How do you define intelligence? How do you classify a person as intelligent? What attributes must a person have - in your eyes - to be designated intelligent? Several months ago I was tasked with scribing my own personal definition of intelligence; the idea of the activity was to compare the answers of everyone in the class and see how opinions varied. My answer was the following:
'Intelligence requires a person to have the capacity to learn and the willingness to do so."
In other words, I suggested that to be intelligent requires two key attributes:
1) The ability to learn
2) The willingness - the determination - to enhance their knowledge.
Whether my definition can be deemed correct, semi-correct, or simply wrong, isn't really the point. The point is, how people perceive intelligence - how it is defined - has been repeatedly reclassified for over 2000 years - since Plato's time!
Anita Woolfolk and Kay Margetts' book Educational Psychology (2007) suggests that most early theories of intelligence "involved one or more of the following three themes: (1) the capacity to learn; (2) the total knowledge a person has acquired; (3) the ability to adapt successfully to new situations and to the environment in general (p.127)." Yet in the past century, there has been considerable controversy over the meaning of intelligence. "Thirteen psychologists in 1921 and twenty-four psychologists in 1986 met to discuss intelligence. Both times, every psychologist had a different view about the nature of intelligence (Neisser et. al.m 1996; Sternberg & Detterman, 1986). Throughout the ages our perception of intelligence has changed, and theorists constantly offer varied definitions. For example, some theorists believe intelligence os a basic ability that affects performance on all cognitively oriented tasks - but Raymond Cattell (1963) and John Horn (1998) theorized that intelligence could be fluid or crystallized.
Fluid Intelligence: mental efficiency that is essentially culture-free and nonverbal; because this aspect of intelligence is grounded in brain development, it increases until adolescence then declines gradually with age. It's also sensitive to injuries.
Crystallized Intelligence: the ability to adapt culturally approved problem-solving methods, [which can] increase throughout the life span because it includes the learned skills and knowledge such as vocabulary, facts, and how to hail a taxi, etc.
Hunt (2000) and Sattler (2001) connected the two aspects of intelligence when they asserted that by investing fluid intelligence in solving problems, we develop crystallized intelligence, but many tasks in life such as mathematical reasoning draw in both fluid and crystallized intelligence.
The most widely accepted view of intelligence today is illustrated in the diagram below (from Woolfolk & Margetts). It's referred to as a three-level view of intelligence, or the three-stratum theory of cognitive abilities.
The most widely accepted view of intelligence today is illustrated in the diagram below (from Woolfolk & Margetts). It's referred to as a three-level view of intelligence, or the three-stratum theory of cognitive abilities.
This model is based on the theory of multiple intelligences, of which Gardner (1983) states there are eight:
1. Linguistic (verbal)
2. Musical
3. Spacial
4. Logical-mathematical
5. Body-kinaesthetic (movement)
6. Naturalist (observing and understanding natural and human-made patterns and systems
7. Interpersonal (understanding others)
8. Intrapersonal (understanding self)
He does, however, state that there may be more kinds of intelligence.
