Intelligence
A term referring to a variety of mental capabilities, including the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.
Throughout the 20th century scientists have debated the nature of intelligence, including its heritability and whether (and to what extent) it exists or is measurable. The 1994 publication of Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray's volume The Bell Curve brought these debates to the forefront of public attention by discussing links between social class, race, and IQ scores, despite the fact that many have questioned the validity of IQ tests as a measurement of intelligence or a predictor of achievement and success.
Although the assessment of mental abilities through standardized testing has had many detractors, especially over the past 30 years, the notion that intellect is a measurable entity—also called the psychometric approach—lies at the heart of much modern theorizing about the nature of intelligence. A rudimentary forerunner to 20th-century intelligence testing was developed in the 1860s by Charles Darwin's younger cousin, Sir Francis Galton, who, inspired by On the Origin of Species, set out to prove that intelligence was inherited, using quantitative studies of prominent individuals and their families. Galton's work was followed in 1905 by that of French psychologist Alfred Binet, who introduced the concept of mental age, which would match chronological age in children of average ability. It would exceed chronological age in bright children and would be below in those of lesser ability. Binet's test was introduced to the United States in a modified form in 1916, and with it the concept of the intelligence quotient (mental age divided by chronological age and multiplied by 100).
In the meantime, one of the central concepts of the psychometric approach to intelligence had been introduced in England in 1904 by Charles Spearman, who had noted that people who perform well on one type of intelligence test tend to do well on others also. Spearman gave a name to the general mental ability that carried over from one type of cognitive testing to another—g for general intelligence—and ultimately decided that it consisted mainly of the ability to infer relationships based on one's experiences. Although the concept of g has the disadvantage of being based solely on a particular statistical analysis rather than direct observation, it has remained an important part of psychometric research.
Psychometrics is still considered by many to be a valid scientific area of inquiry, but it has been challenged by researchers who approach intelligence in different ways. Instead of studying the structure of intelligence (i.e., what it is) some scientists have focused on the processes involved (how it works). A leader in this information-processing approach is Robert Sternberg, whose triarchic theory of intelligence not only addresses internal thought processes but also explores how an individual uses them to solve problems within his or her environment. The first part of Sternberg's theory, like psychometric theories, is concerned with the internal components of intelligence, although its emphasis is on process rather than structure. It analyzes the processes involved in interpreting sensory stimuli, storing and retrieving information in short- and long-term memory, solving problems, and acquiring new skills. The second part of the triarchic theory addresses the interaction between mental processes and experience, centering on the fact that, while a new experience requires complex mental responses, as it becomes increasingly familiar, the required response gradually becomes routine and automatic. In the third part of his theory, Sternberg analyzes the way that people use their intelligence to survive in the "real world" by either adapting to their environments, modifying them, or abandoning them in favor of new ones.
Another approach is Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, which replaces the general intelligence factor (g) with seven different types of intelligence: linguistic; logical-mathematical; spatial; interpersonal (ability to deal with other people); intrapersonal (insight into oneself); musical; and bodily-kinaesthetic (athletic ability). According to Gardner, each of these areas of competence includes a separate set of problem-solving skills that can be mobilized by various symbolic systems. Every person has all the different types of intelligence, although some may be developed far more fully than others. (The most dramatic example of this is found in savants, mentally retarded people with exceptional abilities in a few highly specialized areas, usually involving calculations.)
Gardner regards his theory as radical in its rejection of g and in its reliance on psychometric premises. He claims that g (a purported general intelligence factor enabling people to perform fairly consistently on different types of mental tests) is an artificial construct made possible by the fact that standard IQ tests assess only the first three of the seven types of intelligence, ignoring the others. He also argues that IQ tests can predict school performance only because formal education emphasizes those abilities measured by the tests, rather than truly assessing all aspects of human intelligence. In recent years, Gardner's theory has become popular among educators, and a number of schools have instituted programs based on his ideas.
Another focus for recent studies of intelligence has been the evolutionary development of the brain. Scientists with this research orientation are interested in the ways that human mental capacities developed over hundreds of thousands of years or more in response to changing problem-solving challenges in the environment. From this perspective, the g factor of the psychometricians could be viewed as a specialized ability that has evolved in response to our expanded exposure to tests of all kinds rather than an innate ability that enables us to deal with them. An evolutionary perspective on the phenomenon of similar performance in a variety of cognitive tests might also take into account the selective pairing of cognitively matched couples that has resulted from the modern freedom to marry for love, producing children whose abilities are more and more likely to be uniformly high or low across a series of different cognitive tasks.
For Further Study
Books
Eysenck, H. J. The IQ Argument: Race, Intelligence, and Education. Library Press, 1971.
Fraser, Steven. The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future of America. New York: Basic Books, 1995.
Gardner, Howard. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books, 1983.
Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam, 1995.
Herrnstein, Richard J., and Charles Murray. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Free Press, 1994.
Kline, Paul. Intelligence: The Psychometric View. London: Routledge, 1991.
Sternberg, R. J. Beyond IQ: A Triarchic Theory of Human Intelligence. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
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