Theory of Fluid and Crystallised Intelligence:
This
theory of intelligence was given by British-American psychologist Raymond Cattell.
Raymond Cattell was born on 20th
March 1905 at a small town near Birmingham in England. In 1937, he left England and moved to the United
States of America. Cattell was invited by Edward Thorndike to come to Columbia
University.
According
to Raymond Cattell, there exists two major clusters of mental abilities—“fluid intelligence”
and “crystallized intelligence”.
Fluid intelligence:
Fluid intelligence refers to the ability to think, use logic
in new situations, solve new problems, and identify patterns. Activities that
utilize fluid intelligence include learning, problem solving and pattern
recognition. Fluid intelligence peaks during childhood and adolescence.
Crystallised Intelligence:
It
refers to accumulated knowledge information we store over a lifetime of
experience; in addition, the application of skills and knowledge to solving
specific problems. It covers capacities that a person has acquired through
knowledge and expertise.
Triarchic Theory of intelligence was proposed by Robert
Sternberg in 1985. It attempts to understand the cognitive processes involved
in solving problems.
Robert Sternberg stated that intelligence is the ability to
adapt, to shape and select environment to accomplish one’s goals and those of
one’s society and culture.
According to this theory, there are three basic types of
human intelligence. These are “Componential Intelligence”, “Experiential
Intelligence”, and “Contextual Intelligence”.
Componential Intelligence:
Componential intelligence or analytical intelligence involved
the ability to think critically and analytically. This intelligence has three
components:
- Knowledge Acquisition Component: It refers to the meaningful acquisition of new information by relating the information to the prior knowledge existing in the memory.
- Meta Component: It refers to how one direct ones own thinking i.e., performance and knowledge acquisition components. It is the knowledge about one’s own thinking.
- Performance Component: It involves actually doing things. These are the processes that are used to perform a task or solve a problem. This component is the one that is measured by the intelligence tests. The performance component consists of “encoding”, “inferring”, “mapping”, and “response”.
Experiential Intelligence:
This
type of intelligence emphasizes insight and the ability to formulate new ideas.
This is the kind of intelligence shown by many scientific geniuses and
investors, such as Einstein Newton. It
focuses on the relationship between a person’s inner, mental world and the
outer external world. This aspect is concerned with the effect of intelligence
on one’s experiences as well as the effect of person’s interaction with the
environment on intelligence. This view adds creativity (or novelty and
originality) to the overall conception of intelligence. A creatively
intelligent person may not particularly perform well on a test of intelligence,
but is able to combine different experiences in uniquely original ways. A
second aspect of experiential intelligence is the ability to make routine tasks
that are encountered repeatedly.