The Intelligence Is Changing

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The Intelligence Is Changing

Personal Comment

Are There Only Two or Three or Eight Types of Intelligences?

I do not think so...

Because like “Fyodor Dostoevsky” said: Do not let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex than our subsequent explanations of them.

For me affirm that we have only eight types of intelligence sound like said: “the left hemisphere of our brain only works with unconscious, and the right hemisphere only works with conscious”.




In my opinion: There are so many intelligences how persons exist in our planet. Furthermore the performance of our intelligence change during the day (morning, afternoon, evening), even more though months and years, according our personal situation and life experience.




We must remember the evidence that our performance and behavior in educational task can be severe affected by the way we feel when are seen and judged by others (*).

However these theories are really useful to improve our academic performance or to improve our speeding of learning. Why?
Because...

If the parents and teachers give their children one environment with tolerance and real interest, the students will give them their best performance. So read, increase your knowledge of these theories of intelligence, think about them; and the most important practice with sincerely and love is better for everyone.






(*) UNEQUAL LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES


In 2004, World Bank economists Karla Hoff and Priyanka Pandey reported the result of a remarkable experiment. They took 321 high-caste and 321 low-caste 11 to 12 year-old boys from scattered rural villages in India, and set them the task of solving mazes.

First, the boys did the puzzles without being aware of each other’s caste. Under this condition the low-caste boys did just as well with the mazes as the high-caste boys, indeed slightly better.


Then, the experiment was repeated, but this time each boy was asked to confirm an announcement of his name village, father’s and grandfather’s names, and caste. After this public announcement of caste, the boys did more mazes, and this time - The performance of the low-caste boys dropped significantly.

This is striking evidence that performance and behavior in an educational task can be profoundly affected by the way we feel and we are seen and judged by others. When we expect to be viewed as inferior, our abilities seen to be diminished.

“The Spirit Level”, Why Equality is Better for Everyone, By Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket, 2009, page 113

Is There The "Emotional Intelligence"?

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Are There Different Kinds of Intelligence? (3)
Is There The "Emotional Intelligence"?

A third theory that challenges the "IQ" conception of intelligence is that of "Emotional Intelligence" or "EQ", first popularised by psychologist and science journalist Daniel Goleman's 1995 bestseller "Emotional Intelligence: Why It can Matter More than IQ". Goleman argues that a person's emotions play a significant role in thought, making decisions and future success. He defines this form of intelligence as a set of skills that include impulse control, self-motivations, empathy and the ability to relate well to others.



Self-awareness, Goleman argues is the key to being truly emotionally intelligent, because it allow the person to exercise self-control. With sufficient self-awareness, it is possible to develop various coping mechanisms that allow a person to move from a negative emotional state to a more positive one: counting to ten as means of letting the sensation of sudden anger subside, for example.




As with Garner's theory of multiple intelligences, Goleman's EQ concept has been adopted by various schools in the United States, which use it to develop "emotional literacy" programmes, aimed at helping students learn to manage their anger, frustrations and loneliness. Children who are angry or depressed are capable of learning well, and those with long-running emotional difficulties are liable to drop out altogether. Improving the students' self-esteem and self-motivations helps them to perform better in exams.



Like IQ, each of these alternative conceptions of intelligence has been criticised. Critics of the "multiple intelligences" theory, for example, point to lack of empirical evidence supporting it.



Critics of EQ concept argue that it measures conformity rather that ability: who after all is to say when a person's anger or sadness (or other emotion) is or is not appropriate to a particular situations? EQ's sceptics also point out that scientific studies have failed to find a convincing link between high self-esteem an better academic performance.



While mindful of such criticisms, I believe there is considerable value in considering human intelligence in ways that allow us to appreciate the enormous diversity in how people think and behave.

"EMBRACING THE WIDE SKY", A Tour Across The Horizons of The Human Mind, Daniel Tammet, 2009, pages 51 - 52

Are There "Multiple Intelligences"?

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Are There Different Kinds of Intelligence? (2)
Are There "Multiple Intelligences"?

Like Sternberg, Howard Gardner, a professor of education at Harvard University, believes that there is more than one kind of intelligence - eight, to precise - with every person having a unique blend of each. His theory of "Multiple Intelligences" was made famous by his book "Frames of Mind" first published in 1983. Using a range of criteria, including development history, evolutionary plausibility and support from experimental psychology tasks, Gardner identified these eight different intelligences:



Linguistic Intelligence: Involving both spoken and written language, the ability to learn languages and the capacity to use language to achieve certain goals. Examples: writers, poets, lawyers and speakers.




Logical-Mathematical Intelligence: The capacity to analyse problems, perform mathematical operations and investigate issues scientifically. Examples: scientists, engineers and mathematicians.



Musical Intelligence: Skill in the performance, composition and appreciation of musical patterns. Musicians of all kinds are obvious examples of this intelligence.



Body–Kinaesthetic Intelligence: Using parts of the whole of one’s body to solve problems. Examples: athletes, actors and dancers.



Spatial Intelligence: Includes having a very good sense of direction, as well as the ability to visualize and mentally manipulate objects. Examples: artists, architects and engineers.



Interpersonal Intelligence: The capacity to understand the feelings, intentions and motivations of the other people. Examples: sales-people, politicians and therapists.



Intrapersonal Intelligence: The ability to understand oneself, one's feelings, goals and motivation: Examples: philosophers, psychologists, and theologians.



Naturalistic Intelligence: The ability to draw upon certain features of the environment, to grow and nurture new things and to have a facility for interacting with animals: examples: farmer, gardeners and conservationists.

Many educators in the United States who have adopted Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences to use in their schools report improved exams results, parental participations and classroom discipline.

A Harvard-led study of forty-one schools supported using the theory, and reported that in these schools there was "a culture of hard work, respect and caring; a faculty that collaborated and learned from each other; classrooms that engaged students through constrained but meaningful choices, and a sharp focus on enabling students to produce high-quality work".

"EMBRACING THE WIDE SKY", A Tour Across The Horizons of The Human Mind, Daniel Tammet, 2009, page 50

The Intelligence Consists Of Three Main Aspects?

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Are There Different Kinds of Intelligence? (1)
The Intelligence Consists Of Three Main Aspects?

Clearly, something more than a single test score is needed to guide our evaluation of person's intelligence. I believe it makes more sense to consider intelligence as a complex phenomenon that is best described as a synthesis of various skills and abilities.

In this way a person can be considered intelligent in some respects and less so in others. For example how would you evaluate the intelligence of the following individuals?

• A Nobel Prize winner who regularly forgets where he puts his car keys.
• A thrice-divorced chess champion.
• A company chief executive with history of stress-related heart problems.
• A doctor who smokes and drink heavily.
• A brilliant musical composer plagued by creditors.

In view of such contradictions, various theorists have sought to broaden the traditional understanding of intelligence.

"The Three Main Aspects of Intelligence"

In the 1980s Yale psychologist Robert Sternberg proposed the "triarchic" (three-part) theory of intelligence, which states that intelligence consists of three main aspects:

• “Analytic Intelligence”: The ability to analyse, evaluate and compare.
• “Creative Intelligence ”: Skill in using past experience to achieve insight and deal with situations.
• “Practical Intelligence ”: The ability to adapt to, select and shape the real-world environment,

Successfully intelligent people, according to Sternberg, are those who are aware of their particular strengths and weaknesses and develop further their abilities in order to achieve success in the future.

"EMBRACING THE WIDE SKY", A Tour across the Horizons of The Human Mind, Daniel Tammet, 2009, page 49

The Intelligence

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The Intelligence

The concept of intelligence has always been a subject of controversy. Can a single concept account for all of the intellectual faculties of an individual? Can these faculties be separated and measured? And in particular, what do they show and predict about the cerebral functioning of an individual and about social behaviour?

The notion of intelligence evokes “skills”, whether they are verbal skills, spatial skills, problem-solving skills or the very elaborate skill of dealing with complexity.

However, all of these aspects neglect the concept of “potential”. Yet, neurobiological research on learning and cognitive functions clearly shows that these processes undergo constant evolution and are dependent on a number of factors, particularly environmental and emotional ones.

This means that a stimulating environment should offer each individual the possibility to cultivate and develop his/her skills.

From this point of view, the many attempts to quantify intelligence using tests (such as IQ measurements or others) are too static and refer to standardised and culturally (sometimes even ideologically) biased faculties.

Based on a priori assumptions, intelligent tests are restrictive and therefore problematic. Based on this “intelligence calculation” or the debatable assignation of individuals to different levels of intelligence, what should be concluded for the practices or even the choices related to career orientation?

"Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science", 2007, page 27