CURRENT ISSUES OF INTELLIGENCE

INTEGRATING CURRENT ISSUES
A century after Galton and Binet, we are now making progress in developing new models that draw together some of the apparent contradictions of earlier research. And we have moved some way towards understanding both individual differences and developmental change in ‘normal’ intelligence, as well as in exceptional intellectual populations. Work in the field of intelligence has never been more vibrant at both the level of theory development and at the level of applied research and practice. Our overview of new research on intelligence begins with a couple of contemporary theories. These will allow us to look at two areas of research that today are regarded as test-beds of any comprehensive theory of intelligence – savant syndrome and the nature of mental retardation. But first please note that the terms ‘retarded’ and ‘mental retardation’ are being used here in a professional-technical sense with a very specific definition of measured IQ being less than 70. It is offensive to use the word ‘retard’ to refer to an individual who could be given the diagnostic label ‘retarded’, and the term ‘retard’ should always be avoided, as the intellectual abilities of such people are clearly not defining features of them as individuals. These two cases are important in evaluating theories of intelligence because they are anomalies that are they are exceptions in terms of intellectual ability. Any theory that comprehensively characterizes the concept of ‘intelligence’ must be able to explain what is ‘normal’ as well as that which is exceptional.

INTELLIGENCE

INTELLIGENCE

Parents and teachers will both tell you that they notice differences in the rate at which siblings or classmates complete their work and progress from one level of learning to another. At one extreme, some children apparently have pervasive difficulty in completing daily tasks, while at the other extreme are children who seem ‘gifted’, excelling at almost everything. Think back to your own schooldays, and you will probably recollect a growing awareness of where you ‘fitted in’ relative to your classmates – in other words, which classmates tended to do better than you on
maths and English tests and which would come to you for helpwith their homework.Parents want to know if their child is capable of learning morethan they appear to be. They want to know whether problemsexperienced by their child at school are due to a general inability to keep up with their classmates, or due to a specific area of skill deficit (such as a difficulty mastering reading), or perhaps a personality style or ‘motivational’ factor and nothing to do with intelligence at all. Teachers want to know the answers to a number of important questions; for example, (a) how to give each child the best learning environment, (b) whether lessons should be targeted to a child’s preferred learning style and (c) whether all children can learn the same things if given enough time. Businesses, too, spend large sums of money each year on training new staff, so they want to know which candidates are most likely to learn quickly and accurately the skills and knowledge required to complete their jobs. Some companies also want to know how flexible potential employees are likely to be in dealing with new problems. They want to know whether the person who will ‘act most intelligently’ in one position will also act most intelligently in another. Is the best person for the job the one with thecollege degree or the one with only a basic formal education butten years’ experience working her way up from the factory floor?Our concern with intelligence leads to endless questions. Forexample: Can intelligence be effectively measured? What do traditionalintelligence tests measure? Is intelligence one thing or made up of many different abilities? Was Einstein’s intelligence of the same kind as Mark Twain’s, Leonardo Da Vinci’s or Helen Keller’s? Are we born with a fixed amount of intelligence? Are the same people who were smartest at school still smartest as adults?Are they the most successful? Is intelligence changed dramaticallyby education and culture? (Who do you think is more intelligent – Aristotle or a current undergraduate physics student whose understanding of the physical world is clearly superior?)Is it possible to compare the intelligence of different racial groups? If you placed Anglo-Saxon Australian children from the city into a remote Aboriginal community in central Australia, would they perform as well on local tests of judgement and reasoning as children of the same age from that indigenous community?Would they know how to find water in a desert terrain orhow to find a goanna? Probably not – but does that mean theyhave become less intelligent all of a sudden? Which group would we expect to perform better on conventional tests of spatial ability or verbal reasoning? If we do compare groups, do any differenceshave a genetic or cultural root? Does intelligence ‘run in families’? This chapter will address the core issues in understanding intelligence that bear upon these questions beginning with the notion of individual differences in intelligence.