Mental Abilities
Intelligence
(PS) 321-331
1. Psychometric approach
2. Information processing
approach
Intelligence
3. Triarchal approach
4. Multiple Intelligences
approach
5. Ecological approach
Psychometric approach
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It analyzes people’s responses to questions and tasks in order to describe the structure of intelligence.
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Spearman: noted that scores on almost all tests of mental abilities were positively correlated. People who did well on one test also tended to do well
on all of the others. He concluded that these correlations were created by general mental ability, which he called “g”, for general intelligence, and a
group of special intelligences, which he collectively referred to as “s”. The “s” factors are the specific information and skills needed for particular
tasks. The correlations that could not be by either “g” or “s” were called group factors.
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L.L.Thurstone: he criticized Spearman’s mathematical methods. He analyzed the correlations among IQ tests to identify the underlying actors, or
abilities, beaing measured by those tests with a statistical technique called factor analysis. He found seven relatively independent primary mental
abilities, which he labeled as numerical ability, reasoning, verbal fluency, spatial visualization, perceptual ability, emory, and verbal comprehension.
He didn’t deny that “g” exists, but he argued that it’s not as important as primary mental abilities in discribing a particular person.
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Raymond B. Cattell: he agreed with Spearman, but suggested that there are two kinds of “g”, which he labeled: fluid and crystallized.
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Fluid intelligence: the basic power of reasoning and problem solving. It allows us to think critically about assertions and understand relationships between concepts.
Crystallized intelligence: it involves specific knowledge gained as a result of applying fluid intelligence.
Who is right?
Most psychologists today agree that there is a positive
correlation between several tests of mental ability, a
correlation that is due to a factor known as “g”. The
brain probably does not “contain” some unified “thing”
corresponding to what people call intelligence; “g” is
more likely a collection of subskills and mental abilities,
many of which are needed to suceed on any test of
intelligence.
Information-processing approach
 It analyzes the process of intelligent behavior, not test answers and other products of intelligence. This
approach relates the basic mental processes of perception, memory, and thought to the concept of
intelligence.
 Earl Hunt: suggested that intelligent behavior depends on the amount of attention that we can mobilize. He
suggested that people with a greater intellectual ability have more attentional resources available.
 Jensen & Vernon: thought that perhaps intelligent people have “faster brains” than other people and carry out
mental processes more quickly. When a task is complex, having a “fast brain” might decrease the chance that
information will disappear from memory before it can be used.
 Hans Eynseck: proposed that intelligence can be defined as the error-free transmission of information through
the brain.
Triarchal Theory
 According to Sternberg, a complete theory must deal with three aspects of intelligence:
 Internal components (or processes):
• Performance components: processes such as perceiving stimuli, holding information in STM and calculating sums and
differences
• Knowledge-acquisition components: they involve the selective application of the processes used in gaining and storing new
information
• Metacomponents: they control the performance and knowledge-acquisition components; they are involved in organizing and
setting up a problem.
 Relation of the internal components: it amounts to the ability to profit from experience by altering how the
components are applied.
 External effects: adapting or shaping environments. It means being intelligent in areas that psychology doesnt
examine; in everyday life.
Multiple Intelligences
 Howard Garnder supported the idea that cases of remarkable ability in specific areas
constitute an evidence of the existence of multiple intelligences. He looked not just at
test scores and information-processing experiments but also at the ways in which
children develop, at the exceptional abilities of child prodigies and remarkable adults,
at biological research, and at the values and traditions of various cultures.
 According to Gardner, all people possess a numberof intellectual potentials or
“intelligences”, each of which involves a set of skills that allows them to solve
problems. Biology provides raw capacities to each of these intelligences; cultures
provide symbolic systems such as language to mobilize the raw capacities.
 The specific intelligences that Gardner proposes are:
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Linguistic
Logical-mathematical
Spatial
Musical
Body-kinesthethic
Personal
Intrapersonal
Naturalist
Existentialist
Ecological Approach
The ecological approach to intelligence
views intelligence as mental activity that
allows people to select, shape, and adapt
to those aspects of the environment most
relevant to their lives.
The ecological approach suggests that
intelligence is not the same in all
environments.
Mental abilities &
thinking
Creativity
Unusual mental abilities
-Giftedness
-Mental retardation
-Learning disabilities