This volume is an outgrowth of an invitational conference held in
October 1991 on the main campus of Texas A&M University and sponsored by
a grant from the Dean's Office of the College of Education. The
expressed purpose of the conference was to allow researchers from too
often dispa- rate areas of research related to individual differences to
come together and discuss their approaches to the topic, share ideas,
and critique their differing paradigms to shorten the time it takes for
researchers in parallel disciplines to discover advances that may aid
their own work. We sought to bring together world-class psychometricians
and statis- ticians, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists focused
on the common theme of individual differences. Each reviewed advances in
his or her own work that has clear implications for enhancing our
understanding of indi- vidual differences - from defining and
partitioning variance components to modeling individual differences to
structural and functional cortical variations that produce individual
differences. The Chair of the Department of Educational Psychology at
Texas A&M University, Bruce Thompson, took a lead role along with Victor
L.