "Terman, the Stanford-Binet, and the Birth of the Testing Industry," Wasserman and Tulsky (p. 11) offer some biographical information about Lewis Terman's dissertation in which he contrasted the abilities of 14 boys (which he labeled "bright" and "stupid"). Terman's dissertation served as a precursor to his well-known longitudinal study of gifted...

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