In this video I discuss a number of ways of thinking about intelligence and determining which skills should be considered part of intelligence. I briefly describe Louis Leon Thurstone’s primary mental abilities, Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory, Robert Sternberg’s Triarchic theory, and the theory of Emotional Intelligence. I also discuss how cases of prodigies, savants, and acquired savant syndrome might influence our conception of intelligence, as well as the problem of assessing skills and abilities that can be acquired through extensive practice.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel to see future videos! Have questions or topics you’d like to see covered in a future video? Let me know by commenting or sending me an email!

Check out my book, Master Introductory Psychology, an alternative to a traditional textbook: http://amzn.to/2eTqm5s

Video Transcript

Hi, I’m Michael Corayer and this is Psych Exam Review. In the previous video I introduced the idea of g-factor and this came from research by Charles Spearman and here’s a picture of Spearman here. What Spearman did was he used factor analysis in order to look at the correlations between people’s performance on a broad range of tasks and then he found that these correlations could be explained by a single factor and this is what he called g-factor. And this stood for general intelligence and so if we were to try to diagram this idea we’d say that you have some level of this g-factor and then that influences your performance on a broad range of different skills.

Now not all researchers agreed with Spearman’s approach to defining intelligence and one of his contemporaries Louis Leon Thurstone, I have a picture of Thurstone here, suggested a different organization. He proposed that there were what he called “primary mental abilities” and he proposed that there were seven of these. So his list included things like verbal comprehension, word fluency, number facility, spatial visualization, associative memory, perceptual speed, and reasoning. And so he thought that these influenced particular groups of skills.

So if we were to diagram this idea, it would be saying that we have some mental ability and it influences a particular group of skills. So let’s say you have your number facility and so you have a group of skills related to your number facility and then you have some other separate mental ability over here like verbal comprehension and that’s going to influence other particular skills here. And, you know, then you have some other thing like reasoning and so then you have a group of skills related to reasoning. The idea is that these are separate mental abilities.

Now this might look like a more reasonable organization when it comes to think about intelligence and part of that’s because we recognize that people do have different strengths, right? They might be better with numbers than with, you know, verbal comprehension or something. The problem that we run into though is if we look at these groupings, these primary mental abilities, and then we look for patterns amongst these it turns out we still find evidence for g because it turns out people who are, you know, good with associative memory and people, you know, are the same people who tend to be good with verbal comprehension, and also tend to be good with number facility. And people who do poorly on one tend to do poorly on the others. And so we still have this support for the idea of a single factor that then influences these mid-level abilities, these primary mental abilities here. And then those each influence different skills.

Ok, so another similar theory comes from a more recent researcher Howard Gardner. And Gardner has proposed what he calls a theory of multiple intelligences. Here’s a picture of Gardner here. So Gardner has proposed that there are seven, at least seven, different of these multiple intelligences. So the idea of this multiple intelligence theory is that intelligence works in modules, that we have sort of separated domains of intelligence, and that they don’t necessarily influence one another. And so on Gardner’s list he includes verbal intelligence, mathematical intelligence, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic intelligences. And so the idea is that people can have really high ability in one particular area and that would suggest that it’s separate from those other areas. So you could pick some person with extraordinary musical ability, for instance, and their musical ability might far surpass their verbal or mathematical abilities. And so Gardner suggests that this would mean that it’s a separate type of intelligence.

Now the evidence for multiple intelligences also comes from the idea of prodigies and savants. And so a prodigy refers to a child who has extraordinary ability in one area, accompanied by normal development in other areas. So it’s one area of high ability plus otherwise normal development. And then we also have the case of savant. A savant is a person who has high ability in one area but this is accompanied by low or even disability in other areas and this would be perhaps considered stronger evidence for this idea of separate modules of intelligence.

And probably the most famous savant in recent years is a man named Kim Peek. Kim peek was the inspiration for Dustin Hoffman’s character in the movie Rain Man, of Raymond Babbitt. And here’s a picture of Peek here. And Kim Peek had extraordinary ability in some areas. He had a phenomenal memory, he could do mental calculations, but he had disability in other areas. He wasn’t able to brush his own hair, he needed to be cared for, and so this would suggest that maybe certain types of intelligence are separate modules.

And we also see this in what’s called acquired savant syndrome. People with acquired savant syndrome take on some sudden area of high ability and this often occurs after an accident or some sort of brain injury or a stroke or something like that, where suddenly this ability emerges. So there’s cases of people who suddenly show high musical talent following an injury and they become obsessed with playing the piano and they spend hours each day doing this. Or a case of a man who became obsessed with painting and he suddenly showed this sort of creative artistic talent that he had not shown before in, you know, the injury occurred when he was, I believe, in his 50s or 60s. And so sort of this sudden emergence of an intelligence might suggest also that it’s separate from other types of intelligences.

Now the problem here is that this doesn’t completely contradict the idea of g because we might think that during normal normal development we have this sort of g-factor that’s influencing all areas of development, and then you know, maybe we caused some structural damage to the brain later and that changes things. But it doesn’t mean that g wasn’t important all along. And we can also see this in the potential to unlock certain abilities using magnetic stimulation and this is something I’ll talk about in a future video. There’s some studies that have suggested that you can use transcranial magnetic stimulation, which temporarily inhibits certain regions of the brain, and that this can cause certain skills to be enhanced. So people who have done this might show sudden improvements in their artistic ability after certain brain regions have been inhibited.

Ok, so one of the big problems with multiple intelligence theory is that it doesn’t really address the question of how we define intelligence. It says “well there’s lots of different types of intelligence, there’s different ways you can be smart” is one way people often describe this but the problem is we haven’t really defined any of those particular ways of being smart. So we have this problem of definitions, where we might accept that maybe there’s different types of intelligence but now we have seven of them that we’re attempting to define instead of just one.

So we might pick one of Gardner’s intelligences like bodily-kinesthetic intelligence then we say “well okay let’s imagine let’s say that this does exist.” Let’s say this is a separate module, even if we don’t necessarily agree with that, but let’s temporarily say that that’s true. Well, how are we going to define it? How are we going to measure it? You know, how are we going to assess someone’s bodily-kinesthetic intelligence? Are we going to look at biological markers like, you know, muscle fiber types? Or we can look at things like their muscular endurance. Are we looking more at their hand-eye coordination or their balance? Like, which of these things are more important? How much should they count towards assessing bodily-kinesthetic intelligence? If we look at somebody who clearly has high bodily-kinesthetic intelligence like Michael Jordan, do we assess it based on his basketball playing or his baseball playing, right?

Now this brings us to the question of looking at specific skills. So if I practice free-throws for hours and hours and hours, I’ll probably get better at them. But does that mean that my bodily-kinesthetic intelligence has improved? Or does it just mean that I’ve gotten better at specific skills but my intelligence overall hasn’t changed? And this brings us to the next sort of question which is how much does practice count? So you might be familiar with this 10,000 hour rule. It’s been popularized by Malcolm Gladwell and it’s based on research by Anders Ericsson. And so the idea of this, and there’s some problems with this theory as well, but the idea is that people who achieve a high level of expertise or proficiency in a particular area usually do so after having spent it least 10,000 hours practicing their craft. And so we might wonder how does that relate to the idea of intelligence? So if somebody becomes very, very good at a particular musical instrument, you know, is that the result of their sort of innate musical intelligence or is it the result of hours and hours of specific focused practice?

So if we took one of Gardner’s other multiple intelligences, naturalistic intelligence, which refers to knowledge of the natural world an exemplar of this type of intelligence would be someone like Charles Darwin. Say, ok, yes Darwin had, you know, this incredible capacity for understanding the natural world. We might wonder “well is that really separate from his other intelligence?”. I think that most people would agree that Darwin was definitely a genius and I’m sure if he were to take a modern IQ test he would score very, very high. And so we might ask “well, is it really isolated? Then why is it that his naturalistic intelligence was so much more developed?”. And the answer might be, well he spent decades focused on that. Let’s say he had some high g to begin with and then by directing his energies onto naturalistic understanding, that’s why he developed that very high-level proficiently proficiency.

And certainly he had other skills as well. I mean if you’ve read on the Origin of Species then you can see that Darwin was a very clear communicator of his ideas. He was a good writer and that’s part of the reason for his success. So it becomes hard to say that he only had naturalistic intelligence or that it’s really separate from all the other skills that he had. Now this brings us to another idea which is that when people get higher and higher IQ, that’s where we start to see more variation in their skills. So what I mean by that is when people have low IQ, somebody has an IQ of say 80, they’re going to do pretty poorly on most tasks. They are going to do poorly on verbal comprehension, they’re going to do poorly on, you know, math skills. They’re going to do poorly on word fluency, right? They’re just not going to score very well on pretty much all of the areas. But when people get higher and higher IQ, so if you take somebody has an IQ over, you know, 150 then they’re going to show more variability in the specific skills. They might be extremely proficient with, you know, mathematical problem-solving and you know maybe they’re sort of normal or just slightly above-average with their verbal comprehension.

But that mostly shows itself at higher IQ and so that becomes another issue that we have to think about when we think about the idea of multiple intelligences. Ok, so let’s move to a last few theories here and so next we have Robert Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory. So the way that Sternberg thinks about intelligence, and here’s a picture of Sternberg here, is that he suggested that we should think about intelligence in terms of how it helps us to be successful and that if we’re going to define what intelligence is our definition should be based on those things that bring us success in living. The ideas is it’s not just about raw problem-solving power; it’s about solving problems in a way that helps you to succeed, it helps you to reach your goals. And so based on this he’s proposed this Triarchic Theory. There’s a three-part definition of intelligence and the first part is familiar, it’s the idea of analytical intelligence. And so this is sort of the traditional problem-solving way of thinking about intelligence. but Sternberg suggests that that’s not all there is to intelligence. He’s also proposed the next part which is creative intelligence. So this would be the ability to generate new solutions that haven’t been used before, rather than just finding the answers to problems that, you know, have specific defined answers. It’s coming up with new solutions to new problems and so this would relate to the idea of divergent thinking that I talked about in a previous video, right? The ability to generate, you know, new uses for some object. And then after creative intelligence he also adds what he calls practical intelligence. And so the idea of practical intelligence is in real-life when we’re solving problems, often there’s multiple solutions and we have to choose the best solution to a problem based on the situational context, right? So we don’t just solve problems in a vacuum, right? We have to think about the consequences and whether this solution is better in the short-term versus in the long-term.

So sometimes you might have to accept a flawed decision from your boss and you have to sort of know when to speak up and when to just sort of let things go or you might be arguing with somebody and you might be winning the argument in terms of your, you know, logic but you might decide it’s not worth continuing the argument. So that would be the use of practical intelligence, often described as sort of like “street smarts” right? And so it takes context into consideration when it comes to how we’re solving problems.

Now, a related idea to this is emotional intelligence and so this was proposed by Peter Salovey and John Mayer and has been popularized in books by Daniel Goleman. And the idea of emotional intelligence is that people differ in how they express, manage, and use emotions and that this might have something to do with behaving intelligently. So this might be sort of similar to the practical intelligence I mentioned, where sometimes you have to know that “ok, even though this is the right answer, I’m not going to correct this person because, you know, that’s going to be more trouble than it’s worth” or “I might anger the person and that’s going to have other consequences”. So you’re sort of thinking about the use of emotions and how they might relate to how you solve problems.

Now we run into a problem with this idea of emotional intelligence because we might say that it’s true that people differ in this. It’s certainly true that people vary in how they manage and use emotions. The question is, is that intelligence? Should it be considered intelligence? So we might think about that as just being personality differences, right? So we might say “ok, yes people do vary in their use and management of emotions” but maybe we shouldn’t consider that intelligence, even though it does come to bear on their problem-solving.

So we might say that okay some people are more agreeable than others and I’ll talk about personality traits in a lot more detail, that’s the next unit that we’ll cover, it will all be on personality, but one trait that people vary on is agreeableness. Some people prefer to cooperate with others and other people are more competitive and so they differ in their agreeableness and that’s going to cause differences in how they use their emotions when they’re solving problems. So some people might be more willing to express anger to others because they’re sort of more competitive and other people might try to mask their anger or hide it because they want to cooperate, they’re more agreeable? And so that’s going to have an influence on how they might solve particular problems in dealing with other people but maybe we shouldn’t consider that to be part of their intelligence.

We might just say well their personality traits differ, in the same way we might say people differ in their ability to manage emotions. So we have a trait called neuroticism which is related to negative emotion and the management of emotions and some people score more highly on neuroticism, which means they have more negative emotions and they’re less able to manage things like anxiety. And, of course, that’s going to influence their ability to solve problems in the real world. But should we consider that to be intelligence or should we just consider that to be a personality trait?

Now, some personality researchers would say, you know, that has nothing to do with intelligence; that’s personality traits and we should keep these separate because we start sort of mixing back and forth it becomes very confusing. Is this particular trait part of intelligence or part of personality or something else entirely? And that becomes very difficult to assess.

Ok, so hopefully what you get from this video is you see that intelligence is really complicated. It’s hard to come up with clear definitions and I don’t have a clear answer for you in what should be considered part of intelligence and what shouldn’t. But there’s a lot of different ways of thinking about it and all these different researchers have proposed these different approaches to defining intelligence. Now, nevertheless we want to try to assess intelligence and that’s what we’re going to look at in the next video. We’ll see how researchers have attempted to create assessments for intelligence and the number of problems that assessment also raises. So I hope you found this helpful, if so, please like the video and subscribe to the channel for more. Thanks for watching!