HUMAN ABILITIES

This chapter reviews recent literature, primarily from the 1990s, on h uman abilities. The review opens with a consideration of the question of what intelligence is, and then considers some of the major definiti ons of intelligence, as well as implicit theories of intelligence arou nd the world. Next, the chapter considers cognitive approaches to inte lligence, and then biological approaches. It proceeds to psychometric or traditional approaches to intelligence,and then to broad, recent ap proaches. The different approaches raise somewhat different questions, and hence produce somewhat different answers. They have in common, ho wever, the attempt to understand what kinds of mechanisms lead some pe ople to adapt to, select, and shape environments in ways that match pa rticularly well the demands of those environments.