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Intelligence

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Health and medicine

   Intelligence is a property of mind that encompasses many related mental
   abilities, such as the capacities to reason, plan, solve problems,
   think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn. In common
   parlance, the term smart, metaphorically used is frequently the synonym
   of situational and behavioural (i.e. observed and context dependent)
   intelligence.

   Although many regard the concept of intelligence as having a much
   broader scope, for example in cognitive science and computer science,
   in some schools of psychology, the study of intelligence generally
   regards this trait as distinct from creativity, personality, character,
   or wisdom.

Definitions of intelligence

   At least two major "consensus" definitions of intelligence have been
   proposed. First, from Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, a report of a
   task force convened by the American Psychological Association in 1995:

          Individuals differ from one another in their ability to
          understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the
          environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various
          forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought.
          Although these individual differences can be substantial, they
          are never entirely consistent: a given person’s intellectual
          performance will vary on different occasions, in different
          domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of
          "intelligence" are attempts to clarify and organize this complex
          set of phenomena.

   A second definition of intelligence comes from "Mainstream Science on
   Intelligence", which was signed by 52 intelligence researchers in 1994:

          a very general mental capability that, among other things,
          involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think
          abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn
          from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow
          academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a
          broader and deeper capability for comprehending our
          surroundings—"catching on", "making sense" of things, or
          "figuring out" what to do (reprinted in Intelligence
          Gottfredson, 1997, p. 13).

   Individual intelligence experts have offered a number of similar
   definitions.
     * Alfred Binet: "...judgment, otherwise called good sense, practical
       sense, initiative, the faculty of adapting one's self to
       circumstances... auto-critique ."
     * David Wechsler: "... the aggregate or global capacity of the
       individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal
       effectively with his environment."
     * Cyril Burt: "...innate general cognitive ability."
     * Howard Gardner: "To my mind, a human intellectual competence must
       entail a set of skills of problem solving—enabling the individual
       to resolve genuine problems or difficulties that he or she
       encounters and, when appropriate, to create an effective
       product—and must also entail the potential for finding or creating
       problems—and thereby laying the groundwork for the acquisition of
       new knowledge."
     * Herrnstein and Murray: "...cognitive ability."
     * Sternberg and Salter: "... goal-directed adaptive behaviour."
     * John Kotter on Leadership Intelligence: A "keen mind" i.e., strong
       analytical ability, good judgement, and the capacity to think
       strategically and multi-dimensionally.

Psychometric intelligence

   Despite the variety of concepts of intelligence, the most influential
   approach to understanding intelligence (i.e., with the most supporters
   and the most published research over the longest period of time) is
   based on psychometric testing, which regards intelligence as cognitive
   ability.

   Intelligence, narrowly defined, can be measured by intelligence tests,
   also called IQ (intelligence quotient) tests. Such intelligence tests
   take many forms, but the common tests ( Stanford-Binet, Raven's
   Progressive Matrices, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale,
   Wechsler-Bellevue I, and others) all measure the same dominant form of
   intelligence, g or " general intelligence factor". The abstraction of g
   stems from the observation that scores on all forms of cognitive tests
   correlate positively with one another. g can be derived as the
   principal factor from cognitive test scores using the method of factor
   analysis.

   In the psychometric view, the concept of intelligence is most closely
   identified with g, or Gf ( "fluid g"). However, psychometricians can
   measure a wide range of abilities, which are distinct yet correlated.
   One common view is that these abilities are hierarchically arranged
   with g at the vertex (or top, overlaying all other cognitive
   abilities). However, this is by no means universally accepted (see eg
   Carroll (1993) and Snow et al (1984) who put forward what might be
   described as an iterpenetrating position having more in common with
   that of Charles Spearman (eg 1924) who is credited with having
   developed the concept of g.

Intelligence, IQ, and g

   Intelligence, Intelligence quotient (IQ), and g are distinct.
   Intelligence is the term used in ordinary discourse to refer to
   cognitive ability. However, it is generally regarded as too imprecise
   to be useful for a scientific treatment of the subject. The
   intelligence quotient (IQ) is an index calculated from the scores on
   test items judged by experts to encompass the abilities covered by the
   term intelligence. IQ measures a multidimensional quantity: it is an
   amalgam of different kinds of abilities, the proportions of which may
   differ between IQ tests. The dimensionality of IQ scores can be studied
   by factor analysis, which reveals a single dominant factor underlying
   the scores on all IQ tests. This factor, which is a hypothetical
   construct, is called g. Variation in g corresponds closely to the
   intuitive notion of intelligence, and thus g is sometimes called
   general cognitive ability or general intelligence.

Criticisms of the psychometric approach

   Critics of the psychometric approach, such as Robert Sternberg (who
   formulated the The Triarchic Theory of Intelligence), point out that
   people in the general population have a somewhat different conception
   of intelligence than most experts. In turn, they argue that the
   psychometric approach measures only a part of what is commonly
   understood as intelligence. Other critics, such as Sir Arthur Stanley
   Eddington, argue that the equipment used in an experiment often
   determines the results and that proving that e.g. intelligence exists
   does not prove that current equipment measure it correctly. Sceptics
   often argue that so much scientific knowledge about the brain is still
   to be discovered that claiming the conventional IQ test methodology to
   be infallible is just a small step forward from claiming that
   Craniometry was the infallible method for measuring intelligence (which
   had scientific merits based on knowledge available in the nineteenth
   century).

One or several types of intelligence?

   The phrase "intelligence is task-specific" suggests that while 'general
   intelligence' can indeed be assessed, all that that would really amount
   to is a sum total of a given individual's competencies minus any
   perceived incompetencies.

   Most experts accept the concept of a single dominant factor of
   intelligence, general mental ability or g, while others argue that
   intelligence consists of a set of relatively independent abilities (
   American Psychological Association task force report, Gottfredson
   1998). The evidence for g comes from factor analysis of tests of
   cognitive abilities. The methods of factor analysis do not guarantee a
   single dominant factor will be discovered. Other psychological tests
   which do not measure cognitive ability, such as personality tests,
   generate multiple factors.

   Proponents of multiple-intelligence theories often claim that g is, at
   best, a measure of academic ability. Other types of intelligence, they
   claim, might be just as important outside of a school setting.

   Yale psychologist Robert J. Sternberg has proposed a Triarchic Theory
   of Intelligence. Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner's theory of
   multiple intelligences breaks intelligence down into at least eight
   different components: logical, linguistic, spatial, musical,
   kinesthetic, naturalist, intra-personal and inter-personal
   intelligences. Daniel Goleman and several other researchers have
   developed the concept of emotional intelligence and claim it is at
   least as important as more traditional sorts of intelligence. These
   theories grew from observations of human development and of brain
   injury victims who demonstrate an acute loss of a particular cognitive
   function -- e.g. the ability to think numerically, or the ability to
   understand written language -- without showing any loss in other
   cognitive areas.

   In response, g theorists have pointed out that g's predictive validity
   has been repeatedly demonstrated, for example in predicting important
   non-academic outcomes such as job performance (see IQ), while no
   multiple-intelligences theory has shown comparable validity. Meanwhile,
   they argue, the relevance, and even the existence, of multiple
   intelligences have not been borne out when actually tested (Hunt 2001).
   Furthermore, g theorists contend that proponents of multiple
   intelligences (e.g. Sternberg, Gardner) have not disproved the
   existence of a general factor of intelligence (Kline, 2000). The
   fundamental argument for a general factor is that test scores on a wide
   range of seemingly unrelated cognitive ability tests (such as sentence
   completion, arithmetic, and memorization) are positively correlated:
   people who score highly on one test tend to score highly on all of
   them, and g thus emerges in a factor analysis. This suggests that the
   tests are not unrelated, but that they all tap a common factor.

Controversies

   Researchers in the field of human intelligence have encountered a
   considerable amount of public concern and criticism - much more than
   many scientists would be accustomed to or comfortable with (for
   examples, see Gottfredson, 2005). Some of the controversial topics
   include:
     * The relevance of psychometric intelligence to the common-sense
       understanding of the topic.
     * The importance of intelligence in everyday life (see IQ).
     * The genetic and environmental contributions to individual variation
       in intelligence (see Nature versus nurture).
     * Differences in average measured intelligence between different
       groups and the source and meaning of these differences (see Race
       and intelligence and Sex and intelligence).
     * The implications of the dramatic increase in test scores over time
       (scores have been increasing at about 1 Standard Deviation per
       generation). See Flynn effect.

   Stephen Jay Gould was an important popular critic of intelligence
   theory. In his book The Mismeasure of Man, Gould made the following
   claims about intelligence:
     * Intelligence is not measurable.
     * Intelligence is not innate.
     * Intelligence is only partly heritable, and what is inherited is
       mutable.
     * Intelligence cannot be captured in a single number.

   However it is reported that he has largely ignored at least a decade of
   important recent research and draws from outdated information to
   validate his conclusions. Some of Gould's criticisms are aimed at
   Arthur Jensen. Jensen alleges Gould made several misrepresentations of
   his work.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence"
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