Intelligence

What is Intelligence?

Without going into an academic debate, intelligence is basically our ability to act and react in a changing environment. It includes our ability to solve a math problem, anticipating a spin bowler's delivery in cricket or working out which jar the cookies are hidden in.
It is generally accepted that although potential intelligence is related to heredity, environment is a critical factor in determining the extent to which intelligence develops. Basically, this means that if Albert Einstein had been marooned on an island during his infancy and grown up there brought up by a civilized race without access to Western books, he would not have thought up the theory of relativity. (Of course genius is genius and he may well have developed the best way of climbing a coconut palm or harvesting wild rice).

Since the concept of intelligence is subjective and elusive, psychologists generally define it as that which is measured by their intelligence tests. While extremely limited (and sometimes dangerously subjective) there is unfortunately no other way of measuring intelligence.

Robert Sternberg (1985) proposed that the fundamental aspects of intelligence are analytical, creative and practical. He called this approach the triarchic theory of intelligence. His definition is "Intelligence is the cognitive ability of an individual to learn from experience, to reason well, to remember important information, and to cope with the demands of daily living."

Howard Gardner (1983) held that intelligence is actually made up of autonomous faculties that can work individually or in combination with other faculties. Known as the 'Theory of Multiple Intelligence' his definition is "Intelligence is the ability to solve problems, or to create products, that are varied within one or more cultural settings.". The notable aspect of this approach is recognising that culture is important. An islander's ability to know when to go fishing is as important as the city dweller's knack for crossing the road without getting smeared on the asphalt.

GANESHA - GOD OF INTELLIGENCE

An interesting sidelight on intelligence In Indian mythology, Ganesha is The Lord of Intelligence represented with an elephant head meaning intelligence is elephantine. He is considered to be the remover of obstacles... (which probably means that by doing things intelligently one can get over problems). Ganesha is associated with two goddesses which represents two aspects of intelligence. The first devi - Buddhi - represents reasoning capacity, which is an acquired ability. The second - Siddhi - denotes intuitive intelligence which, unlike reasoning, is a natural or divine grace. By this interpretation, it is Buddhi (acquired intelligence) that we measure in testing. Siddhi - the intelligence bestowed by divine grace and the cause for insight and creativity - is beyond the scope of any current test.

Theories on Intelligence

A Closer Look at Intelligence & it's measurement
Intelligence has always been a controversial issue for psychologists. Given the number of factors in intelligence raised by Sternberg and Gardner, it also raises the question of whether intelligence can be measured at all. For instance; further attributes of intelligence include the ability to: understand complex ideas (relativity, the balance of nature, why anything dating before 1990 - including you - is 'uncool'), learn from experience and adapt ('No dear, you may not use the phone now. I have a call coming in an hour.'), engage in logical reasoning ('You actually voted for that retard ?!') and overcome practical obstacles by thinking ('You touch the TV again, I'll knock you into the next county'). A sense of humour (the ability to see the absurd in any situation or laugh at one's own mistakes - not the ability to laugh at others or everything) is also considered by some to be an indication of intelligence. In modern psychology all these (except, alas, a sense of humour - since intelligence is a Serious subject) are considered systems of abilities or 'intelligences'. Each is a different ability that meshes with others while solving problems or engaging in creative work.

Seen in this context, standard IQ tests - though widely used - do not represent an evaluation of intelligence in totality. They evaluate selected abilities such as scholastic aptitude, school achievement, reasoning, logic and so on. Many other aspects are left out of the analysis. Since these tests primarily measure analytical ability, a common criticism of I.Q. tests is that they only show how good you are at I.Q. tests and do not reflect 'true' intelligence or even potential.

Triarchic theory - Sternberg

Robert Sternberg's (1985) triarchic theory proposes that the fundamental aspects of intelligence are:
Analytic - capacity for comparing, analyzing, complex thinking
Creative - inventing, designing
Practical - using, applying

During his study of practical intelligence, Sternberg developed measures of "tacit knowledge" - or the ability of individuals to deal with real-life practical situations. The results show that tacit knowledge is relatively independent of intelligence test scores and other common selection measures.

The specific abilities that are indicators of tacit knowledge or practical intelligence are listed below. (PS : Our examples are purely for helping you understand and remember the concepts. Intelligence is a serious business and some of these examples are not meant for serious discussion!.)

Practical Problem-Solving Abilities

• Reason logically and well ('Mom, if I don't have that chocolate now, I'm gonna starve and die')
• Identify connections among ideas (flint makes spark, spark makes fire, dry bush burn in lightning, lightning looks like spark? get the idea ?)
• See all aspects of a problem ('Mummy, I need to go and the bathroom's closed.')
• Keep an open mind and respond thoughtfully to others' ideas ('No, let's say seventy for me and thirty for you.")
• Size up situations well and make good decisions ('That dudes' got a gun. Run !')
• Get to the heart of a problem ('No. You can't get a raise because we're overpaying you now.')
• Interpret information accurately ('Yes Officer. I saw the board which said sixty.")
• Go to original sources for basic information ('She told me that you told her that I wore army shoes.')
• Pose problems clearly ('Listen Mac. Hand over your wallet or I bash yer face in.')
• Be a good source of ideas ('I think its' time for a coffee break.')
• Perceive implied assumptions and conclusions ('Are you telling me I'm dumb ?')
Verbal Ability

• Speak clearly, fluently and articulately
• Converse well and be knowledgeable about a particular subject
• Study hard
• Set aside time for reading and read almost anything with high degree of comprehension
• Write without difficulty
• Social Competence
• Accept others for what they are
• Admit mistakes
• Display interest in the world at large
• Is on time for appointments
• Have a social conscience
• Think before speaking and doing
• Make fair judgments
• Assess well the relevance of information to a problem at hand
• Be sensitive to other people's needs and desires
• Display interest in the immediate environment
• Please note that few of these faculties are tested in any IQ test.
• In terms of Sternberg's theory, this means you can flunk the MENSA test and still be able to show exceptional ability in various areas.
• Life tells us this is true.

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Multiple Intelligence - Howard Gardner

Linguistic Intelligence | Logical-mathematical Intelligence | Musical Intelligence | Spatial Intelligence | Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence | Interpersonal Intelligence | Intrapersonal Intelligence | Other The Multiple Intelligence theory of Howard Gardner (1983) states that a person's intelligence is made up of autonomous 'intelligences' (capabilities) that can work individually or in tandem with other intelligences. He originally identified seven such faculties and subsequently added more.

Linguistic Intelligence
A person's ability to construct and comprehend language may vary, but it is still universal. Abilities such as recognising the meaning of words, their order in a sentence, rules of grammar, sensitivity to sounds, rhythm, inflection, the capacity to convince, to excite, use rhetoric, remember information, understand explanations, instruction, verse, adages and so on are typical linguistic intelligence attributes.

Logical-mathematical Intelligence
This covers our ability to mentally process logical problems and equations, the type most often found on multiple choice standardized tests. This covers abilities such as assessing quantity, comparison, numeric operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, using these in daily life and the ability to calculation mentally. At a slightly higher (perhaps) and non-mathematical level, this intelligence calls for understanding causal relationships, their implications, the steps in a chain of reasoning, dealing with hypothetical questions and the ability to perceive actions and its relationships to other actions and implications.

Musical Intelligence
Rather strangely, despite the mathematical backdrop to rhythm and harmony, our ability to perform and comprehend music appears to work independently of all other forms of intelligence. Some typical musical abilities are the understanding of melodies, rhythms and tones, the capability to categorize rhythms and relationships, remembering tunes and lyrics and composing music. Of course, the last is not for everyone - bathroom melodies don't count.

Spatial Intelligence
Spatial intelligence is the ability to comprehend shapes and images in three dimensions - be it a puzzle, mould, sculpture or copying pictures. It also involves the capacity to create a mental image and modify it based on feedback from the real world (no offence, but is cubism a higher form of perception or did they lose out on this?). It helps us to mentally view objects from different angles, rotate and recreate them. Sensitivity to paintings and perceiving resemblance and dissimilarities are also typical spatial intelligence attributes.

Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence
All people possess control of their movements through balance, agility and grace. This calls for an inner sense of the dynamics of your body. Top athletes, dancers and performers have developed this natural ability to a degree where they have an (almost) unnatural control over how their body should act in a situation. This skill also includes the capacity to skillfully work with and manipulate objects. A pianist's capacity to produce independent patterns of movement in each hand is a manifestation of bodily-kinesthetic intelligence working in tandem with musical intelligence.

Interpersonal Intelligence
This is the ability to interact with others, understand them, and interpret their behavior. It is seen in the way we notice and make distinction among others; particularly, to their moods, temperament motivations and intentions. Interpersonal intelligence in many ways is critical. It allows us to touch others in the community by understanding them.

Intrapersonal Intelligence
Closely related to the faculty of interpersonal intelligence is that of intrapersonal intelligence - our ability to understand and have a sense of "self." It allows us to discriminate between our own feelings, understand them and draw conclusions which guide our behavior. Using it we can apply lessons learnt from the life or behaviour of other people. This faculty is essential as a feedback mechanism to understand our reactions to our surroundings. Other Intelligences added are

Naturalist intelligence
Our ability to identify and classify patterns in nature as well as our concern for the environment.

Existential/transpersonal intelligence
Our search for and connection with the unknowns (of which there are plenty).



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Other approaches

Piaget (1972) had little interest in individual differences and offered the theory of Developmental Progression. His effort was focussed on showing how new information was assimilated into our existing thinking patterns, establishing how intelligence develops and indexing the process, he used the developmental progression of children as the source of study.

Lev Vygotsky's (1978) point was that all types of intelligence have a social origin. His contention was that normal IQ test only measured intelligence that had already developed but not the potential of the individual - which he called the 'zone of proximal development'. This represents the level of performance a child may reach with help from a supportive adult. Feuerstein subsequently developed this as the concept of modifiability in 1980.

Modern biological approaches for evaluating intelligence considers measures of brain functioning such as cerebral glucose metabolism, nerve conduction velocity, cortical neuron activity or brain imaging results from PET and MRI scans. In the future, intelligence testing may have a biological brain activity measure and it could be rather different from what it is today!

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