NON-UNITARY THEORIES OF INTELLIGENCE
Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences Ever since Thurstone (1938), there has been a long series of challengers to Spearman’s unitary conception of intelligence. Probably the most influential is Gardner (1983), an educationalist who believes that the classical view of intelligence reflects a Western bias towards logical reasoning, which in turn is reflected in our educational system. Whether we are considering intelligence in terms of processing capacity, or considering Thurstone’s primary mental abilities, or reviewing the tasks that are routinely included in intelligence tests, Gardner believes that we typically only focus on a narrow range of logico-mathematical abilities. His theory of multiple intelligences (multiple intelligences Gardner’s theory that there are many autonomous intelligences including linguistic, musical, logical–mathematical, spatial, bodily–kinaesthetic, personal, naturalist and spiritualist) accounts for the diverse range of important adult capacities by considering a diverse r nge of abilities, each of which he values as highly as traditional conceptions of ‘intelligence’. Gardner lists these autonomous intelligences as linguistic, musical, logical–mathematical, spatial, bodily–kinaesthetic, personal, naturalist and spiritualist (Gardner, Kornhaber & Wake, 1996). Each is manifested, suggests Gardner, in culturally relevant ‘intelligent’ behaviours, with normal adults having differing profiles of relative strengths and weaknesses across these intelligences. Gardner’s abilities were identified from a diverse body of evidence, including:
the selective damage of individual abilities through brain damage;
the existence of otherwise very low-IQ individuals who display extremely well-developed ability in one intelligence (savants);
examples of excellence in one domain but ordinariness in another (e.g. Mozart was a musical genius but struggled in many other aspects of life); and
the constraint that the ability should be culturally valued and have a plausible evolutionary and developmental history.
Gardner’s multiple intelligence model made a significant impact in the field of education, with schools developing broader and more responsive approaches to assessment, and a more diverse curriculum to help develop individual intelligences in each student. But not only is Gardner alone in claiming that there is no general factor of intelligence, he also provided no theoretical specification of what any of his proposed intelligences constitute, or how they work at any specific level of description – social, cognitive or biological (see Anderson, 1992). This makes gathering evidence for the theory of multiple intelligences problematic. Although it is a challenging and somewhat appealing idea, there is no evidence for true autonomy of intelligences either – rather the reverse. As we have seen, as per the earlier theorizing of Charles Spearman, diverse abilities are generally correlated. That said, the idea that there is more to intelligence than g alone is now generally accepted. The challenge for the future is to develop a theory that makes g compatible with the observed degree of specificity in intellectual functioning that has been outlined as evidence by Gardner. Finally, Gardner’s desire to emphasize the value of a diverse range of human talents is laudable, but attempting to achieve this by re-naming them ‘intelligences’ can lead to confusion and errors in application. For example, we may encourage unrealistic expectations of people if we adopt the position that there is a genius in us all and we just need to find our hidden gift – paradoxically we may put children under pressure to ‘find their intelligence’. While it is a truism to say that we all have our strengths and weaknesses, few of us will truly excel, even with concentrated application in one domain.
A hierarchical structure for intelligence Sternberg (1984, 1985) also proposed a non-unitary theory – the triarchic theory of intelligence. Like Gardner, he proposes several types of intelligence: analytical intelligence (which approximates the traditional notion of g); creative intelligence (which involves insight, synthesis and the ability to respond to novel situations); and practical intelligence (which involves the ability to solve real-life problems). But in his theory Sternberg attempts to go beyond this to explain how these intelligences work. He suggests that each kind of intelligence involves a control hierarchy of cognitive components that contribute to our ‘mental self-management’ – these include a) performance components, b) knowledge acquisition components and c) metacomponents. At the bottom of the hierarchy are the elemental performance components. These are the information-processing mechanisms involved in the execution of any task and invoked by a particular sequence of operations, such as e coding, inference and response selection. Sternberg came to the conclusion that although performance components contribute to individual differences in intelligence, overall the contribution is weak, with correlations rarely exceeding 0.3. Knowledge acquisition components are those processes involved in the gaining and storing of information – processes such as memory – and in turn, these components will evolve performance components in the service of their own functions. At the top of Sternberg’s processing hierarchy are metacomponents. These are executive processes responsible for planning task solutions and monitoring feedback from performance and knowledge acquisition components. Sternberg claimed that the major individual differences related to intelligence are found in these metacomponent processes. In other words, intelligence is the province of the processes principally involved in problemsolving strategies (high-level components) rather than the information processing (low-level components) that impl ements the problem-solving routines. So, for example, one of Sternberg’s metacomponents is responsible for recognizing the nature of the problem set by a cognitive task. Although Sternberg has written extensively on his theory, it reads more like a re-statement of how intelligence is manifested rather than an explanation of it. Furthermore, recent reviews of the theoretical and empirical support for the theory do not support the notion that creative or practical intelligences are as important as analytical intelligence (i.e. an approximation of g) in predicting life success (Brody, 2003a; Gottfredson, 2003).
Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences Ever since Thurstone (1938), there has been a long series of challengers to Spearman’s unitary conception of intelligence. Probably the most influential is Gardner (1983), an educationalist who believes that the classical view of intelligence reflects a Western bias towards logical reasoning, which in turn is reflected in our educational system. Whether we are considering intelligence in terms of processing capacity, or considering Thurstone’s primary mental abilities, or reviewing the tasks that are routinely included in intelligence tests, Gardner believes that we typically only focus on a narrow range of logico-mathematical abilities. His theory of multiple intelligences (multiple intelligences Gardner’s theory that there are many autonomous intelligences including linguistic, musical, logical–mathematical, spatial, bodily–kinaesthetic, personal, naturalist and spiritualist) accounts for the diverse range of important adult capacities by considering a diverse r nge of abilities, each of which he values as highly as traditional conceptions of ‘intelligence’. Gardner lists these autonomous intelligences as linguistic, musical, logical–mathematical, spatial, bodily–kinaesthetic, personal, naturalist and spiritualist (Gardner, Kornhaber & Wake, 1996). Each is manifested, suggests Gardner, in culturally relevant ‘intelligent’ behaviours, with normal adults having differing profiles of relative strengths and weaknesses across these intelligences. Gardner’s abilities were identified from a diverse body of evidence, including:
the selective damage of individual abilities through brain damage;
the existence of otherwise very low-IQ individuals who display extremely well-developed ability in one intelligence (savants);
examples of excellence in one domain but ordinariness in another (e.g. Mozart was a musical genius but struggled in many other aspects of life); and
the constraint that the ability should be culturally valued and have a plausible evolutionary and developmental history.
Gardner’s multiple intelligence model made a significant impact in the field of education, with schools developing broader and more responsive approaches to assessment, and a more diverse curriculum to help develop individual intelligences in each student. But not only is Gardner alone in claiming that there is no general factor of intelligence, he also provided no theoretical specification of what any of his proposed intelligences constitute, or how they work at any specific level of description – social, cognitive or biological (see Anderson, 1992). This makes gathering evidence for the theory of multiple intelligences problematic. Although it is a challenging and somewhat appealing idea, there is no evidence for true autonomy of intelligences either – rather the reverse. As we have seen, as per the earlier theorizing of Charles Spearman, diverse abilities are generally correlated. That said, the idea that there is more to intelligence than g alone is now generally accepted. The challenge for the future is to develop a theory that makes g compatible with the observed degree of specificity in intellectual functioning that has been outlined as evidence by Gardner. Finally, Gardner’s desire to emphasize the value of a diverse range of human talents is laudable, but attempting to achieve this by re-naming them ‘intelligences’ can lead to confusion and errors in application. For example, we may encourage unrealistic expectations of people if we adopt the position that there is a genius in us all and we just need to find our hidden gift – paradoxically we may put children under pressure to ‘find their intelligence’. While it is a truism to say that we all have our strengths and weaknesses, few of us will truly excel, even with concentrated application in one domain.
A hierarchical structure for intelligence Sternberg (1984, 1985) also proposed a non-unitary theory – the triarchic theory of intelligence. Like Gardner, he proposes several types of intelligence: analytical intelligence (which approximates the traditional notion of g); creative intelligence (which involves insight, synthesis and the ability to respond to novel situations); and practical intelligence (which involves the ability to solve real-life problems). But in his theory Sternberg attempts to go beyond this to explain how these intelligences work. He suggests that each kind of intelligence involves a control hierarchy of cognitive components that contribute to our ‘mental self-management’ – these include a) performance components, b) knowledge acquisition components and c) metacomponents. At the bottom of the hierarchy are the elemental performance components. These are the information-processing mechanisms involved in the execution of any task and invoked by a particular sequence of operations, such as e coding, inference and response selection. Sternberg came to the conclusion that although performance components contribute to individual differences in intelligence, overall the contribution is weak, with correlations rarely exceeding 0.3. Knowledge acquisition components are those processes involved in the gaining and storing of information – processes such as memory – and in turn, these components will evolve performance components in the service of their own functions. At the top of Sternberg’s processing hierarchy are metacomponents. These are executive processes responsible for planning task solutions and monitoring feedback from performance and knowledge acquisition components. Sternberg claimed that the major individual differences related to intelligence are found in these metacomponent processes. In other words, intelligence is the province of the processes principally involved in problemsolving strategies (high-level components) rather than the information processing (low-level components) that impl ements the problem-solving routines. So, for example, one of Sternberg’s metacomponents is responsible for recognizing the nature of the problem set by a cognitive task. Although Sternberg has written extensively on his theory, it reads more like a re-statement of how intelligence is manifested rather than an explanation of it. Furthermore, recent reviews of the theoretical and empirical support for the theory do not support the notion that creative or practical intelligences are as important as analytical intelligence (i.e. an approximation of g) in predicting life success (Brody, 2003a; Gottfredson, 2003).
No comments:
Post a Comment