Intelligence: Definition and Theories

What is Intelligence?

Intelligence can be defined in many different ways since there are a variety of individual differences. Intelligence to me is the ability to reason and respond quickly yet accurately in all aspects of life, such as physically, emotionally, and mentally. Anyone can define intelligence because it is an open-ended word that has much room for interpretation. Thus my paper is an attempt to find the meaning of human intelligence. There are a couple of scientists who have tried to come up with theories of what makes a human being intelligent.

Jean Piaget, a Swiss child psychologist, is well known for his four stages of mental growth theory (1). In the sensorimotor stage, from birth to age 2, the child is concerned with gaining motor control and getting familiar with physical objects. Then from age 2 to 7, the child develops verbal skills, which is called the preoperational stage. In the concrete operational stage the child deals with abstract thinking from age 7 to 12. The final stage called the formal operational stage ends at age 15 and this is when the child learns to reason logically and systematically. (1)

Piaget's theory provides a basis for human intelligence by categorizing the major stages in child development and how they contribute to intelligence. Each of these invariant stages has major cognitive skills that must be learned. Knowledge is not merely transmitted verbally but must be constructed and reconstructed by the learner (3).

Thus this development involves a few basic steps. The first fundamental process of intellectual growth is the ability to assimilate the new events learned into the preexisting cognitive structures. The second fundamental process is the capability to change those ...

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...ists approach in defining human intelligence. I believe that intelligence is the ability to utilize our entire brain, which will most definitely include Gardner's theory but more. Since we only use a small percentage of our brain, I imagine our brains have a lot more forms of intelligence than the ones Gardner proposes as well as more stages of child development than the ones Piaget proposes. As I mentioned before, intelligence is an open-ended word that may never have an agreed upon definition, but we all have our own definition.

References:

1)Jean Piaget, Swiss Child Psychologist

http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eintell/piaget.shtml

2)The Seven Human Intelligences

http://www.homeschoolzone.com/hsz/leppert2.htm

3)Jean Piaget: Intellectual Development

http://www.sk.com.br/sk-piage.html

4)Seven Intelligences

http://www.ibiblio.org/edweb/edref.mi.th4.html