APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGYAppl. Cognit. Psychol. 21: 407–411 (2007)

Book Reviews

What has research on interest revealed?

EXPLORING THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INTEREST. Paul J. Silvia. Oxford University Press,New York, 2006. No. of pages 276. ISBN 0-19-515855-5. Price £29.99 (hardback).

What makes us interested in a particular book, film or piece of music? Is it something to do with thebook? Are some people just naturally curious? Why this particular book and not another, similarone? And can we really compare interest in a book with, say, interest in a person or an event? PaulSilvia tackles some of these questions in this book, part of an OUP series on the psychology ofhuman motivation.

I say some, because the last question is not really tackled. There is a chapter on ‘what isinteresting?’, but this defines interesting material as the material studied by psychologists studyinginterest—indeed, much of the time not very interesting material at all. But that is not the point, Silviaargues: interest is largely a property of the individual perceiver rather than of the stimulus itself—aperson—rather than object-centred approach. He favours the appraisal theory of interest, whichargues that it is cognitive processing per se that determines our level of interest, and cites as evidenceresearch comparing experts and novices in their level of interest in (selected works of) abstract art.Here, complexity does not explain interest, as an object-centred theory might predict: expertise is abetter predictor.

The book is divided into three sections. The first section, ‘Interests and Emotion’, is where Silviamakes the case for appraisal theory, arguing that interest should be treated as an emotion as it hasrobust and culturally independent facial and vocal expressions that are consistent across alldevelopmental stages. The second section, ‘Interest and Personality’, examines the literature onindividual differences in interest and develops an Emotion—Attribution theory in which he arguesthat we make causal attributions about our emotions (I am sad because . . . ) and that these determineour expectations about events.

He cites an example of an individual whose day is brightened up by going to church. If theyattribute this effect to religion itself, then they might be motivated towards private prayer; if theyattribute it to the social rewards of the church gathering, they might be motivated to try other socialactivities. He then applies this theory to vocational interest, by way of Bandura’s self-efficacy model(where ‘outcome expectations’ are a mediator of self-efficacy and vocational interest). The finalsection is an overview and suggestions for future research (‘the psychology of interest is poised forenormous growth’, he states optimistically).

Silvia has done a good critical job throughout in terms of demanding that researchers’ modelshave sound theoretical basis. For example, he dismisses a lot of the vocational research, such asHolland’s RIASEC model, for lacking any account of how the different vocational personality typesemerge in the first place—a very valid criticism. He makes similar points in relation to personalitymodels in Chapter 4, arguing that these tend to be largely descriptive rather than attempting toexplain how different personality types come about.

Silvia is generally critical of psychometric research that derives models from correlational ratherthan experimental data and is particularly sceptical about theories derived solely on the basis of self-report measures. This last criticism is a valid point too, although a lot of the supporting experimentalresearch in the book seems to be based on subjective ratings of how interesting participants found aparticular event or task (without any attempt to explore the meanings of ‘interest’ for them).

The same problem would seem to affect research on interest and learning covered in Chapter 3.Here, Silvia discusses the counterintuitive finding that attention is not a mediating factor aspreviously supposed. He cites the work of Dewey, whose educational theory is supported by thisevidence, since it is based on the argument that children are unlikely to learn from material they find

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

intrinsically interesting. Learning requires effort and interesting material is processed too easily tofoster genuine understanding. Later research seemed to back Dewey up, finding that lavishlyillustrated educational materials were no better remembered than dry textual materials. Silvia issceptical about this research, suggesting that the apparently ‘seductive’ details that distract readersdo not actually have to be seductive at all—in most cases they simply increase the amount ofinformation in the task or are incompatible with the textual information, thus making the texts moredifficult to recall (similar results have been found with inconsistent visuals on TV news). However,again the answer may lie in the actual measure of interest that the researchers have used—in mostcases children’s interest in the topic itself is recorded, although this may have nothing to do with theway the topic is treated in that specific text. This is perhaps where the person-centred approach doesnot always sit comfortably with experimental methodology.

Ultimately, this book is a pretty good breakdown of a very diverse literature. The usefulness of theconcept of interest as an individual property remain to be seen. The question ‘where do interestscome from?’ is a very important one, which most of the theories in the book seem unable orunwilling to address. It may be that this is the point where culture has to come in . . . and thecognitive psychologist might need to find a different hat to wear.

DAVID GILES

Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

Published online in Wiley InterScience(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/acp.1310

An exploration of diverse approaches to studying cognition and intelligence

COGNITIONAND INTELLIGENCE: IDENTIFYING THEMECHANISMS OF THEMIND. R. J.Sternberg & J. E. Pretz (Eds.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005. No. of pages 345.ISBN 0-521-82744-2. Price $70.00 (hardback).

In this edited volume, Sternberg and Pretz provide an excellent overview of recent research andtheory on cognition and intelligence. The chapters are written by a diverse array of authors whosetheoretical orientations and research largely reflect the current bifurcation in the field between thosewho focus on the basic, lower-order mechanisms of intelligence such as processing speed, and thosewho focus on higher-order components of intelligence, such as complex problem solving, reasoningand transfer. The book is roughly divided into two larger parts that reflect this split in the field,followed by a two chapter coda by researchers who provide a more developmental perspective onintelligence.

The book begins with three chapters that evaluate the role of elementary cognitive tasks inassessing intelligence. Hunt leads off the book with a broad overview of the relation betweeninformation processing and intelligence. Hunt concludes that processing speed (as measured byreaction time and inspection time measures), working memory and frontal lobe volume are allimportant components of intelligence. Jensen provides a chapter on mental chronometry in which heargues that using elementary cognitive tasks that assess individuals’ response times and inspectiontimes provide a psychometrically superior measure of intelligence when compared to standard IQtests. Jensen believes that processing speed is a key component of individual differences in g, andthat batteries of elementary cognitive tasks and psychometric measures of intelligence share a greatdeal of common variance. Stankov discusses the necessity of combining the study of elementarycognitive tasks with a broader approach of assessing intelligence through more complex tasks andtasks that tap into other sensory modalities, such as auditory, tactile and kinaesthetic.

The next two chapters discuss the role neuroimaging can play in assessing the hypothesis thatmore intelligent individuals process information more efficiently. In brain imaging studies using

408 Book Reviews

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 21: 407–411 (2007)

DOI: 10.1002/acp