Intelligence

Saad Almoshawah Ph.D

few topics in psychology engender as much popular attention and conjecture as intelligence and intelligence testing.

Academics have lost their jobs and their reputations for holding unpopular views on the topic, and related issues are seldom out of the media.

In reality, of course, what we consider to be intelligence is always associated with doing something

What do we mean by intelligence? In everyday life, we can mean a number of things: I might think of a speech given bya public figure as an intelligent speech, and mean something quite different from respecting the intelligence someone used while dealing with an emergency.

Alternatively, you might know someone who is unbelievably good at, say, maths, but not very good at keeping their personal relationships going, while someoneelse seems to be extremely socially capable, and can always give good advice if you need it. Which of them is the moreintelligent?

Political issues in intelligence theory

Intelligence is probably the single most controversial topicin psychology.

People hold widely different opinions on what it is, how it develops and how relevant it is for living; and these differences have sometimes developed into highlyacrimonious debates.

One of the main reasons for this is that intelligence is not just an academic issue. There are deeply political implications in the question of whether intelligence depends on learning and experience, or whether it is fixed because it is inherited; and it is these underlying political implications which have kept thedebate as active and as intense as it is today. The politicalimplications of intelligence theory centre on three issues:

social stratification, education, and eugenics.

Social stratification

The idea of intelligence as a 'thing' which some people hadmore or less of, only really emerged towards the end of thenineteenth century.

Prior to that, while it was recognised that some people were more intellectual than others, or that some were gifted at invention or oratory, intelligence was seen more as a quality which imbued people's actions, not as an independent entity.

It was an adjective or adverb, rather than a noun: you could act intelligently or perform an intelligent act; but there was little idea of 'intelligence' as something that you had. The process of converting a quality into a 'thing' as if it has an independent existence is knownas reification, and the reification of the concept of intelligence occurred in tandem with the changes in the social order.

Educational policy

The educational question is closely linked with the issue ofsocial stratification, although it is not the same.

The schooling and educational practices available within asociety have dramatic effects on people's lives. In atechnological society, in which social advancement is basedon education, debates and assertions about who is or who isnot intelligent are crucially important in determining thetype of education which is offered to people within thatsociety. These debates and assertions therefore also haveimplications for social programmes and social spending.Theories of intelligence have been directly influential in thedevelopment of school systems and of educational practices

Eugenics

Eugenics was both a theory and a political movement initiated by Francis Galton (1884). In his book Hereditary Genius, Galton argued from studies of the families of eminent Victorians that since intelligence clearly ran in families

He went on to observe with alarm that the 'lower classes' in society were breeding prolifically, and argued that this would result in a lowering of the overall intelligence of the nation, or of the race.

The eugenics movement was - and to some extent still is, although less overtly - influential in shaping immigration policies in both Britain and America, and has re-emerged in the concept of'ethnic cleansing' in recent years.

Definitions of intelligence

One of the first definitions of intelligence was developed by the psychologists responsible for the development of the first intelligence test, Binet and Simon (1905). They argued that the essence of intelligence is: 'to judge well, to comprehend well, to reason well'. This is a very general view of intelligence, and one which does not try to be specific about actually defining what intelligence is, for reasons which will become apparent.

Another general definition was provided by Heim, in 1970, who argued that 'intelligent activity consists in grasping the essentials in a situation and responding appropriately to them.

Terman (1916) described intelligence as 'the ability to carry on abstract thinking, whereas Burt, as we have seen, regarded it as a fixed, inherited cognitive ability (Burt, 1955).

There have been many other semi- popular books written about intelligence (e.g. Gardner, 1999; Stemberg, 1997). The fact that academics write popular books about intelligence and that lay people have long been interested in the topic suggests that people in general may be relatively well informed about it.

Books on how to assess ones own IQ have been very popular (e.g. Eysenck, 1981); there are also books aimed at parents that attempt to assess their children's IQ (Eysenck & Evans, 1996);

Stemberg (1990) identified seven academic metaphors of intelligence

Geographic: seeks to map the mind and understand the structure of intelligence.

Computational: seeks to understand information-processing programmes and processes underlyingintelligence.

Biological: asks how the anatomy, physiology and chemistry of the brain and CNS accounts for intelligent thought through hemispheric localisation and neural transmission.

Epistemological: asks what are the structures of the mind through which all knowledge and mental processes are organised.

Anthropological: asks what form intelligence takes as a cultural invention, may be comparative and relativistic. For example, why does one culture believe certain behaviours are part of intelligence whileanother does not?

Sociological: examines how social pressures (mediated learning experiences) in development are internalised. Metaphors focus on different types of intelligence (i.e. multiple intelligences) and how they relate to one another.

Systems: is concerned with how we understand the mind as a system, which cross-cuts metaphors.

These various interesting but piecemeal studies do give some indication of lay theories of intelligence, but there is still a lot we do not know. We know that such theories get more sophisticated with age, and we know they may be relatively culture- and group-specific

We know that compared to most academic theories lay theories tend to be 'over inclusive'. But we do not know if people today are better informed about academic thinking than

they used to be, though it would be surprising if they are not.

We do not know how lay theories relate to attitudes towards, and personal experience of, a wide range of ability and intelligence tests.

It may be that results on IQ tests are the best predictors of people's attitudes to them.

SEVEN TYPES OF INTELLIGENCE

Verbal or linguistic intelligence: the ability to use words. Logical or mathematical intelligence: the ability to reason

logically, solve number problems. Spatial intelligence: the ability to find your way around the

environment, and form mental images. Musical intelligence: the ability to perceive and create pitch and

rhythm. Body-kinetic intelligence: the ability to carry our motor

movement, e.g. being a surgeon or a dancer. Interpersonal intelligence: the ability to understand other people. Intrapersonal intelligence: the ability to understand yourself and

develop a sense of your own identity

Multiple intelligences

Over the last decade there have been many attempts to redefine intelligence and split it into different facets. Thus we talk of emotional intelligence as well as practical intelligence; but perhaps the idea that has appealed most to lay people (but certainly not academics) is the theory of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1999).

Research has shown that males still rate their emotional quotient as higher than females (Petrides & Furnham, 2000) as well as on other forms of practical or successful intelligence (Furnham, in press-a).

However, most studies in this area have examined sex

differences on Gardner's seven multiple intelligences

Gardner (1999) initially argued that there were seven types of intelligence .

He suggested the first two were those valued at school, the next three valuable in the arts, and the last two a sort of early emotional intelligence concept.Various studies have looked at sex differences in estimates of the seven multiple intelligences.

Guilford's multi factorial theory of intelligence

Guilford (1967) argued that intelligence consisted of 120 different and independent skills, which he later expanded to 150 (Guilford, 1982). Each mental task, according to Guilford's model, consists of three kinds of components: a mental operation, a content, and a product

A mental operation is concerned with how the mind goes about the task: the style or approach which it adopts.

A content concerns the type of mental representation which isinvolved.

a product is concerned with the type of outcome which can result from the mental task. It is the different combinations of each of these which produces the 150 different cognitive skills involved in intelligence

Guilford theory

Guilford Guilford argued that there are five different types ofmental operations, which he identified as being:

(1)cognition; (2) memory; (3) divergent production; (4)convergent production; (5) evaluation. Contents

Guilford theory

Guilford's model, are also of five types: (1) visual; (2)

auditory; (3) symbolic; (4) semantic; (5) behavioural

Guilford theory

And there are six kinds of products: (1) units; (2) classes; (3) relations; (4) systems; (5) transformations; (6)implications.

Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences

A modern multiple-component theory of intelligence wasproposed by Gardner (1985), who took a rather moreextreme view.

Instead of identifying independent skills working together to produce a general intelligence, Gardner proposed that we

actually have different intelligences .

Gardner uses four main types of evidence on which tobase this argument.

One of these is developmental evidence, which outlines how the various aptitudes or skills develop as the individual ages.

A second source is evidence from brain damage which affects specific functioning but not other functions.

There is also evidence from extreme cases, such as idiots savants or those whom society perceives as 'geniuses';

and Gardner also included evolutionary evidence and accounts which indicate how a specific ability or aptitude might have evolved

Experiential intelligence

The second sub-theory of the triarchic model is that of experiential intelligence, which is all about how someone's own past experience influences how they go about a given task or situation. In other words, it addresses the way that we accumulate skills and knowledge as a result of our personal life-experiences.

The way this life-experience manifests itself in intelligence, according to Sternberg, can be summarised in terms of the development of twofundamental skills.

The first of these is the ability to deal with situational demands,

and the second is the ability to automatist information-processing.

Intelligence quotient (IQ) calculated by:

IQ = (mental age/ chronological age x100)