- [Instructor] There are a
number of different theories about what intelligence
is and how to define it. But before I get into
that, I want to talk about a debate that pervades all
of these different theories. And that's the question of whether or not there's one general intelligence, or whether intelligence
has multiple aspects, or whether there are
multiple intelligences. And so, as we go through all
of these different theories, I want you to keep that debate in mind and really think about where each theorist stands on this debate. The first theory I want to talk about is the theory of general intelligence which was put forth by a
man named Charles Spearman. He used factor analysis, which
is a statistical procedure to identify clusters of related abilities. He predicted the idea of
a general intelligence, which is sometimes referred
to as the G Factor, or sometimes just G. And he predicted that
this general intelligence could predict our outcomes
in varied academic areas. There is actually a lot of
evidence to support this. Studies have shown that
those who score high in one area, like verbal intelligence, also tend to score highly in other areas, like spacial reasoning. However, this idea was controversial then and it's still controversial now. When you really think about it, human abilities are incredibly diverse. Do we really think that one single factor could account for all of them? Well another psychologist, L.L.
Thurnston, didn't think so. So he proposed a theory that focused on primary mental abilities. Thurnston came up with seven
factors of intelligence instead of Spearman's single one. I'm not going to write them all down, but they include word
fluency, verbal comprehension, spacial reasoning, perceptual speed, numerical ability, inductive
reasoning, and memory. For me, one of the main
strengths of this theory is that it seems more
accurate to have a break down. After all, we can imagine
that someone might have good inductive reasoning
skills while maybe not having high verbal comprehension. But the problem with Thurnston's theory is the very thing that was
a strength for Spearman's, which is that those who do
well on one of these factors also tend to do well on the others, which suggests an underlying
single intelligence factor. But both of these theories
actually have another limitation, and that's that they seem really limited in what they consider to be intelligence. Even Thurnston's theory,
which has seven factors, tends to focus primarily
on what we would consider to be book smarts. And so in order to try and expand on this, in order to try to be more inclusive, Howard Gardner created the
theory of multiple intelligence, which expanded our ideas
of what kind of things might be included as intelligence. And Gardner divided our
intelligence into seven, and then nine independent intelligences. And they're independent in that they don't rely on each other, or they don't depend on each other, meaning that your intelligence in one area doesn't predict your
intelligence in another area. And again, I'm not going
to write these all down, 'cause that would take up a lot of time, but he predicted a
logical-mathematical intelligence, a linguistic intelligence,
a musical intelligence, a spatial intelligence, a
body-kinesthetic intelligence, an intrapersonal intelligence and an interpersonal intelligence. Later on, he added the idea
of a naturalist intelligence, as well as an existential intelligence. The strength of this theory is, of course, is that it includes more
than just book smarts. It takes lots of other human
abilities into account. But are all of these intelligences? Why do we need to use that word? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to refer to these as abilities or talents? And it kind of depends on whether or not we think that there's any repercussion to labeling them in
intelligence versus a talent. To me it seems like it
only makes a difference if you're giving this term
intelligence a certain weight, that somehow, by labeling
this in intelligence, you're making it more
important or more serious than it was before when
it was just a talent, and I really don't know
if I agree with that. It seems to me like it's important and worthwhile either way. Another problem with this theory is that there simply
isn't a lot of evidence to support it, and this
partially has to do with the fact that there's
no real way to test it. I know that might come
as a surprise to people who have heard of this theory before, or heard of things like
different learning styles which stems from this theory. To me, it really sounds like a nice idea, but as of right now,
it just isn't supported by the research. The last theory I want to talk about was put forth by Robert Sternberg, and that's the triarchic
theory of intelligence. Sternberg agreed with Gardner about the existence of
multiple intelligences, but he said that there were three of them not seven, eight, or nine. Sternberg restricted his
definition of intelligence to things that he thought would
lead to real world success. He's included analytical intelligence or problem solving ability,
creative intelligence, and practical intelligence. He specifically picked things out that he thought led to
success in the real world. Another benefit was that we
can reliably measure things along these lines because
it's fairly easy to define, so it's easy to test. As for problems, we kind of
fall back on the initial one, which is that research has shown that individuals who score highly on one of these three intelligences tend to score highly
on the others as well. So are these three intelligences really just three sides of the same coin? And now that I've written it down, this sentence kind of
looks a bit funny to me, but I think that you get the idea, which is that maybe
these three intelligences vary together, because
we're still talking about general intelligence, or G. I want to take a moment to step away from these different
theories of intelligence to talk about the problem
that I first brought up, which was whether or not
there's one general intelligence versus multiple intelligences. Because taken together,
a lot of the research seems to point in the direction of there being one general intelligence. And on a personal note, I will admit that I sometimes have
trouble with the idea of general intelligence. After all, there's so
many different traits that we can measure a person on. And so, for a long time I was
pretty skeptical of this idea. But there were two things
that really helped me. The first one I brought
up when I was talking about some of the problems with the theory of multiple intelligences. And that's that why does everything need to be an intelligence? Does that word really matter? Does that word actually hold any meaning? And maybe it does, but maybe it doesn't, because when I go and I
listen to an orchestra, it doesn't really matter whether or not I say that the musicians have
a high musical intelligence or a very high musical ability. It's still wonderful to listen to. And another thing that
helped me better understand and appreciate it was
when a teacher that I had compared general
intelligence to athleticism. Because, on the one hand,
there are many, many things that would enable someone
to do well in sports: eye-hand coordination, speed,
quick reflexes, muscle mass. And just because someone
does well in one sport, doesn't mean that they're
going to do well in another. There's no reason to assume that someone who has a gold medal in figure skating is going to be a good volleyball player. But that said, there does seem to be some kind of general athletic ability. And so it helped me a lot
to think about intelligence like athleticism, that
while you can split it up into things like mathematical
ability and spatial awareness, maybe there is some kind of
general underlying intelligence, just as there might be some
general underlying athleticism.