Cognition, Intelligence, and Achievement: A Tribute to J. P. Das

By Rauno K. Parrila and John R. Kirby

Cognition, Intelligence, and Achievement is motivated by the work of the renowned Professor J. P. Das on the PASS (Planning, Attention, Simultaneous and Successive Processing) theory of intelligence and CAS measures (Cognitive Assessment System) of cognitive processes. This book reviews current research using this and other frameworks in understanding the relationships among cognition, intelligence, and achievement. The assessment and diagnosis of learning disabilities, mental retardation, and ADHD are addressed, and the interrelationships among cognition, culture, neuropsychology, academic achievement, instruction, and remediation are examined. No other book has presented such an integrated view across these domains, from such a diverse array of internationally known and respected experts from psychology, education, and neuroscience.

• Summarizes decades of research on PASS theory and use of CAS
• Discusses how findings in the neuropsychology of intelligence speak to PASS theory use and application
• Covers use of PASS and CAS for assessing and treating a variety of learning disabilities
• Outlines use of PASS and CAS for enhancing learning and cognitive processes

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academic Press
• Release date: Jul 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9780124104440

Book preview

Australia

Part I

Introductory Chapters

Outline

Chapter 1 Cognition, Intelligence, and Achievement: A Tribute to J. P. Das

Chapter 2 Glimpses into the Personal Life of J. P. Das

Chapter 3 Three Faces of Cognitive Processes: Theory, Assessment, and Intervention

Chapter 1

Cognition, Intelligence, and Achievement

A Tribute to J. P. Das

Timothy C. Papadopoulos¹, Rauno K. Parrila² and John R. Kirby³,    ¹Department of Psychology & Centre for Applied Neuroscience, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus,    ²Department of Educational Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada,    ³Faculty of Education, Department of Psychology, and Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Cognition, Intelligence, and Achievement is a Festschrift volume to honor the career and the contributions of Professor Jagannath Prasad Das of the University of Alberta in education and psychology. Understanding the concepts of cognition, intelligence, and achievement requires the creation of theories and models that rely on data from the real world. J. P. Das (or Das, as he is known to his friends and close collaborators) has made major contributions to our understanding of the relationships among these concepts through a well-grounded neurocognitive theory and a solid empirical base. During his almost 60-year academic career, J. P. Das has published a great number of influential papers in the broad field of cognitive psychology and special education. For many, his work on the Planning, Attention-Arousal, Simultaneous, and Successive (PASS) theory of intelligence, first proposed in 1975 (Das, Kirby, & Jarman, 1979), and later elaborated by Das, Naglieri, and Kirby (1994), and Das, Kar, and Parrila (1996), advanced our knowledge by broadening the concept of intelligence and how to assess it. Motivated by the theoretical propositions of Soviet neuropsychologist Alexander Luria, the PASS theory studied human intelligence in the context of learning and cognition rather than with a predominant focus on test construction and the structure of intellect. This is the reason that makes Professor Das one of the most widely recognized scholars related to Luria’s seminal neuropsychological work on brain functioning.

Keywords

cognition; intelligence; achievement; Planning; Attention-Arousal; Simultaneous and Successive theory; Das-Naglieri Cognitive Assessment System

Cognition, Intelligence, and Achievement is a Festschrift volume to honor the career and the contributions of Professor Jagannath Prasad Das of the University of Alberta in education and psychology. Understanding the concepts of cognition, intelligence, and achievement requires the creation of theories and models that rely on data from the real world. J. P. Das (or Das, as he is known to his friends and close collaborators) has made major contributions to our understanding of the relationships among these concepts through a well-grounded neurocognitive theory and a solid empirical base. During his almost 60-year academic career, J. P. Das has published a great number of influential papers in the broad field of cognitive psychology and special education. For many, his work on the Planning, Attention-Arousal, Simultaneous, and Successive (PASS) theory of intelligence, first proposed in 1975 (Das, Kirby, & Jarman, 1979), and later elaborated by Das, Naglieri, and Kirby (1994), and Das, Kar, and Parrila (1996), advanced our knowledge by broadening the concept of intelligence and how to assess it. Motivated by the theoretical propositions of Soviet neuropsychologist Alexander Luria, the PASS theory studied human intelligence in the context of learning and cognition rather than with a predominant focus on test construction and the structure of intellect. This is the reason that makes Professor Das one of the most widely recognized scholars related to Luria’s seminal neuropsychological work on brain functioning.

In 1972, J. P. Das became the Director of the newly formed Centre for Mental Retardation at the University of Alberta; this center was later renamed the Developmental Disabilities Centre, and more recently the J. P. Das Centre on Developmental and Learning Disabilities. Das’s extensive research since then covers three broad areas, all of which are represented in this volume: intelligence as a cognitive process, developmental and learning disabilities, and remediation of learning and cognitive processes. In research and practice, Das has always adopted an international and cross-cultural perspective and demonstrated great concern for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children, trying particularly to improve the lives of those with developmental and learning disabilities.

Das’s work on the conceptualization and measurement of intelligence challenged theories of general intelligence (g) on the grounds that the brain is made up of interdependent but distinct functional systems. Das was one of the leaders in the 1970s, offering theoretical interpretations of the cognitive processes that comprised intelligence (others represented in this volume include Earl Hunt and Robert Sternberg). Whereas the construction of intelligence tests and the mathematical analysis of the relations among measures had dominated the research on intelligence until then, Das and others began to reintegrate the study of intelligence with the study of cognition (e.g., Hunt, Frost, & Lunneborg, 1973; Sternberg, 1977). Instead of viewing intelligence simply as being whatever IQ tests measure, they studied the processes by which intelligent behavior was produced. As a result, they were far more focused on how to improve intelligence and its consequences. Many of the papers in this volume address issues regarding the cognitive conceptualization of intelligence.

The second major area of Das’s work focused on the diagnosis of different learning and developmental disabilities. The four PASS cognitive processes helped further understand and better define some of the most common categories of special populations including children with specific learning disabilities, attention and planning deficits, reading comprehension deficits, mathematics deficits, or individuals with intellectual disabilities. The application of the PASS theory to practical assessment strategies has been achieved through the Das-Naglieri Cognitive Assessment System (D-N CAS; Naglieri & Das, 1997), a cross-culturally applicable battery of tests of intelligence and cognitive processes. As a result, the PASS theory and the CAS have helped make the assessment of intelligence useful for the differential diagnosis of learning and developmental disorders. Examples of this research are included in the present volume.

Das’s research on the remediation of learning and cognitive deficits is a third major area of his work: the PASS theory of cognitive processes has proven useful for designing educational and cognitive interventions. The theory has provided the framework for the development of two intervention programs: (a) the PASS Reading Enhancement Program (PREP), and (b) Cognition Enhancement Training (COGENT). The development of these intervention programs involved extensive efforts at tracking the short- and long-term effects of treatment with studies carried out with young children in Canada, the United States, Australia, Europe, China, and South Africa. It is expected that this line of research will stimulate much new empirical research in the area of cognitive intervention. All these issues and many others relating to cognition, intelligence, and achievement are addressed in the chapters ahead.

The Rationale for this Book

To honor Professor J. P. Das, we invited scholars who are familiar with his work to contribute chapters in one of the three thematic areas described below. This resulting collection of 20 essays by researchers in the fields of educational, developmental, and cognitive psychology and special education is rich and diverse, illustrating how Das’s contributions continue to guide or shape psychological research.

As noted previously, Das has been instrumental in relating work from neuropsychology and cognition to intelligence and school achievement. Our intention, therefore, was to bring together researchers who know or have been influenced by Das’s work to contribute chapters which focus on the themes that Das had studied. The goal was not to focus only on Das’s contributions, but rather to see how his contributions stimulated or are related to the thinking and research of other researchers in education and psychology. As such, we hope that the book will become a valuable resource for scholars, graduate students, practicing educational psychologists, and special education teachers. We believe that the chapters transcend the boundaries of Das’s work to investigate the emergence of a range of new ideas in the fields of cognition, assessment, intelligence, and intervention.

Organization of the Text

The book is organized around three broad research themes, which correspond to J. P. Das’s major research interests: intelligence as a cognitive process (Chapters 4–9), developmental and learning disabilities (Chapters 10–15), and the enhancement of learning and cognitive processes (Chapters 16–20). Because of the nature of these fields and the goal to integrate them, the three sections necessarily overlap extensively. Next, we briefly overview the chapters that follow.

Foreword and Introductory Chapters

The book begins with a foreword by Robert J. Sternberg, who portrays the outstanding career of J. P. Das. Sternberg places emphasis on how the work of Das has motivated researchers, psychologists, and educators to investigate functional relationships between information processing abilities. He describes their attempt to assess individuals more comprehensively, relying on the triangulation of theory, assessment, and intervention. In addition, Sternberg extracts the values Das models that mark his career and inspire all of us who follow.

Chapter 2 is a brief biography of J. P. Das, written by his son, Satya Das, a highly respected journalist and consultant in international affairs. Satya talks about his father’s personal qualities, the context in which he grew up and worked, and his family.

In Chapter 3, J. P. Das describes his academic career and the development of the PASS model. He elaborates on the operationalization of the model in the Das-Naglieri Cognitive Assessment System and the development and application of two intervention programs designed to improve cognitive processing and therefore achievement—the PASS Reading Enhancement Program (PREP) and Cognition Enhancement Training (COGENT). Das describes how PASS theory has broadened the scope of the assessment of intelligence and learning disabilities, and guided intervention when necessary. Finally, he sets the ground for future research, examining the prospects for PASS theory’s continuing growth.

Intelligence as a Cognitive Process

Given Das’s interest in intelligence and its assessment, this section starts with an essay titled J.P. Das’s Ideas in Retrospect and Prospect by Jerry Carlson and Earl Hunt. Chapter 4 examines the emergence of the PASS theory of intelligence and how this relates to the work of Luria and Vygotsky. To inform the discussion, Carlson and Hunt (a) review relevant research on the applications of the PASS theory in children with learning disabilities; (b) emphasize the need to expand on the conceptualization of planning as a higher-order mental process in order to better inform intelligence research; (c) point out the need to consider processing speed as an essential part of intelligence; and (d) conclude by suggesting ways to revise the PASS model by including constructs of central processing speed, both higher and lower order skills necessary for language comprehension, and skills in orientation and perceptual control.

Chapter 5, by Rauno Parrila and Lynn McQuarrie, examines the relationship between cognitive processes and academic achievement, and proposes a meta-theoretical framework that can help better contextualize cognitive processes within a broader array of other psychological attributes of individuals, their environments, and their behaviors within those environments. Motivated by the current trends in reading research, the authors argue that their Multiple Systems Model of Reading can be used to better understand typical and atypical reading development. This can be achieved, they argue, if we respect the complex and sometimes idiosyncratic nature of the developing organism, and by not allocating causal responsibility for possible reading problems to any single factor.

The next chapter, which relates to Das’s long-standing interest in cross-cultural psychology, is a 40-year overview of the relationship between culture and cognition by John Berry. The review is based on the combination of two perspectives: (a) the ecocultural framework, which seeks to understand the cognitive adaptation and development of persons living in particular habitats, and (b) the universalist perspective on cognition in cultural context. This approach provides a basis for examining both the underlying similarities in cognitive processes and the cultural variation in cognitive development (known also as competence) and display (known also as performance). By placing emphasis on the linkages between cognitive performances and experiences available to individuals within their ecocultural contexts—instead of making broad generalizations about the intelligence of populations and individuals within them—this review parallels the contributions of J. P. Das.

In Chapter 7, Kendeou, Papadopoulos, and Spanoudis examine the underlying cognitive processes that support reading comprehension and link them to the PASS theory of intelligence. The authors use empirical data from a large-scale study with Greek-speaking adolescent readers to find that while lower-level reading processes, such as word decoding, are dependent more on Successive and Simultaneous processing, higher-order reading processes, such as comprehension, are dependent more on Planning and Attention. Their conclusion is that although all four PASS processes contribute to reading, some play a more important role than others depending on the aspect of reading on which we focus or on the age of the readers.

Consistent with Das’s quest to develop cross-culturally valid tests of intelligence, and recognizing the challenges in adapting intelligence tests to different languages and cultures, in Chapter 8 Deng and Georgiou investigate the factor structure and measurement invariance of the Das-Naglieri CAS in two cultural groups (Canadian and Chinese). The authors conclude that the factor structure of D-N CAS is similar in Canada and China, and that a theory of intelligence based on assessment of neuropsychological processes may have advantages over traditional IQ tests and be more suitable for use in culturally diverse populations.

Chapter 9 is written by C. K. Leong, one of the early doctoral students of Das, whose work has focused on reading development and reading disability throughout his long and productive career. Leong discusses character and word reading in Chinese children as a cognitive and psycholinguistic process within a componential information processing framework. He concludes that cognitive and psycholinguistic processes, such as phonological awareness, subcharacter processing, orthographic processing, and morphological processing, which are involved in reading alphabetic orthographies, also explain well the nature of learning to read Chinese orthography.

Developmental and Learning Disabilities

As mentioned previously, a second important and ongoing component of J. P. Das’s research deals with untangling the profiles of children with learning and other disabilities. In Chapter 10, Lee Swanson provides a fundamental contribution to our understanding of learning disabilities by reviewing empirical evidence on working memory (WM) deficits among children who have specific learning disabilities (LD) in reading and/or mathematics. Swanson demonstrates that these children are more likely to suffer general WM capacity constraints than average achieving children; however, these constraints are not entirely specific to their academic disability or intelligence. Why such deficits do not affect general cognition is not so obvious. Swanson puts forward the argument that children with LD achieve normal intelligence by employing different cognitive routes (e.g., visual-spatial rather than verbal strategies) compared to average achievers. Overall, this paper clearly is in line with the tradition of J. P Das by providing a rich set of empirical findings and interpretations.

The next chapter, by John Kirby, Hee-Jin Kim, and Robert Silvestri, addresses two of the long-debated questions raised in the literature: namely, whether Planning and Attention should be seen as distinct factors and whether Planning itself is a single factor. The authors revisit this question by examining the cognitive constructs underlying attention and executive functions measures in college students with AD/HD, dyslexia, both, or neither. The results broadly confirm earlier findings based on the work of Das and his colleagues with younger participants, according to which it makes sense for the PASS theory to distinguish between planning and attention. However, they also demonstrate that the nature of the measures that define attention and planning factors need to be re-examined, because both functions comprise an array of distinct processes, requiring a battery of measures for their assessment.

Over the years, the PASS theory has been used to examine the predictors of reading ability and mathematics ability. That is the topic of Chapter 12, in which George Georgiou, George Manolitsis, and Niki Tziraki examine if intelligence—operationalized in terms of the PASS cognitive processes—can predict early reading and mathematics ability. The authors find that successive processing and planning are unique predictors of reading ability, whereas none of the PASS processes account for unique variance in mathematics. According to the authors, these findings suggest that the contribution of PASS cognitive processes to mathematics ability is likely to appear as students mature cognitively and begin to use mental mathematics strategies to determine basic calculation facts.

Anyone interested in knowing more about how PASS theory is used in Europe should look closely at the contribution by Evelyn Kroesbergen, Johannes van Luit, and Sietske van Viersen in Chapter 13. The authors provide an informative review of European studies that have investigated the cognitive profiles of students with special educational needs within the context of the PASS theory of intelligence. The authors synthesize the literature and demonstrate how their synthesis can help further understanding of the merit of PASS theory and inform treatment planning for children with learning and other disabilities. They conclude that schools will be better equipped when educators know how to deal with various specific information processing problems, based on children’s scores on CAS subtests.

Chapter 14 by Dimitra Koutsouki and Katerina Asonitou should stimulate future debate among researchers regarding the limits of the theory, research, and applications of the PASS model. More specifically, the authors describe the application of PASS theory and the CAS to the cognitive assessment of children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). In doing so, they provide a thorough and comprehensive review of four different theoretical approaches and research developments in the diagnosis of DCD, concluding that PASS theory can not only be used for the identification of distinct cognitive process-based subtypes of DCD, but also for making better-informed remedial decisions.

Marilyn Abbott and Lynn McQuarrie describe in Chapter 15 the pilot-testing of a computerized assessment battery, based on the CAS, but with lower verbal load demands compared to the original CAS tasks, and argue that this may constitute a more appropriate assessment for hearing and deaf English language learners (ELLs) than conventional and nonverbal measures of cognitive functioning. The authors argue that reliable low verbal load CAS measures may allow educators to make more informed decisions about ELLs’ strengths and weaknesses early in language development, providing, in turn, timely help to the children to reach their potential.

Enhancing Learning and Cognitive Processes

The third section of the volume presents five essays that honor J. P. Das’s extensive work on the remediation of cognitive and learning disabilities. In Chapter 16, Timothy Papadopoulos, Christiana Ktisti, Christoforos Christoforou, and Maria Loizou discuss how the strong foundations of the PASS theory have provided the basis for remedial applications such as PREP (PASS Reading Enhancement Program). Reviewing the efficacy of the PREP program across different age, language, and ability groups, they report preliminary findings from an early intervention study comparing the short- and long-term effects of PREP remediation to those of a more phonologically based intervention, Graphogame (Lyytinen, Erskine, Kujala, Ojanen, & Richardson, 2009). In addition, the authors propose a novel generic framework for analyzing microgenetic data to explore the learning progress dynamics and developmental stages of readers during intervention.

Chapter 17 by David Tzuriel and Gilat Trabelsi builds on the foundation laid by the late Reuven Feuerstein, a friend and a contemporary of Das. The authors examine the effects of a remediation program, Seria-Think Program (STP), aiming to improve the executive functions of planning and self-regulation and mathematics performance in young learners with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Results show that STP is efficient in improving children’s planning behavior and their use of these acquired skills to process mathematics tasks. This outcome demonstrates how cognitive intervention supports learning-how-to-learn skills.

In Chapter 18, Michael Lawson, Alan Barnes, Bruce White, and Helen Askell-Williams map and interpret students’ knowledge about learning and their understanding of what happens when they learn. The authors argue that many students have low-quality knowledge about learning, and provide a critical analysis and empirical evidence regarding the hypothesis that engagement in detailed study of learning by teachers and students is required for the development of explicit high-quality knowledge about learning.

The final two chapters demonstrate how one can integrate the principles of cognitive models emphasizing the importance of functional systems in the working brain into the diagnostic and remedial process of developmental and learning disabilities. In Chapter 19, Virginia Berninger, Lee Swanson, and Whitney Griffin identify problems that have negated the value of much of the previous work on the identification and treatment of developmental and learning disabilities, and delineate a strategy for distinguishing between developmental and specific learning disabilities. The authors place emphasis on the relevance of executive functions and working memory to special populations. They conclude that assessment and treatment models that are grounded in functional systems for cognition, language, and their interaction with the environment are more effective than those based on global IQ scores for understanding a variety of developmental, learning, and acquired disorders.

Finally, in Chapter 20 Federico Pérez-Álvarez and Carme Timoneda-Gallart acknowledge Das’s contribution in focusing researchers’ attention on the relationship between intelligent behavior and neuroscience, studying specifically how we think about the way we think. In doing so, the authors first integrate PASS processes into a holistic cognitive-emotional framework, on the basis of which they distinguish conscious from unconscious behavior and describe the type of processing that drives each of these behaviors. Second, they review studies that have applied the PASS model to the analysis of emotions and executive functioning, and conclude with the presentation of a program that results in improvements in emotion processing, affecting self-perception and emotion management.

The book closes with a chapter from the editors, who describe their experiences working with Professor Das, the effect his work has had upon their own work, and their thoughts about future developments in this field.

As former doctoral students of Professor Das and as editors of this book, we hope that this volume will stimulate further discussion and interest into the areas of cognition, intelligence, and achievement to which J. P. Das has himself contributed. We thank the many scholars who contributed excellent chapters and tolerated our occasionally obsessive editing. Through these writings, we honor J. P. Das, a great man, mentor, and influential psychologist.

References

1. Das JP, Kar BC, Parrila RK. Cognitive planning New Delhi: Sage Publications; 1996.

2. Das JP, Kirby JR, Jarman RF. Simultaneous and successive cognitive processes New York: Academic Press; 1979.

3. Das JP, Naglieri JA, Kirby JR. Assessment of cognitive processes: The PASS theory of intelligence. Boston, MA Allyn & Bacon 1994.

4. Hunt E, Frost N, Lunneborg CE. Individual differences in cognition: A new approach to intelligence. In: New York: Academic Press; 1973:87–123. Bower GS, ed. Advances in learning and motivation. Vol. 7.

5. Lyytinen H, Erskine J, Kujala J, Ojanen E, Richardson U. In search of a science-based application: A learning tool for reading acquisition. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. 2009;50:668–675.

6. Naglieri JA, Das JP. Das-Naglieri Cognitive Assessment System Itasca, IL: Riverside Publishing; 1997.

7. Sternberg RJ. Intelligence, information processing, and analogical reasoning: The componential analysis of human abilities Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum; 1977.

Chapter 2

Glimpses into the Personal Life of J. P. Das

Satya Brata Das,    Cambridge Strategies Inc., Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

And so it comes to pass that J. P. is installed in a banqueting seat in a community hall in southeast Edmonton, the city he has made his home since 1967, building the career feted in this volume. A thunderstorm has cooled the stifling heat of the wedding day, and the dance is about to begin: the parent and child dance that is the first of the evening. The evening is pierced by the melodious voice of one of J. P.’s favorite singers, Joan Baez, with the Bob Dylan lullaby his granddaughters grew up with:

May you build a ladder to the stars

And climb on every rung

May you stay forever young

His granddaughter Somya stands before him, a grown-up vision in a flowing yellow sari, inviting J. P. to dance. His eyes alight with the inevitable why, but he does not resist as she pulls him out of the chair and on to the floor: for this time, the answer is why not?

Keywords

Jagannath Prasad (J. P.) Das; Gita; personal life; son; granddaughter; scholarship; University of London

Well into his 82nd year, on the eve of a wedding he never expected to see, Jagannath Prasad (J. P.) Das is pulled into a riot of color and music by young muscle-toned arms.

The vivid aromas of a sumptuous Indian buffet waft in the chatter and laughter, camera-phones click as his granddaughter’s bridesmaids insist he join their dance to a pulsing Bollywood beat.

He is suffused with a singular happiness, radiant with an affection and love he has always expressed in a hundred gestures but never in words: his granddaughter Silpi’s henna ceremony!

This is the granddaughter he nurtured from infancy, who took her first mouthful of solid food in his arms, who rode horseback as he obligingly crawled on all fours across the family-room carpet, to whom he sang Sanskrit shlokas as lullabies, whose cognitive abilities he tested with emerging theories and hypotheses; the Silpi with whom he shared the gift of laughter, and the boundlessness of unconditional love.

This is the granddaughter who would one day grow up to copyedit his books, sort out his bibliographies, insert notes and corrections in his manuscripts: the only one in the family who would earn the privilege of intimacy with his unfinished work (Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1 J. P. Das with his granddaughter Silpi at her graduation day.

And here on Silpi’s wedding eve, in a central Edmonton restaurant awash with the unfiltered joy of families about to be joined by a wedding, there are familiars among the bridesmaids: Silpi’s oldest friend, steadfast from kindergarten onwards; the friends she drew close later in life; and above all Silpi’s younger sister Somya, the other beneficiary of the exuberant innocence and joyous curiosity J. P. infused in the vital first years of his granddaughters’ lives—years he missed in the life of his own son.

The room is full of his other intimates: daughter Sheela and son-in-law Shawn, Silpi’s mom Mita, and above all Gita, the companion he met and married nearly six decades earlier.

The following afternoon, J. P. sits in brilliant sunshine in a riverfront park in Edmonton, his adopted home, as Silpi marries Shawn in a meaningful ceremony blending East and West. My teacher said Arjun, I want you to preside at my granddaughter’s wedding, so here I am, explained 78-year-old priest Arjun Purohit, the oldest among J. P.’s former students, who traveled across the country to fulfill his guru’s wishes.

Silpi’s wedding weekend in the summer of 2012 is a peak moment, in J. P.’s life, as he will admit much later in the quiet intimacy of a family table. In a lifetime of demonstrating rather than articulating his love, always restrained by the coda of humility and detachment prescribed by his upbringing in a devout Vaishnava household, he is restrained in his exuberance. Yet this, a granddaughter’s marriage, is indeed an unexpected outcome in an unlikely life’s journey, one that was destined to take a very different path, but for a sacrilegious murder in a place of worship.

The eldest child in a family where six of eight siblings survived to adulthood, J. P. fell seriously ill, whereupon his parents Biswanath Prasad Das and Nilamani Dei pledged to devote J. P.’s life to the service of God should the child live. For Biswanath, himself orphaned at age 10 with a mother and three sisters to support, the survival of the firstborn was achieved with intense prayer and the application of faith. Thus, J. P. was duly sent to a monastery before he reached his teens, with a destiny to become a Hindu monk in the Vaishnava tradition, renouncing the possibility of career and family to devote himself to faith and spiritual inquiry. The abbot’s murder, by a disciple lusting for the monastery’s gold, released J. P. back into family.

Perceiving a different destiny for his son, Biswanath determined that J. P. should pursue his academic endeavors as far as he could, resisting calls from peers to put the boy to work as soon as he could earn for the family. It was by no means an easy choice. The orphaned Biswanath eventually took a job in the post office, sacrificing the higher education he himself wanted. He borrowed, scraped, plunged deeply into debt to ensure all six of his children would have a college education to the minimum of a masters’ level, including his three daughters. Putting J. P. to work would have eased the burden, but Biswanath wanted his son to rise as far his talents would lead.

This was the path that led J. P. from scholarship to scholarship as a class topper. And thus he arrives at the University of Patna, draped in handspun dhoti and kurta topped with a coarse cloak, as befitted both the humility of a Vaishanava, and an ardent disciple of the life and example of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. J. P.’s classmates mistook him for the new cook’s assistant—until J. P. was assigned the premium lodging reserved for students who stood first in the national BA exams.

J. P. left Patna in 1953 as the gold medalist in Psychology, which in turn led to a national scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of London (Figure 2.2). In the meantime, he met and married Gita, and traveled to London with plans that his pregnant wife would join him some months later. In the course of a decade, J. P. had gone from novice monk to leading scholar. Now he was on a ship bound for England, with a gentle and soft-spoken cabin mate who would make his own name in the field of Economics, and later serve as Prime Minister of India: Dr. Manmohan Singh.

Figure 2.2 J. P. Das as a young PhD graduate in London.

And what of the unborn son he left behind? In post-independence India, my parents met and married at the intersection of the falling aristocracy and the rising middle class. And in keeping with the emergence of a new nation, where education and the universal availability of knowledge would erode the old feudal power structures more quickly than anyone might have imagined, my parents were the vanguard generation. Indeed, my mother Gita was among the first women who traveled to London for their education; and her feudal family was open to the idea that she should leave her newborn son with them, while she broadened and expanded her already remarkable intellectual horizons. From a sprawling family estate, where her father held dominion over 45 neighboring villages (a historic title, last confirmed by Lord Cornwallis in 1803), my mother chose a life with a young academic from an impoverished family with a handful of siblings to support. From a household with a legion of servants to answer her every beck and call, she moved to a single room in London with J. P., sharing one heavy woollen dressing gown between them for warmth. Hers too was a life journey as unlikely as J. P.’s, as she left her newborn—me—in her family’s care.

In my first recollection of coherence, those tesserae of cognition that filter the realm of earliest childhood memory, I always come back to The Wait. Sometimes it is to the sound of crickets, the aroma of ripening gourds atop roofs of bamboo and thatch, the thud of a zinc bucket against a well. Or the tannic purple stain of ripe rose-apples, the surging sweetness of custard apples, the waft of mangos on an afternoon breeze. The Wait.

Invariably, it is on the arcaded upstairs veranda of my maternal grandparents’ estate, in the arms of an uncle or a nanny or a butler or a cook: a work-worn adult finger pointing beyond the courtyard, beyond the fish ponds, beyond the crossroads temple, to the rammed-earth path running between huts and groves and paddy fields, always with a whispered declaration that we are nearly at the end of The Wait, that the day of reunion is nearly here.

The Wait carries meaning and conviction only while I am in the arms of the grandmother whom I call Ma, and who does nothing to disabuse me of the illusion that I am her son. Time and again, as though preparing me for catastrophe, she tells me that one day I would leave her doting bosom, to be with a father I have never seen: known only from a toothy picture in a glass-fronted al-mira besides my grandfather’s hunting rifle and shotgun.

I come to perceive their time away from me in fragments of images, memories, anecdotes; pieced together like fractal iteration over the course of years and decades. There is the black-and-white box-camera print of J. P. holding a little girl by the hand as they stroll in a London park: a friend’s daughter, who would grow up to become the celebrated Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif. There are tales of exceptionally jocund moments with their bosom friends Lowell and Marilyn Storms, Arthur Jensen, Neil O’Connor; respectful mentions of J. P.’s teacher, Hans-Juergen Eysenck, and others of those memorably formative years in an England still rebuilding and recovering after the Second World War.

Yet there is absolute clarity about the end of The Wait. A slight figure comes through the gate of the estate, with a crowd gathered to meet him as he crosses the outer courtyard to the walls of the mansion. And in my clearest flash of childhood memory, it is at the veranda where my grandfather held court that my grandmother says, This is your father. And thus begins a momentous life’s bond, informed with such warmth and compassion that it took me many years to understand how truly exceptional it was. Our journey together, from then until now, has been the most fulfilling any child could ask for. The abundance of an open heart is rare gift indeed in a society where cynicism abounds, and to have a father always open to the new has been the most important formative gift I could have hoped for.

Until I grew old enough to perceive the richness and diversity of human relationships, I simply assumed that all fathers are that loving. Only after my own children were born did I discern the influence of J. P.’s true guru in his open-hearted embrace of children and the wondrous possibilities of their life to be; the guru who died when J. P. was a mere toddler yet profoundly shaped how J. P. came to perceive his own duty to humankind: Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (Figure 2.3).

Figure 2.3 J. P. Das in his office at the University of Alberta.

From those early memories through to the full evolution of a life, my father has always maintained a child’s curiosity, and indeed a childlike innocence about the world and all its splendor. Indeed, it is the insatiable why of a child’s questioning that informs his sense of wonderment, and leads to immediate connection with children, especially those fortunate to be in his family. This is especially so when it comes to his grandchildren. It is hard not to love my grandfather, Silpi explained to her husband-to-be Shawn, as my wife Mita and I prepared to welcome Shawn into our family on that wedding weekend.

Silpi spoke from a lifetime of her own experience, from the time her grandfather would feed her seated on his lap, to firing her imagination with tales of the outlandish and the absurd. As though to make up for his absence in the first years of my life, he lavished his full heart on his granddaughters, always impelled by the inquiring why.

And so it comes to pass that J. P. is installed in a banqueting seat in a community hall in southeast Edmonton, the city he has made his home since 1968, building the career feted in this volume. A thunderstorm has cooled the stifling heat of the wedding day, and the dance is about to begin: the parent and child dance that is the first of the evening. The evening is pierced by the melodious voice of one of J. P.’s favorite singers, Joan Baez, with the Bob Dylan lullaby his granddaughters grew up with:

May you build a ladder to the stars

And climb on every rung

May you stay forever young

His granddaughter Somya stands before him, a grown-up vision in a flowing yellow sari, inviting J. P. to dance. His eyes alight with the inevitable why, but he does not resist as she pulls him out of the chair and on to the floor: for this time, the answer is why not? (Figure 2.4).

Figure 2.4 J. P. Das dancing with his granddaughter Somya.

Chapter 3

Three Faces of Cognitive Processes

Theory, Assessment, and Intervention

J.P. Das,    Department of Educational Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

A comprehensive theory of intelligence as cognitive processes and its use for assessment that may guide intervention when necessary has been developed over 40 years. I present an integrated account of its development and prospects for its continuing growth. The roots of the theory are in both neuropsychological and cognitive research and their applications. The empirical research arising within the framework of the theory has continued to yield useful insight into the varieties of cognitive processes present in typical and atypical individuals. A special feature of the theory has been developed for overcoming specific cognitive difficulties, as well as to enhance four major cognitive functions that comprise Planning and executive functions, Attention, and Simultaneous and Successive information processing. The reach of the theory continues to expand as it is supported by the studies of many people, some of whom are contributors to this volume.

Keywords

cognitive process; Planning function; Attention; Simultaneous processing; Successive Information processing; PASS model; executive function; theory; assessment; intervention

Origin and History of PASS Cognitive Processes

My purpose in this chapter is to review the history of the PASS theory, describe how it has been applied to the assessment of cognitive processes and academic achievement, and discuss future directions for research. Let me begin by describing my own beginnings in psychology.

PASS Prehistory

Intelligence and the social psychology of human behavior were my primary interests as I began to read psychology. This began when I was introduced to the subject matter of psychology mostly at Patna University in India. Among my professors were three influential ones: Professor Mohsin, who had studied with Godfrey Thompson, a Scottish rival of Spearman; A.K.P. Sinha, who had just returned with a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Michigan; and Durganand Sinha, who had completed graduate studies at the University of Cambridge in memory, as had his professor in India, Jamuna Prasad, who worked with Fredrick Bartlett. All of them were my professors when I entered the M.A. program in Experimental Psychology in 1951 following my graduation from an honors program in Philosophy, in which Psychology was one of the courses taught by Professor Rath, the first person to obtain a doctorate in Psychology in my state; he earned it at University College, London. My first research paper, Effect of a Completely Dissimilar Interpolated Learning on Retroactive Inhibition (Das, 1954), was an experimental study, as I was imprinted so to speak by my professors, and my first in an international journal (Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology) was in experimental social psychology: Understanding Versus Suggestion in the Judgment of Literary Passages (Das, 1955).

It was toward the end of August in 1955 that I went to London to study with Professor Eysenck at the Institute of Psychiatry within the University of London. Do you believe in good fortune? To obtain a Government of India scholarship for overseas studies, one of the 40 awarded to scholars in any subject in any part of India, was a matter of good luck. As soon as I learned of the award, I began corresponding with Professor Eysenck. He agreed; perhaps having a paper in press in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology weighed in my favor, apart from my good academic record. At the same time, I had also applied for graduate school at the University of Michigan, and was accepted directly into the doctoral program; however, the government scholarship from India was not available for the USA. And so began my higher studies in psychology at the Institute. That was a turning point in my academic career. In those formative 2 years, I acquired the basic techniques of doing good research, and specific knowledge and skill for investigating eye-lid conditioning, reactive inhibition, and their relation to suggestibility and hypnosis. Reading Pavlov’s two volumes on conditioned reflexes and experiments on hypnotizability as a personality trait brought me closer to Soviet psychology—many of the research papers on experimental hypnosis originated from the then Soviet Union.

My first introduction to the work of Professor Luria (whom I heard giving a lecture at London University in 1957) and Vygotsky was made possible by my association with Professor Neil O’Connor. He had a vast knowledge of Soviet psychology and could read original articles in Russian. Further, he got me interested in special populations, including those with mental retardation and schizophrenia.

Looking back, what did I gain? A good grounding in experimental designs, and statistical methods such as factor analysis that I learned from scratch; measuring speed by reaction time; the learning theories and experiments of Pavlov and Hull. These were among the things I learned through discussions with my contemporaries such as Arthur Jensen, and they were some of the tangible gains that have helped me build a reasonable base for good research and teaching, and influence my subsequent research even to this