ABSTRACT
Intelligence has been called a superconstruct because it embraces a grand span of cognitive and quasi-cognitive functions (Baltes, 1986). In this book, the elements of mental functioning that compose intelligence have been portrayed as competencies, and referred to collectively as a repertoire. Intelligence is a cognitive congeries. It is not just knowledge or skill, adaptivity or purposivity, competencies or dispositions, words or images: It is a federation of all of these and more. Cognitive competencies are unequal in their importance, and intelligence consists of a subset of cognitive functions—the intelligence repertoire. These are the functions that are most general and powerful in promoting effectiveness, and are differentially possessed and deployed by members of a population. Cognitive functions that lie within the intelligence repertoire will have both properties of generality across situations and variability across persons.
