Aspects Of Intelligence Proposed By Guilford

([44])

Operations	Content	Product
cognition (understanding, discovering etc.)	auditory	unit (a single item of information)
memory	symbolic (including verbal thinking and communication)	class (a set of items that share some characteristics or attributes)
divergent thinking (generating multiple solutions to problems)	semantic (information organized as symbols or signs that have no meaning by themselves, eg. numbers and letters of the alphabet)	relation (a connection between items)
convergent thinking (identifying a single solution to a problem)	behaviour	system (an organization of items or networks with interacting parts)
evaluation (judging whether an answer is accurate, consistent or valid)	visual	transformation (changing an item’s attributes, eg. reversing order of letters in a word)
		implication (expectation or prediction)

Howard Gardner

Howard Gardner (see How Children Learn pages 63–66) was later to support Guilford’s rejection of Spearman’s idea of general intelligence. He, however, favoured not two, but six or eight, intelligences. As described in How Children Learn, Gardner set out to discredit the notion of intelligence as something inherited or fixed or indeed as something which could be measured. He reminds us that intelligence tests and the notion of IQ remained popular over many decades, because they provided an easy method for schools, hospitals and employment agencies to justify decisions about grading and sorting people. The early criticisms made by Lippmann, querying the reliability of scoring intelligence, are echoed by Gardner. He highlights ([45]) the way in which intelligence test scores tend to indicate that those with higher socio-economic standing achieve higher scores, and discusses the way in which traditional tests ignore practical intelligence or the increasing use of symbol systems. He further suggests ([46]) that:

‘one reason I have moved away from attempting to create such measures is that they may lead to new forms of labelling and stigmatization… intelligences should be mobilized to help people learn important content and not used as a way of categorizing them… I do not want to inspire the creation of a new set of “losers”’.

The Influence Of Developing Theories About Intelligence

One of the things which can be learnt from Burt’s deception about the nature of intelligence is that the influence these developing theories of intelligence have had has often been shaped by external factors. Nature v nurture arguments are central to thinking about intelligence. While some people believe that intelligence is fixed, reliant wholly on our genes, others believe that upbringing or nurturing have a strong effect on intelligence. The answer is likely to be somewhere between these two extreme points of view. The relationship between genetic influence on learning and development and the impact of the environment in which children are brought up has sometimes been described as an intricate dance ([47]).

The nature argument about intelligence has often been used by societies which rely on one group of people being less important than others. In places where slavery is practised for example, the political and social situation is often justified by arguments about slaves being of less intelligence and therefore of less worth than the dominant group.

At one level, therefore, it could be said that the theories of intelligence themselves are influenced by other factors. Burt’s data went unchallenged for many years because the view of intelligence which his studies confirmed was one held by most people.

Margaret McMillan (see How Children Learn pages 23–25) was a theorist and practitioner who firmly held the nurture side of the argument. Her experiences in poor parts of London showed her that the intelligence tests, which were gaining in popularity at the time as a way of classifying or categorising children, categorised many such children as subnormal. She recognized at an early stage that ‘the stimulating environment of the nursery school enabled many to overcome the inhibiting effects of early deprivation’ ([48]). More recently the American Psychological Society has added weight to the argument for nurture shaping intelligence. Ideas about intelligence in different cultures have been compared (see table below). It is something akin to this belief which has motivated politicians in the twenty-first century to fund Sure Start – a belief that breaking the cycle of deprivation supports improvements in the learning and development of young children.

Cultural Views Of Intelligence

Cultural Group	Words and phrases associated with intelligence
Chinese students	memory for facts
Australian students	memory seen as trivial in relation to intelligence
Ugandan villagers	slow, careful, active,knowing how to and acting in socially appropriate ways
Ugandan teachers (and other westernized groups)	speed
middle-class groups in USA	abstract thinking; technical ability (but not social and emotional intelligence)
Some African groups’ view of children’s intelligence	social responsibility; cooperativeness and obedience
Malay students	social and cognitive attributes
Ifaluk of western Pacific	knowledge and performance of good social behaviour

Putting The Theories Into Practice

Like many test scores and targets, intelligence tests are very attractive to administrators and policy makers because they allow something which is very difficult to categorise or pigeon-hole (namely people) to be grouped. Tests of this sort (often referred to as psychometric tests) are used in the assessment of children with special educational needs and in areas where 11+ testing still occurs. Gardner’s point about labelling and stigmatization (see above) is an important one – especially for early years practitioners. Numbers attached to something as fluid and open to misrepresentation as IQ scores carry some risks – and those risks are that we limit children’s opportunities. All too often the correlation which may be found between social class and test scores can mean that those who are most disadvantaged in social terms are further limited by low expectations and limited experiences.

One important factor which has had some impact on practice is the growing recognition that the brain is highly flexible and that it is therefore unlikely that intelligence is a fixed entity. This fits in with programmes such as Sure Start which have been set up in an effort to change the social conditions which affect achievement in school.

Final Comment

It has been pointed out that people who devise intelligence tests value most the things that they themselves are good at. Intelligence tests therefore tend to focus on things which enabled them to succeed at school ([49]). It is important to remember that what counts as intelligence varies markedly between societies and cultures. The table above sets out some of the differences in cultural views of intelligence (49).

As Gardner’s theory has reminded us, intelligence is not a fixed aspect of human behaviour. Children, like everyone else, act intelligently in some situations and not in others. One of the major problems with intelligence testing has been a failure to acknowledge that simply being in a test situation makes it more difficult for many children to demonstrate their real knowledge and understanding.

Theories about intelligence remain incomplete. The American Psychological Association set up a task force in the late 1990s and outlined areas which need further research (49). These include:

• The impact of genes on intelligence is not fully known
• Aspects of environment which affect intelligence are not yet fully known
• The relationship between nutrition and intelligence is not fully known
• Neither the Flynn effect nor the differences in intelligence test scores between groups have been fully explained
• Insufficient is known about aspects of human behaviour (such as creativity, wisdom or social sensitivity) which are not readily measured by intelligence tests.

Where To Find Out More

Gardner, H. et al (1996) Intelligence: multiple perspectives. London: Harcourt Brace College Publishers

Neisser, U. et al (1996) Intelligence: knowns and unknowns. American Psychologist 51: 77-101

Palmer, J. (ed) (2001) Fifty Major Thinkers on Education. London: Routledge

44 Guilford, J.P. Stricture of Intellect. http://tip.psychology.org/guilford.html

45 Gardner, H. (1999) Intelligence Reframed. New York: Basic Books

46 Gardner, H. (2006) Multiple Intelligences: new horizons. New York: Basic Books (page 70)

47 Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2001) ‘Why babies’ brains are not Swiss army knives’ In Rose, H. and Rose, S. (eds) Alas Poor Darwin: arguments against evolutionary psychology. London: Vintage

48 Whitbread, N. (1975) The Evolution of the Nursery-Infant School. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul

49 Deary, I. (2001) Intelligence: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press (page 121 gives details of the findings of the American Psychological Association)