Based on solid refereed research, the authors explain how to make the most of developing intellect.

Typical texts develop students' knowledge while only minimally developing the general skills they will need for success in school and in life. The goal of our text is to assist students in acquiring the most important skills for facing the diverse challenges life presents. The book contains an overview of theories of intelligence, but itself is based in large part on a theory according to which individuals need creative skills to generate new ideas and a vision for the future, analytical skills to make sure that the vision is a good one, and practical skills to execute the ideas and to persuade other people of their value. The book considers key skills in problem solving, logical reasoning, analysis of arguments, knowledge acquisition, creative and practical thinking, automatizing information processing, and avoiding life traps that derail even the most intelligent among us.

1. Views of intelligence
2. The theory of successful human intelligence
3. Metacognition: thinking with metacomponents
4. Advanced problem-solving steps
5. Cognitive processing: performance components (I)
6. Cognitive processing: performance components (II)
7. Logical reasoning and analysis of arguments: performance components (III)
8. Inference and inferential fallacies
9. Knowledge-acquisition components
10. Coping with novelty
11. Deciding for creativity
12. Automatizing information processing
13. Practical intelligence
14. Why intelligent people fail (too often).