NONFICTION - Aug. 13, 1995

OUTSMARTING IQ: The Emerging Science of Learnable Intelligence by David Perkins (Free Press: $23; 390 pp.). Too bad this book wasn’t published eight or 10 months ago: It would have provided a nice contrast to ‘94’s “The Bell Curve,” the controversial, arguably racist book (issued by the same publisher, ironically) in which Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray declared that intelligence is governed mainly by genetics. David Perkins, a researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, doesn’t dismiss the role of genes in the creation of intelligence, but he argues that experience and “mindfulness” also contribute greatly to mental development, and that the standard IQ test, in isolation, doesn’t measure intelligence adequately. The first half of “Outsmarting IQ” is quite interesting; Perkins notes that “the father of IQ,” Alfred Binet, made modest claims for his evaluative techniques, that apparently normal people with high IQs can make unintelligent decisions if a “feeling” part of the brain is injured. The second half of the book, by contrast, is often tiresome social-science-speak, as Perkins describes in detail various academic models of intelligence and ways in which brainpower can be taught and augmented. Teachers in particular will find much to occupy them here; others will be put off by the vagueness seemingly inherent in the cognition field. It makes some sense in context, sure, but when Perkins poses himself the question “What stuff do you get when you get smarter?” you expect a better response than “The stuff you get is whatever stuff goes into knowing your way around.”