Intelligence is an umbrella term used to describe a property of the mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to learn.
There are several ways to define intelligence.
In some cases, intelligence may include traits such as creativity, personality, character, knowledge, or wisdom.
There is no agreement on which traits define the phenomenon of intelligence agreed upon by a majority across the various concerned disciplines.
Theories of intelligence can be divided into those based on a unilinear construct of general intelligence and those based on multiple intelligences.
Francis Galton, influenced by his cousin Charles Darwin, was the first to advance a theory of general intelligence.
For Francis Galton, intelligence was a real faculty with a biological basis that could be studied by measuring reaction times to certain cognitive tasks.
Francis Galton's research on measuring the head size of British scientists and ordinary citizens led to the conclusion that head size had no relationship with the person's intelligence.
The size of a person's head is not a measurement of intelligence.
Alfred Binet and the French school of intelligence believed that intelligence was an average of numerous dissimilar abilities, rather than a unitary entity with specific identifiable properties.
Intelligence comes from the Latin verb intellegere, which means "to understand".
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 by taking thought.
A given person’s intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria.
Concepts of "intelligence" are attempts to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena.
Although considerable clarity has been achieved in some areas, no such conceptualization has yet answered all the important questions and none commands universal assent. Indeed, when two dozen prominent theorists were recently asked to define intelligence, they gave two dozen somewhat different definitions.
Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience.
Intelligence is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts.
Intelligence reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings.
Intelligence reflects a broader and deeper capability for making sense of things.
Intelligence reflects a broader and deeper capability for figuring out what to do.
Intelligence is the ability to apply knowledge in order to perform better in an environment.
Intelligence is the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment.
Intelligence is an innate general cognitive ability.
To my mind, a human intellectual competence must entail a set of skills of problem solving, enabling the individual to resolve genuine problems or difficulties that he or she encounters and, when appropriate, to create an effective product, and must also entail the potential for finding or creating problems, and and thereby laying the groundwork for the acquisition of new knowledge.
Intelligence is the ability to deal with cognitive complexity.
Mathematical definitions have, as one advantage, that they could be applied to nonhuman intelligences and in the absence of human testers.
Theoretical and academic definitions of intelligence may not be as useful in clinical and therapeutic applications.
The most widely accepted theory of intelligence is based on psychometrics testing or intelligence quotient tests.
An intelligence quotient test is an IQ test.
Despite the variety of concepts of intelligence, the approach to understanding intelligence with the most supporters and published research over the longest period of time is based on psychometrics testing.
Some intelligence quotient tests include the Stanford-Binet, Raven's Progressive Matrices, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children.
Charles Spearman is generally credited with discovering general intelligence, which he reported in his 1904 American Journal of Psychology article titled "General Intelligence," Objectively Determined and Measured.
Based on the results of a series of studies collected in Hampshire, England, Spearman concluded that there was a common function or group of functions across intellectual activities including what he called intelligence and sensory discriminations.
To objectively determine and measure general intelligence, Spearman invented the first technique of factor analysis as a mathematical proof of the Two-Factor Theory.
he Two-Factor Theory of Intelligence holds that every test can be divided into a “g” factor and an “s” factor.
The g-factor measures the “general” factor or common function among ability tests.
The s-factor measures the “specific” factor unique to a particular ability test.
Based on a more modern interpretation of his work, Spearman’s g factor represents the fact that any set of cognitive ability tests, no matter how different, tend to all correlate positively.
IQ tests were originally designed to identify mentally "defective" children.
The inventors of the IQ did not necessarily believe they were measuring fixed intelligence.
critics argue that intelligence tests have been used to support nativistic theories which view intelligence as a qualitative object with a relatively fixed quantity.
Critics of the psychometrics point out that intelligence is often more complex and broader in conception than what is measured by IQ tests.
skeptics argue that even though tests of mental abilities are correlated, people still have unique strengths and weaknesses in specific areas.
Researchers in the field of human intelligence have encountered a considerable amount of public concern and criticism.
A number of critics have challenged the relevance of psychometric intelligence in the context of everyday life.
There have been controversies over genetic factors in intelligence, particularly questions regarding the relationship between race and intelligence and sex and intelligence.
A controversy in the field of intelligence is how to interpret the increases in test scores that have occurred over time, the so-called Flynn effect.
Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences is based on studies not only on normal children and adults but also by studies of gifted individuals, of persons who have suffered brain damage, of experts and virtuosos, and of individuals from diverse cultures.
Gardner to breaks intelligence down into at least eight different components: logical, linguistic, spatial, musical, kinesthetic, naturalist, intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences.
Howard Gardner argues that psychometric tests address only linguistic and logical plus some aspects of spatial intelligence; other forms have been entirely ignored.
The paper-and-pencil format of most IQ tests rules out many kinds of intelligent performance that matter in everyday life, such as social intelligence.
Most of theories of multiple intelligences are relatively recent in origin, though Louis Thurstone proposed a theory of multiple "primary abilities" in the early 20th Century.
Robert Sternberg proposed the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence to provide a more comprehensive description of intellectual competence than traditional differential or cognitive theories of human ability.
The Triarchic Theory describes three fundamental aspects of intelligence.
Analytic intelligence comprises the mental processes through which intelligence is expressed.
Creative intelligence is necessary when an individual is confronted with a challenge that is nearly, but not entirely, novel or when an individual is engaged in automatizing the performance of a task.
Practical intelligence is bound in a sociocultural milieu and involves adaptation to, selection of, and shaping of the environment to maximize fit in the context.
The Triarchic Theory does not argue against the validity of a general intelligence factor; instead, the theory posits that general intelligence is part of analytic intelligence, and only by considering all three aspects of intelligence can the full range of intellectual functioning be fully understood.
More recently, the Triarchic Theory has been updated and renamed the Theory of Successful Intelligence.
Intelligence is defined as an individual’s assessment of success in life by the individual’s own standards and within the individual’s sociocultural context.
Success is achieved by using combinations of analytical, creative, and practical intelligence.
The three aspects of intelligence are referred to as processing skills.
Analytical, creative, and practical intelligence are processing skills.
Analytical, creative, and practical intelligence are the three aspects of intelligence.
The processing skills are applied to the pursuit of success through what were the three elements of practical intelligence: adapting to, shaping of, and selecting of one’s environments.
The mechanisms that employ the processing skills to achieve success include utilizing one’s strengths and compensating or correcting for one’s weaknesses.
Sternberg’s theories and research on intelligence remain contentious within the scientific community.
Daniel Goleman and several other researchers have developed the concept of emotional intelligence and claim it is at least as "important" as more traditional sorts of intelligence.
IQ proponents have pointed out that IQ's predictive validity has been repeatedly demonstrated, for example in predicting important non-academic outcomes such as job performance, whereas the various multiple intelligence theories have little or no such support.
A set of ability tests that do not correlate together would support the claim that multiple intelligences are independent of each other.
Our hominid and human ancestors evolved large and complex brains exhibiting an ever-increasing intelligence through a long and mostly unknown evolutionary process.
The evolutionary process was either driven by the direct adaptive benefits of intelligence, or alternatively, driven by its indirect benefits within the context of sexual selection as a reliable signal of genetic resistance against pathogens.
Intelligence is an ill-defined, difficult to quantify concept.
The IQ tests used to measure intelligence provide only approximations of the posited 'real' intelligence.
A number of theoretically unrelated properties are known to correlate with IQ such as race, gender and height but since correlation does not imply causation the true relationship between these factors is uncertain.
Factors affecting IQ may be divided into biological and environmental.
Evidence suggests that genetic variation has a significant impact on IQ, accounting for three fourths in adults.
Despite the high heritability of IQ, few genes have been found to have a substantial effect on IQ, suggesting that IQ is the product of interaction between multiple genes.
Some biological factors correlating with IQ include ratio of brain weight to body weight and the volume and location of gray matter tissue in the brain.
Because intelligence appears to be at least partly dependent on brain structure and the genes shaping brain development, it has been proposed that genetic engineering could be used to enhance the intelligence of animals, a process sometimes called biological uplift in science fiction.
Experiments on mice have demonstrated superior ability in learning and memory in various behavioural tasks.
Evidence suggests that family environmental factors may have an effect upon childhood IQ, accounting for up to a quarter of the variance.
There are indications that, in middle age, intelligence is influenced by life style choices.
Cultural factors also play a role in intelligence.
Since intelligence is susceptible to modification through the manipulation of environment, the ability to influence intelligence raises ethical issues.
Transhumanist theorists study the possibilities and consequences of developing and using techniques to enhance human abilities and aptitudes, and ameliorate what it regards as undesirable and unnecessary aspects of the human condition; eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention.
The perception of eugenics has varied throughout history, from a social responsibility required of society, to an immoral, racist stance.
Neuroethics considers the ethical, legal and social implications of neuroscience, and deals with issues such as difference between treating a human neurological disease and enhancing the human brain, and how wealth impacts access to neurotechnology.
Neuroethical issues interact with the ethics of human genetic engineering.
Although humans have been the primary focus of intelligence researchers, scientists have also attempted to investigate animal intelligence, or more broadly, animal cognition.
Artificial intelligence is both the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science which aims to create it, through "the study and design of intelligent agents" or "rational agents", where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximize its chances of success.
General intelligence or strong AI has not yet been achieved and is a long-term goal of AI research.
Among the traits that researchers hope machines will exhibit are reasoning, knowledge, planning, learning, communication, perception and the ability to move and manipulate objects.