Intelligence the Idea of Intelligence

¶ … Intelligence

The idea of "intelligence" is a commonly held understanding that, for many years, was unbound by the definitions, practical examinations, and ultimate applications of in the scientific field. From Sternberg to Spearman, psychologists over the last hundred years have attempted to shed light on the popular idea of intelligence and turn its nebulous concept into one of concrete measured understanding. Some psychologists stress the importance of the interaction between heredity and the environment that lead to one's development of intelligence; Binet, Weschler, and Piaget focused particularly on this complex concept in structuring their own views of intelligence. Still others attempted to examine the disparity between scientist's view of intelligence and that of the general population or the multi-faceted manners in which it was witnessed across the board.

Robert Sternberg was the first of the set to research intelligence as something discernible by a definitive standard and comparable to its lay interpretation. Using supermarket shoppers, newspaper readers, commuters, students, and strangers, he asked nearly five hundred people to associate behaviors associated with ideas of "intelligence," "academic intelligence," "everyday intelligence, and "unintelligence."

These associations led Sternberg to develop a list of characteristic behaviors each ideal which he then delivered to a group of 140 intelligence-psychologists for further analysis. Ultimately, he concluded that most people, despite different levels of education, conclude that intelligence is a general problem solving and verbal ability as well as social competence, and demands that someone "listens to all sides of an argument" and "is on time for appointments." (233)

Building on the ideas Sternberg introduced, compiling lay interpretations of intelligence with those of the professional/clinical fields, Francis Galton limned the conversation of intelligence within a discussion of heritability. Galton observed that "the only information that reaches us concerning our outward events appears to pass through the avenues of our sense; and the more perceptive the senses are of difference, the larger is the field upon which our judgment and intelligence can act." (234) To test this, Galton developed a series of sensorimotor and other perception-related exercises, concluding with a definition of intelligence related to the senses, and ultimately to the speed of neural conductivity. (235)

Unlike his predecessors, Binet did not conclude with a specific definition of intelligence. Unlike Galton and Sternberg, he moved outside the task of defining intelligence and transferred the task into reality, attempting to identify "intellectually limited school children who could not benefit from the regular instruction program." Binet argued, in contrast with Galton and Sternberg, that intelligence was not a series of distinctive characteristics, but instead a series of inextricable interactions that, winding together, are used to produce a correct solution to a given problem. Because of the difficulties he analyzed in a testtaker's response to a task, he called for more complex measurements of intellectual ability than previously undertaken.

Wechsler built upon these views, compiling a more complete definition of intelligence but as parochial as that examined by Sternberg. "Intelligence, operationally defined, is the aggregate or global capacity of the individually to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal with his environment." (235)

Wechsler critically added that intelligence is not just the sum of the abilities included in the definition, but it is something only understandable by the measurement of the various aspects of those abilities. (235) Likewise, he added that an individual's ability to perceive and respond to social, moral, and aesthetic values contributed to a personality of intelligence.

Examining the cognitive process of young children, Piaget found that intelligence was an evolving process of a certain adaptation to the outside world. He observed that as cognitive skills were developed, adaptation increases to the rest of the world through a series of physical trial and error. He found that cognitive development was neither a matter of solely maturation or learning, but a unified process in which the external world was as critical as that internally. "He believed that as a consequence of interaction with the environment, psychological structures become reorganized." Accordingly, biological aspects of intelligence development are determined by natural maturation mechanisms, which ultimately determine a person's ability for mental assimilation and accommodation.

Charles Spearman was the first to develop techniques that measured "intercorrelations" between different tests of intelligence. The development of these theories lead to the evolution of the two-factor theory of intelligence, in which he postulated that the existence of a general intellectual ability factor that can and is tapped by all other mental abilities such as linguistic, mechanical, and arithmetic abilities. (238) Spearman instituted tests that measured the magnitude of this general intelligence and concluded that the higher the general intelligence, the greater a subject's overall intelligence would be. (237)