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Types of Intelligence
The meaning of intelligence is a concept that varies across cultures and ideologies. According to psychologists “intelligence is the capacity to understand the world, think rationally, and use resources effectively when faced with challenges.” (Feldman, R. S. 2010). Due to the different types of human capabilities, there are different types of human intelligence. Some intelligence is expressed mentally as in existential, intrapersonal, and spatial intelligences.
Existential intelligence is the capacity and inclination to consider and question philosophically. People with this type of intelligence are very comfortable with concepts like the meaning of life, the purpose of death, and other realities. Intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to know one’s self well, seemingly without effort. People with this type of intelligence are considered to be well-grounded. It is not that these people do not have problems and difficulties; yet when difficulties arise they know where to obtain help. Spatial intelligence is the ability to successfully traverse open spaces, and terrains mentally without benefit of extraneous assistance. Expert chess players and artists have this type of intelligence in modern societies; although in non-industrial cultures those that possess this type of intelligence plot the course for their societies’ hunting and fishing activities.
There is a physical type of intelligence. When I think of physical intelligence the mental picture I have is of an Olympic figure skater, with their leg extended while spinning in a circle. The spinning is not what impresses me, I believe practice makes perfect; I am impressed when they stop spinning and don’t fall down from dizziness. This bodily capabil...
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...icture was a plate; the correct answer was a saucer. Without a reference of scale I was unable to answer correctly. Being African-American it may have been assumed that saucers were not a part of my environment, when the resource was not provided. According to psychologists “intelligence is the capacity to understand the world, think rationally, and use resources effectively when faced with challenges.” (Feldman, R. S. 2010). This must be used to create effective testing.
References
Feldman, R. S. (2010) Psychology and your life Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences theory (n.d.). Retrieved August 18, 2009 from
www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/education/ed_mi_overview.html.
Bommarito, N. (n.d.). Cultural bias in standardized intelligence testing.
Retrieved August 15, 2009 from http://www.nicbommarito.com/writing/nonfiction/anthroiq.pdf.
Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines intelligence as the capacity to apprehend facts and propositions, to reason about them, and the ability to understand them and their relations to each other. A. M. Turing had this definition in mind when he made his predictions and designed his test, commonly known as the Turing test. His test is, in principle, simple. A group of judges converse with different entities, some computers and some human, without knowledge of which is which. The job of the judges is to discern which entity is a computer. Judges may ask them any question they like, "Are you a computer?" excepted, and the participants may answer with anything they like, and in turn, ask questions of the judges. The concept of the test is not difficult, but creating an entity capable of passing the test with current technology is virtually impossible.
Howard Gardner used to define intelligence as “the ability to solve problems or to create products that are valued within one or more cultural settings” (Gardner 33). The modern day human being would most likely include the words “smart” and “dumb” in their definition of intelligence. Gardner questioned the belief of only one intelligence so he created his own theory that involved seven different discoveries. He didn’t want to call these discoveries “skills” or “talents” or gifts” because those all suggested a drawback so he decided on the word “intelligence,” creating his theory of multiple intelligences (Gardner 33). Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences including, linguistic, logical/mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, intrapersonal and interpersonal, has many implications for modern education and culture.
According to Howard Gardner (1991), every individual is born with a certain intelligence or potential intelligence. It is unfair to teach and/or assess an individual with a standard guideline or benchmark. This is mainly because every individual possess a different intellectual strength and different kinds of mind that learn, perform and understand in a different ways which is difficult to be changed. If an individual cannot understand the way we communicate, we should communicate in the way they can understand. Howard Gardner (1983), in his Multiple Intelligence Theory, proposes that human intelligence has seven dimensions that should be acknowledged and developed by the encouragement of learning and self-development and
Intelligence tests have been developed by scientists as a tool to categorize army recruits or analyze school children. But still discussing what intelligence is, academics have a difficult time defining what intelligence tests should measure. According to the American researcher Thorndike, intelligence is only that what intelligence tests claim it is (Comer, Gould, & Furnham, 2013). Thus, depending on what is being researched in the test and depending on the scientist’s definition of intelligence the meaning of the word intelligence may vary a lot. This essay will discuss what intelligence is in order to be able to understand the intelligence theories and aims of intelligence tests.
For the concept of intelligence, Robert Sternberg’s “Triarchic Theory of Successful Intelligence” and Gardner’s “Theory of Multiple Intelligences” were focused on for this particular self-assessment. Sternberg’s theory of intelligence divides total intelligence into analytic, creative and practical components (Woolfolk 117). According to Sternberg, analytical intelligence involves “the mental processes of the individual that lead to more or less intelligent behavior”, creative intelligence involves “coping with new experiences”, and practical intelligence involves emphasizing “the importance of choosing an environment in which you can succeed, adapting to that environment, and reshaping it if necessary” (Woolfolk 118).
Throughout history, psychologists have made hundreds of attempts to define intelligence and measure it precisely. However, none of these attempts have been accepted by all because Intelligence is so broad. Intelligence has been defined by many things, by Weschler, who made the most used psychological test today, as “the global capacity of a person to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment.” However, while he may have created the most successful test, his definition is not the only definition of intelligence, for psychologists such as Gardner, believed that there was more than just knowledge to intelligence, and Sternberg, who defined intelligence as “mental activity directed toward purposive adaptation to, selection and shaping of, real-world environments relevant to one’s life.” Intelligences has been measured in a variety of ways throughout psychologists, however because intelligence is such a broad concept, there is no single definition and method of testing it.
According to Merriam Webster Intelligence is "the ability to learn or understand things or to deal with new or difficult situations." Howard Gardener discovered the theory multiple intelligence they are musical, kinetic, linguistic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, spatial, logical, and existential intelligence. Unlike the normal school setting, Gardner’s theory helps with student’s learning abilities by focusing on their strengths. Gardner believes that understanding these multiple intelligent theories will help students strengthen their knowledge.
Most researchers believe that we are born with a certain intelligence or potential intelligence. They also believe that the intelligence we are born with is difficult to change. Psychologists use short-answer tests to assess one’s intelligence (Gardner papers). It was believed that intelligence was a single inherited thing. Human beings start out initially as a blank slate and could be trained to learn anything, provided that it was presented in an appropriate way (Multiple Intelligences and Education). Currently an “increasing number of researchers believe the opposite. Gardner defined intelligence as: “the ability to create an effective product or offer a service that is valued in culture; a set ...
One of the most definitive things ever said regarding the nature of intelligence was that intelligence is whatever IQ tests measure. The IQ test has been in use throughout the 20th century and serves as an accepted measure of a person’s intelligence. It is used by institutions such as schools and the army to screen people’s level of intelligence and decisions are made based on that. The IQ test consists of a series of questions regarding certain skills such as vocabulary, mathematics, spatial relations. The scores that a person gets on these tests depend on the amount of questions that a person answers correctly. The actual score that a person gets is dependant on how others in that age group do on those particular questions.
Dictionaries add still more definitions: Funk & Wagnall’s defines intelligence as “The faculty of perceiving and comprehending meaning; mental quickness; active intellect; understanding” , while Webster’s defines it as “the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations; the skilled use of reason.” While some of these definitions are similar, none of them are exactly the same.
Intelligence by definition is “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills” (Oxford Dictionary, 2014). However, many psychologists argue that there is no standard definition of ‘intelligence’, and there have been many different theories over time as psychologists try to find better ways to define this concept (Boundless 2013). While some believe in a single, general intelligence, others believe that intelligence involves multiple abilities and skills. Another largely debated concept is whether intelligence is genetically determined and fixed, or whether is it open to change, through learning and environmental influence. This is commonly known as the nature vs. nurture debate.
Lohman, D. F. (1998). Fluid intelligence, inductive reasoning, and working memory: Where the theory of Multiple Intelligences falls short. Talent development IV: Proceedings from the
Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligence focuses more on how numerical expressions of human intelligence are not a full and accurate depiction of people’s abilities (McFarlane, 2011). He includes and describes eight intelligences that are based on skills and abilities that are valued within different cultures. The eight intelligences include visual-spatial (e.g. sailor navigating with no navigational systems), verbal-linguistic (e.g. poets, writers, orators, and communicators), bodily-kinesthetic (e.g. dancers, athletes, surgeons, craftspeople), logical-mathematical (e.g. mathematicians and logicians), interpersonal(e.g. salespeople, teachers, clinicians, politicians, and religious leaders), musical (e.g. musicians and
It is often difficult to remember that intelligence is purely a social construct, and as such is limited to operational definitions. Binet & Simon (1905, as cited in Mackintosh) defined it purely in terms of mental ability: "the ability to judge well, to comprehend well, to reason well." Wechsler (1944, as cited in Mackintosh) added behavioral factors: "the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with the environment." Sternberg (1985) synthesizes the previous definitions, defining intelligence as "the mental capacity of emitting contextually appropriate behavior at those regions in the experiential continuum that involve response to novelty or automatization of information processing as a function of metacomponents, performance components, and knowledge acquisition components." Gardner (1993) took the definition to a societal level, as "the ability or skill to solve problems or to fashion products which...
In 1983, Howard Gardner a Harvard professor proposed the theory that individual can have multiple ways of learning and processing information. The multiple intelligences consist of 9 different ways and these include: verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, existential, musical, naturalistic, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. Every individual has a different amount of each intelligence but each intelligence is at a varying level. With the help of a multiple intelligences assessment, I found that my top three multiple intelligences are Intrapersonal, logical, and interpersonal. Within his research Gardner says that “Intrapersonal intelligence refers to people’s ability to recognize and assess those same characteristics