Ian John Deary

OBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

, FBA,

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and Literature, letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". ...

, FMedSci (born 1954) is a Scottish

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and explanation, interpretatio ...

(also dual trained as a medical doctor and psychiatrist) known for work in the fields of

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...

, cognitive

ageing Ageing (or aging in American English) is the process of becoming older until death. The term refers mainly to humans, many other animals, and fungi; whereas for example, bacteria, perennial plants and some simple animals are potentially biol ...

, cognitive epidemiology, and personality. Deary is professor of differential psychology at

The University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

. He is former director of the Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology and co-director of the Alzheimer Scotland Dementia Research Centre.

Research

Ian Deary has contributed to numerous topics in intelligence research. For instance, he has conducted several studies into the relationship between

and elementary cognitive tasks such as

reaction time Mental chronometry is the scientific study of processing speed or reaction time on cognitive tasks to infer the content, duration, and temporal sequencing of mental operations. Reaction time (RT; also referred to as "response time") is measured ...

and

inspection time Inspection time refers to the exposure duration required for a human subject to reliably identify a simple stimulus. Typically a stimulus made up of two parallel lines differing in length and joined at the tops by a cross bar is presented (similar ...

, and has investigated the overlap between intelligence and educational achievement. In 1983 he obtained a PhD at the University of Edinburgh with the thesis "Social work and the elderly: a problem of definition" written for the Stuart Macgregor Memorial Prize. Deary was a founder of the field of cognitive epidemiology, which studies the relationship of intelligence to health outcomes. He described and discussed cognitive epidemiology in a 2010 article for the journal

Psychological Science in the Public Interest ''Psychological Science in the Public Interest'' (''PSPI'') is a triannual peer-reviewed open access academic journal covering issues in psychology of interest to the public at large. It is published by SAGE Publications on behalf of the Associatio ...

. A 2010 review in

Nature Reviews Neuroscience ''Nature Reviews Neuroscience'' is a monthly peer-reviewed review journal published by Nature Portfolio. It was established in 2000. The editor-in-chief is Darran Yates. Abstracting and indexing The journal is abstracted and indexed in: *PubMed/ ...

, co-authored by Deary, described research on the neuroscience of intelligence differences. In 2012, the journal ''

Annual Review of Psychology The ''Annual Review of Psychology'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes review articles about psychology. First published in 1950, its longest-serving editors have been Mark Rosenzweig (1969–1994) and Susan Fiske (2000&ndas ...

'' published an overview of the field of intelligence research, authored by Deary.

Lothian Birth Cohort studies

Deary was one of the co-founders of the Lothian Birth Cohort studies of 1921 and 1936. These studies collect data from older Scottish individuals who, aged 11, had their intelligence tested as part of the Scottish Mental Surveys of 1932 and 1947. From the year 2000 onward, Deary and colleagues contacted surviving members of these surveys living in the

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

and

Lothians Lothian (; ; ) is a region of the Scottish Lowlands, lying between the southern shore of the Firth of Forth and the Lammermuir Hills and the Moorfoot Hills. The principal settlement is the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, while other signific ...

areas and invited them to retake the same intelligence test, along with further batteries of cognitive tests. Members of the cohorts born in 1921 were followed up at age of 79, and those born in 1936 at age 70. Interview and biomedical data were also collected from the cohort members to allow wide-ranging investigation of the causes and consequences of differences in cognition across the lifespan. Using data from the Lothian Birth Cohort studies, Deary and colleagues have investigated the effects of ageing on cognition. For instance, studies have shown that intelligence between age 11 and age 79 is highly

stable A stable is a building in which working animals are kept, especially horses or oxen. The building is usually divided into stalls, and may include storage for equipment and feed. Styles There are many different types of stables in use tod ...

(

correlation In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistics ...

of around r = .66), and that childhood and old age intelligence have a

genetic correlation In multivariate quantitative genetics, a genetic correlation (denoted r_g or r_a) is the proportion of variance that two traits share due to genetic causes, the correlation between the genetic influences on a trait and the genetic influences on a d ...

of .62. A number of papers from the Lothian Birth Cohort studies, co-authored by Deary, have reported that higher childhood intelligence scores negatively predict earlier mortality; that is, more intelligent people live longer. Data from the Lothian Birth Cohort studies continue to be used for studies of the relationship of intelligence to a wide variety of health, educational and

socioeconomic Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

outcomes. In addition, genetic and

brain imaging Neuroimaging is the use of quantitative (computational) techniques to study the structure and function of the central nervous system, developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive manner. Incre ...

data from members of the Cohorts allow investigation of the biological causes of differences in intelligence and cognitive ageing.

Awards and recognition

Ian Deary is a fellow of the

Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (RCPE) is a medical royal college in Scotland. It is one of three organisations that set the specialty training standards for physicians in the United Kingdom. It was established by royal charter i ...

, the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was establis ...

, the

British Academy The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the sa ...

, the

Academy of Medical Sciences The Academy of Medical Sciences is an organisation established in the UK in 1998. It is one of the four UK National Academy, National Academies, the others being the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society. Its ...

, the

Royal College of Psychiatrists The Royal College of Psychiatrists is the main professional organisation of psychiatrists in the United Kingdom, and is responsible for representing psychiatrists, for psychiatric research and for providing public information about mental healt ...

, and the

Association for Psychological Science The Association for Psychological Science (APS), previously the American Psychological Society, is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in r ...

. He is a past president of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences, and has held a Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award (2003–2007) for research into cognitive ageing. In 2003 he received the first of the Chancellor's Awards at the University of Edinburgh, and in 2010 was named as a Distinguished European Personality Psychologist by the European Association of Personality Psychology. In 2014, Deary received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the

International Society for Intelligence Research The International Society for Intelligence Research (ISIR) is a scientific society for researchers in human intelligence. It was founded by Douglas K. Detterman of Case Western Reserve University in 2000. The society advocates for ongoing suppo ...

, and received the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award from the

in 2015. In the

2019 New Year Honours The 2019 New Year Honours are appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms to various orders and honours to recognise and reward good works by citizens of those countries. The New Year Honours are awarded as part of the New Year celebrati ...

, Deary was awarded an

for services to the Social Sciences.

Books

* Deary, I. J. (2000). ''Looking'' ''Down on Human Intelligence: From Psychometrics to the Brain. ''Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. * Deary, I. J. (2001). ''Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction. ''Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. * Matthews, G., Deary, I. J., & Whiteman, M. C. (2009). ''Personality Traits'' (3rd Edition). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. * Deary, I. J., Whalley, L. J., & Starr, J. M. (2009). ''A Lifetime of Intelligence''. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

References

External links

Ian Deary's profile page at the University of Edinburgh

Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology

Lothian Birth Cohorts

Alzheimer Scotland Dementia Research Centre

Entry
on

ORCID The ORCID (; Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a nonproprietary alphanumeric code to uniquely identify authors and contributors of scholarly communication. This addresses the problem that a particular author's contributions to the scien ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Deary, Ian Differential psychologists Intelligence researchers Living people People educated at Hamilton Academy Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Academics of the University of Edinburgh Scottish scholars and academics Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom) Scottish psychologists Place of birth missing (living people) 1954 births Fellows of the British Academy Officers of the Order of the British Empire 20th-century British psychologists 21st-century British psychologists James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award recipients