Handbook of psychology volume 7 educational psychology

38

Contemporary Theories of Intelligence

other than those of the principal proponents of the theory to

test the theory adequately.

True Intelligence.

Perkins (1995) proposed a theory of

what he refers to as true intelligence, which he believes syn-

thesizes classic views as well as new ones. According to

Perkins, there are three basic aspects to intelligence: neural,

experiential, and reflective. 

Neural intelligence concerns what Perkins believes to be

the fact that some people’s neurological systems function

better than do the neurological systems of others, running

faster and with more precision. He mentions “more finely

tuned voltages” and “more exquisitely adapted chemical cat-

alysts” as well as a “better pattern of connectivity in the

labyrinth of neurons” (Perkins, 1995, p. 97), although it is not

entirely clear what any of these phrases means. Perkins be-

lieves this aspect of intelligence to be largely genetically de-

termined and unlearnable. This kind of intelligence seems to

be somewhat similar to Cattell’s (1971) idea of fluid intelli-

gence. The experiential aspect of intelligence is what has

been learned from experience. It is the extent and organiza-

tion of the knowledge base, and thus is similar to Cattell’s

(1971) notion of crystallized intelligence. The reflective as-

pect of intelligence refers to the role of strategies in memory

and problem solving and appears to be similar to the con-

struct of metacognition or cognitive monitoring (Brown &

DeLoache, 1978; Flavell, 1981). 

There have been no published empirical tests of the theory

of true intelligence, so it is difficult to evaluate the theory at

this time. Like Gardner’s (1983) theory, Perkins’s theory is

based on literature review, and as noted earlier, such literature

reviews often tend to be selective and then interpreted in a

way to maximize the theory’s fit to the available data.

The Bioecological Model of Intelligence.

Ceci (1996)

proposed a bioecological model of intelligence, according to

which multiple cognitive potentials, context, and knowledge

all are essential bases of individual differences in perfor-

mance. Each of the multiple cognitive potentials enables re-

lationships to be discovered, thoughts to be monitored, and

knowledge to be acquired within a given domain. Although

these potentials are biologically based, their development is

closely linked to environmental context, and hence it is diffi-

cult if not impossible cleanly to separate biological from en-

vironmental contributions to intelligence. Moreover, abilities

may express themselves very differently in different con-

texts. For example, children given essentially the same task

in the context of a video game and in the context of a labora-

tory cognitive task performed much better when the task was

presented in the context of the video game. 

The bioecological model appears in many ways to be

more a framework than a theory. At some level, the theory

must be right. Certainly, both biological and ecological fac-

tors contribute to the development and manifestation of intel-

ligence. Perhaps what the theory needs most at this time are

specific and clearly falsifiable predictions that would set it

apart from other theories.

Emotional Intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is the

ability to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotion;

the ability to access or generate feelings when they facilitate

thought; the ability to understand emotion and emotional

knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote

emotional and intellectual growth (Mayer et al., 2000). The

concept was introduced by Salovey and Mayer (Mayer &

Salovey, 1993; Salovey & Mayer, 1990) and popularized

and expanded by Goleman (1995).

There is some evidence—though still tentative—for the

existence of emotional intelligence. For example, Mayer and

Gehr (1996) found that emotional perception of characters

in a variety of situations correlated with SAT scores, with

empathy, and with emotional openness. Full convergent-

discriminant validation of the construct, however, appears to

be needed. The results to date are mixed, with some studies

supportive (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2000) and others not

(Davies, Stankov, & Roberts, 1998).

CONCLUSIONS

The study of intelligence has come far in the century since

Spearman (1904) published his seminal paper on general

intelligence. Although there is no consensus as to what intel-

ligence is or how to measure it, there are many viable alter-

natives. More research needs to distinguish among these

alternatives rather than simply adducing evidence for any one

of the alternatives. 

Among the psychometric theories, Carroll’s (1993) has

achieved fairly widespread acclaim, perhaps because it is

based on a meta-analysis of so much empirical work. Be-

cause of its complexity, however, it is likely to have less in-

fluence on measurement than simpler theories, such as the

theory of fluid and crystallized abilities (Cattell, 1971; Horn,

1994). History suggests that very complicated theories (e.g.,

Guilford, 1967, 1982; Guilford & Hoepfner, 1971; Guttman,

1954) tend not to have a long shelf life. In Guilford’s case,

however, it is more a compliment to than a criticism of his

theory, because the demise of Guilford’s theory is related to

its falsifiability (Horn & Knapp, 1973), a property that not all

modern theories have shown themselves to possess.

Conclusions

39

There are some questions that no existing theories of

intelligence answer. Consider a few of these. 

Challenges to Traditional Theories and Beliefs

About Intelligence

Within recent years, several challenges from unexpected

quarters have been proposed to theories and conceptions of

intelligence. Two such challenges are the Flynn effect and

dynamic testing.

The Flynn Effect.

An empirical phenomenon chal-

lenges many theories of intelligence that view intelligence

as some kind of fixed, largely genetically based trait. We

know that the environment has powerful effects on cognitive

abilities. Perhaps the simplest and most potent demonstration

of this effect is what is called the Flynn effect (Flynn, 1984,

1987, 1994, 1998). The basic phenomenon is that IQ has in-

creased over successive generations around the world through

most of the century—at least since 1930. The effect must be

environmental because a successive stream of genetic muta-

tions obviously could not have taken hold and exerted such an

effect over such a short period of time. The effect is power-

ful—about 15 points of IQ per generation for tests of fluid in-

telligence. And it occurs all over the world. The effect has

been greater for tests of fluid intelligence than for tests of

crystallized intelligence. The difference, if linearly extrapo-

lated (a hazardous procedure, obviously), would suggest that

a person who in 1892 fell at the 90th percentile on the Raven

Progressive Matrices Test, a test of fluid intelligence, would,

in 1992, score at the 5th percentile.

There have been many potential explanations of the Flynn

effect, and in 1996 Ulric Neisser organized a conference at

Emory University to try to explain the effect (Neisser, 1998).

Some of the possible explanations include increased school-

ing, greater educational attainment of parents, better nutri-

tion, and less childhood disease. A particularly interesting

explanation is that of more and better parental attention to

children (see Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994). Whatever the

answer, the Flynn effect suggests that we need to think care-

fully about the view that IQ is fixed. It probably is not fixed

within individuals (Campbell & Ramey, 1994; Ramey, 1994),

and it is certainly not fixed across generations.

Dynamic Assessment.

In dynamic assessment, individ-

uals learn at the time of test. If they answer an item correctly,

they are given guided feedback to help them solve the item,

either until they get it correct or until the examiner has run

out of clues to give them.

The notion of dynamic testing appears to have origi-

nated with Vygotsky (1934/1962, 1978) and was developed

independently by Feuerstein, Rand, Haywood, Hoffman,

and Jensen (1985). Dynamic assessment is generally based

on the notion that cognitive abilities are modifiable and that

there is some zone of proximal development (Vygotsky,

1978), which represents the difference between actually de-

veloped ability and latent capacity. Dynamic assessments at-

tempt to measure this zone of proximal development, or an

analogue to it.

Dynamic assessment is cause for both celebration and

caution (Grigorenko & Sternberg, 1998). On the one hand, it

represents a break from conventional psychometric notions

of a more or less fixed level of intelligence. On the other

hand, it is more a promissory note than a realized success.

The Feuerstein test, the Learning Potential Assessment

Device (Feuerstein et al., 1985), is of clinical use but is not

psychometrically normed or validated. There is only one for-

mally normed test available in the United States (Swanson,

1995). This test yields scores for working memory before and

at various points during and after training, as well as scores

for amount of improvement with intervention, number of

hints that have been given, and a subjective evaluation by the

examiner of the examinee’s use of strategies. Other tests are

perhaps on the horizon (Guthke & Stein, 1996), but their po-

tential for standardization and validity, too, remains to be

shown.

Intelligence as Typical Performance.

Traditionally, in-

telligence has been thought of as something to be conceptual-

ized and measured in terms of maximum performance. The

tests of intelligence have been maximum-performance tests,

requiring examinees to work as hard as they can to maximize

their scores. Ackerman (1994; Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997;

Goff & Ackerman, 1992) has recently argued that typical-

performance tests—which, like personality tests, do not re-

quire extensive intellectual effort—ought to supplement

maximal-performance ones. On such tests individuals might

be asked to what extent statements like “I prefer my life to be

filled with puzzles I must solve” or “I enjoy work that requires

conscientious, exacting skills” match their attitudes. A factor

analysis of such tests yielded five factors: intellectual engage-

ment, openness, conscientiousness, directed activity, and

science-technology interest.

Ackerman’s data suggest a weak relationship between

his measures of typical performance and more conventional

measures of maximum performance. What is needed most

at this time are incremental validity studies that show that this

theory provides significant incremental validity with respect

to real-world task performance over the validity provided by

40

Contemporary Theories of Intelligence

available measures of intelligence. Because our intelligence

so often is used in typical performance settings (Sternberg

et al., 1981), future theorists will need to cope with the chal-

lenge of typical performance, following Ackerman’s lead.

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