Herman Heinrich Spitz (March 2, 1925 – February 11, 2019) was an American psychologist known for evaluating intelligence among people with developmental disabilities. He retired in 1989 as the director of research at the E.R. Johnstone Training and Research Center in Bordentown, New Jersey, a state institution for adolescents and young adults with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities. He worked under Superintendent John M. Wall, who retired in 1990 after serving from August 1969.
Spitz studied concepts such as mental age,Spitz HH (1982). Intellectual Extremes, Mental Age, and the Nature of Human Intelligence. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly v28 n2 p167-92 Apr 1982 and the abilities of autistic savants.Spitz HH (1995). Calendar calculating idiots savants and the smart unconscious. New Ideas in Psychology He co-authored a survey on efforts to raise intelligence among people with intellectual disabilities.Spitz HH (1986). The Raising of Intelligence: A Selected History of Attempts to Raise Retarded Intelligence. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. He reported on programs like the Carolina Abecedarian Early Intervention Project, which advocated for the early education of poor children.Spitz HH (1992). Does the Carolina Abecedarian Early Intervention Project Prevent Sociocultural Mental Retardation? Intelligence v16 n2 p225-37 Apr-Jun 1992 Using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, he reported that the Flynn effect of significant intelligence quotient gains in a single generation in many nations applied only to those with average intelligence.Spitz HH (1989). Variations in Wechsler Interscale IQ Disparities at Different Levels of IQ. Intelligence v13 n2 p157-67 Apr-Jun 1989 He also analyzed Wechsler subtest results among test takers with intellectual disabilities to assess the hereditarian hypothesis for the general intelligence factor.Spitz HH (1988). Wechsler Subtest Patterns of Mentally Retarded Groups: Relationship to "g" and to Estimates of Heritability. Intelligence v12 n3 p279-97 Jul-Sep 1988
In 1994 he joined 51 others in signing on "Mainstream Science on Intelligence,"Gottfredson, Linda (December 13, 1994). Mainstream Science on Intelligence. Wall Street Journal, p A18. an editorial written by Linda Gottfredson and published in the Wall Street Journal. This editorial declared the consensus of the signing scholars on the measurement and significance of intelligence following the publication of the book The Bell Curve.
Herman H. Spitz died in Natick, Massachusetts, on February 11, 2019, at the age of 93.
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