What is Intelligence?
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| What is Intelligence? |
The word intelligence
derives from the Latin word “interlegere” which means to pick out or discern.
It is it is an individual’s capacity to act purposefully, think rationally and
deal effectively with his/her environment.Intelligence is an innate cognitive
ability. In other words, intelligence is a general mental capability that
involves the ability to reason, plan solve problems, comprehend complex ideas,
and learn quickly; it is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.
It is not merely book learning or gaining academic skills. Rather, it reflects
a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—catching on,
making sense of things or figuring out what to do.
According to
Woodworth and Marquis, “Intelligence means intellect put to use. It is the use
of intellectual abilities for handling a situation or accomplishing any task”.
Intelligence may be regarded as a sort of mental energy in the form of mental
(cognitive) abilities available with an individual to enable him to handle his
environment in terms of adaptation and facing new situations as effectively as
possible.
Individuals
differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt
effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various
forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles, and so on. Though, these individual
differences can be substantial, they are never entirely consistent, a given
person’s intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in
different domains as judged by different criteria.
Approaches of Intelligence:
There are
different approaches with the help of which different groups of psychologists
investigated intelligence. These are the following:
- Psychometric Approach
- Information Processing Approach
Psychometric Approach:
This approach focuses on measuring differences in intellectual abilities. According
to this approach, intelligence is the ability to learn in an abstract manner or
to think or adapt to his/her environment.
The theories of
intelligence like the two factor theory and the multifactor theory is related
to this approach. The two factor theory of intelligence states that all human
intellectual abilities have a common and a general factor. Spearman’s theory is
an example and he calls the general
factor the “g” factor and describes it as mental energy that is involved
in all mental activities. There is also a specific factor “s” in intelligence
which is specific to a task. The multifactor theory of intelligence describes
intelligence in terms of separate factor or underlying specific abilities.
Information Processing Approach: The information processing group goes one step further by focusing
on cognitive processes underlying the intellectual abilities. Cognitive
processes include all processes of the mind such as memory, reasoning,
visualization, problem solving, and so on. The theory which uses this
information processing approach is Robert
Stenberg’s Triarchic theory.
Theories of Intelligence:
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| Theories of Intelligence |
Intelligence is
one of the most popular psychological terms used in everyday life. The
expression of intelligence is not limited to any particular activity, domain or
context; rather it is manifested in every human activity. For long, the study
of intelligence was confined to the cognitive domain. Now, it is believed that
intelligence is not a single entity (or having single dimension), rather it has
multiple dimensions or aspects.
Factor Theories of Intelligence: In making decisions about intelligence, many have used a
statistical technique known as factory analysis. The technique is a way of
identifying groups of abilities or behavior or traits that are related to one
another. In the area of intelligence testing, the technique is usually applied
to several specific sub-tests; each designed to measure one specific cognitive
ability. Factor analysis poses several problems for the investigator, for
example, different methods of factors analysis can yield different factors and
it is often hard to judge which factors are the best. Examples of factor
theories of intelligence are G factor
theory, multifactor theories and hierarchical theory.
Process Oriented Theories of Intelligence: each of the preceding theories is an attempt to unravel
intelligence to find its component parts and describe how those parts fit
together. This is not the only path to an understanding of intelligence. An
alternate approach taken by several influential theorists is to focus on
intellectual processes the patterns of thinking that people use whey they
reason and solve problems. Also, they are often more interested in how people
go about solving problems and figuring out answers than in how many right
answers people get finally, the process oriented theorists tend to focus on the
development of intellectual processes.
