IQ Testing 101

Alan S. Kaufman, PhD, is Clinical Professor of Psychology at the Yale University School of Medicine, Child Study Center. Kaufman earned an AB degree from the University of Pennsylvania in1965; an MA in Educational Psychology from Columbia University in 1967; and a PhD from Columbia University in 1970 (under Robert L. Thorndike in Psychology: Measurement, Research, and Evaluation). While Assistant Director at The Psychological Corporation from 1968 to 1974, Kaufman worked closely with David Wechsler on the revision of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) and supervised the standardization of the revised version—the WISC-R. He also collaborated with Dorothea McCarthy in the development and standardization of the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities. From the mid-1970s to the present, Kaufman has held several university positions prior to his current professorship at Yale, most notably at the University of Georgia (1974-1979) and the University of Alabama (1984-1995). Kaufman's texts, including Intelligent Testing with the WISC-R (1979), Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence (1990), and Intelligent Testing with the WISC-III (1994), have been widely used for the interpretation of Wechsler's scales for children, adolescents, and adults. In 2009, he co-authored Essentials of WAIS-IV Assessment (with Liz Lichtenberger) and the second edition of Essentials of WISC-IV Assessment (with Dawn Flanagan). Kaufman's tests, developed with his wife Nadeen—most notably the 1983 Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) and its 2004 revision (KABC-II)—have been widely used throughout the world to measure children's intelligence. Kaufman is a Fellow of four divisions of the American Psychological Association (APA) and of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and is a recipient of the Mensa Education and Research Foundation Award for Excellence (1989) and the Mid-South Educational Research Association Outstanding Research Award (1988 and 1993). In 1997, he received the APA's prestigious Senior Scientist Award from Division 16 (School Psychology), and in 2005 he delivered the Legends in School Psychology Annual Address to the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP).