Intelligence - Spearman and Gardner

¶ … Intelligence - Spearman and Gardner Psychologists define intelligence as a "general capacity to acquire knowledge" (Huffman 2003: 319). This knowledge allows a person to learn from experience and observation. Intelligence also allows humans to adapt to changes in their environment, or to adapt the environment through manipulation and the use of tools. There is much debate, however, regarding the nature of intelligence and what cognitive functions comprise intelligence. This paper compares and contrasts two prevailing theories of intelligence, proposed by Charles Spearman and by Howard Gardner.

Spearman's Model In the early part of the 20th century, most psychologists considered intelligence as an innate activity that brought together all the different cognitive functions. Charles Spearman was a proponent of viewing intelligence as one single factor, which he called "general intelligence" or g. Spearman proposed that g underlies all forms of intellectual ability, from problem solving to reasoning to performing well on tests designed to measure intelligence. As evidence of this single ability concept, Spearman observed that separate tests of mental abilities tended to be positively correlated.

Thus, a person who does well on tests of spatial reasoning also tended to do well on tests that measure one's reasoning ability. For Spearman, this correlation pointed to an underlying intelligence - g - that governed all aspects of a person's cognitive skills (Huffman 2003). Spearman's model had significant influences on psychologists such as Raymond Cattell. Cattell's contribution, however, was a more nuanced analysis of g. Cattell proposed that a single form of intelligence did exist, but that there were two forms of this g.

The first measures "fluid intelligence" and is called gf. This intelligence measures an individual's ability to reason, memorize and process information quickly. For Cattell, gf was inherent and generally did not change with level of education. However, gf was observed to decline with age. The second form, crystallized intelligence or gc, measures the knowledge and skills one learns through experience and education. This form of intelligence increases across the lifespan, as long as people continue honing their cognitive abilities (Huffman 2003).

Spearman and to a lesser extent, Cattell's work on g forms the basis of standardized testing today. The standard exit exams administered in high schools, for example, supposedly measure whether a student is performing at his or her grade level, in comparison to the average results from their peers. The standard IQ tests based on the work of Alfred Binet and Lewis Terman are also based on the idea of a single-ability measure of intelligence. Multiple intelligence The idea of a single g factoring intelligence, however, has numerous critics.

As early as 1938, psychologist L.L. Thurstone criticized the narrowness of Spearman's model. Thurstone argued that mental abilities such as verbal comprehension, spatial visualization and reasoning were distinct forms of intelligences that should be considered separate from one another (Huffman 2003). Howard Gardner, a cognitive theorist, pursued this idea further by proposing a theory of multiple intelligences. Gardner devised a criteria of eight intelligences, including linguistic skills, bodily-kinesthetic skills and logical-mathematical skills.

According to Gardner, people can have different profiles of intelligence, meaning that they can have challenges in some areas but exhibit strengths in others. Because of these different forms of intelligence, Gardner proposed that people also have distinct learning styles (Huffman 2003). Thus, a person with strengths in kinesthetic and spatial intelligence will have very different learning styles from people who have strong linguistic and logical-mathematical skills. The idea of multiple intelligences has numerous implications for standardized testing.

Gardner's writings challenge the validity and usefulness of data culled from tests such as the Stanford-Binet, which is used to assess the intelligence of children aged 3-16 in the United States. For Gardner, tests should assess a person's different strengths, rather.