Cognitive-contextual theories

Cognitive-contextual theories deal with the way that cognitive processes operate in various environmental contexts. Two of the major theories of this type are that of the American psychologist Howard Gardner and that of Sternberg. In 1983 Gardner proposed a theory of what he called "multiple intelligences." Earlier theorists had gone so far as to contend that intelligence comprises multiple abilities. But Gardner went a step further, arguing that there is no single intelligence. In his view, intelligences are multiple, including, at a minimum, linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligence. Some of these intelligences are quite similar to the abilities proposed by the psychometric theorists, but others are not. For example, the idea of a musical intelligence is relatively new, as is the idea of a bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, which encompasses the particular faculties of athletes and dancers. Gardner derived his listing of intelligences from a variety of sources, including studies of cognitive processing, of brain damage, of exceptional individuals, and of cognition across cultures. Gardner proposed that whereas most concepts of intelligence had been ethnocentric and culturally biased, his was universal, based upon biologic and cross-cultural data as well as upon data derived from the cognitive performance of a wide array of people.

An alternative theory also taking into account both cognition and context is Sternberg's "triarchic" theory of human intelligence. Sternberg agreed with Gardner that conventional notions of intelligence were too narrow. But he disagreed as to how psychologists should go beyond traditional conceptions, suggesting that abilities such as musical and bodily-kinesthetic ones are talents rather than intelligences in that they are fairly specific and are not prerequisites for adaptation in most cultures.

According to Sternberg, intelligence has three aspects. These are not multiple intelligences, as in Gardner's scheme. Where Gardner viewed the various intelligences as separate and independent, Sternberg posited three integrated and interdependent aspects of intelligence. These aspects relate intelligence to what goes on internally within a person, to what goes on in the external world, and to experience, which mediates between the internal and external worlds.

The first aspect consists of the cognitive processes and representations that form the core of all thought. Sternberg distinguished three kinds of processes: those involved in deciding what to do and later in deciding how well it was done, those involved in doing what one had decided to do, and those involved in learning how to do it in the first place. For example, when deciding which of two brands of a product to buy, a shopper might first decide how to decide which is a better purchase (say, in terms of unit cost), then actually do the required calculation. Of course the shopper had first to have learned how to calculate unit prices.

The second aspect consists of the application of these processes to the external world. According to Sternberg, mental processes serve three functions in the everyday world: adaptation to existing environments, the shaping of existing environments into new ones, and the selection of new environments when old ones prove unsatisfactory. The theory holds that more intelligent persons are not just those who can execute many cognitive processes quickly or well; rather, their greater intelligence is reflected in knowing what their strengths and weaknesses are and capitalizing upon their strengths while remedying or compensating for their weaknesses. More intelligent persons, then, find a niche in which they can operate most efficiently.

The third aspect of Sternberg's triarchic theory is the integration of the internal and external worlds through experience. One measure of intelligence is the ability to cope with relatively novel situations. For example, intelligence might be measured by taking someone who is well adapted to one culture and placing him in an unfamiliar one, in order to assess his ability to cope with a new situation. Or in the case of a person for whom an automobile is of critical importance, intelligence may be gauged according to the way that person functions when the car is being repaired and unavailable for a short period. Sternberg also suggested that another facet of experience that is important in evaluating intelligence is the automatization of cognitive processing, which occurs when a once relatively novel task becomes familiar. For example, when children first learn to read, they are confronted with a relatively novel task. But one is interested not only in how well children deal with the novelty of reading but also in how well they render reading automatic and subconscious. The abilities to cope with relative novelty and to automatize cognitive processing are seen as interrelated: The more a person is able to automatize the tasks of daily life, the more mental resources there are left to cope with novelty.

Biologic theories

The theories discussed above seek to understand intelligence in terms of underlying hypothetical constructs, whether these constructs are factors (e.g., verbal ability, spatial ability), as is the case with psychometric theories; cognitive processes (e.g., retrieval of information from memory, inferring relations); or cognitive processes as they interact with context (e.g., musical intelligence or the shaping of the environment). Some theorists, however, have taken a radically different approach, seeking to understand intelligence directly in terms of its biologic bases without intervening hypothetical constructs. These theorists, usually called reductionists, believe that a true understanding of intelligence can result only from the identification of its biologic substrates. Reductionism takes an appealing philosophical stance, and some would argue that there is no real alternative if the goal is to explain rather than merely to describe behaviour. But the case is not an open-and-shut one. In trying to discover why an automobile does not start in the morning, for example, the driver does not usually imagine that the basic problem is one involving molecules and atoms. The driver is probably better advised to analyze the performance of components, such as the starter or carburetor. Even if the automobile's molecular or atomic reactions could be analyzed, such an analysis would probably be unhelpful. The example suggests that the biologic approaches to intelligence should be looked at as complementary to, rather than as replacing, other approaches. Although relatively little is known about the biologic bases of intelligence, progress has been made on three different fronts, all involving studies of brain operation.

Contents of this article:

Introduction
Cognitive-contextual theories and biologic theories
Hemispheric studies
Development of intelligence
Post-Piaget theories and the environmental viewpoint
Measuring intelligence
The distribution of IQ scores and the malleability of intelligence