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Introduction
Throught the years, there have been many varying takes on intelligence and the compounds and complexity of the ever-elusive definiton we can all agree on. -
Galton
In the late 19th century, Francis Galton, inspired by his distant cousin, Charles Darwin, propsed the theory of general intelligence, or the "g factor." This was the idea that all people pocessed ceratin basic mental and cognitive abilities that defined their general intelligence. -
Spearman
Later, Charles Spearman built off of Galton's general intelligence theory by stating that there were two factors to intelligence: "g" and "s." The latter represented specific intelligence, which expalined the narrow fields of intelligence observed in people. -
Thorndike
Similarly to Spearman, Edward L. Thorndike catoegorized intelligence into two factors. They were "Trial-Error" and "Stimulus-Respnse" associations. -
Stern
William Stern was a psychologist who defined intelligence as "a general capacity of an individual consciously to adjust his thinking to new requirements,...a general mental adaptability to new problems and conditions of life." He was the creator of the Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, which allowed one to assign a number to one's connitive ablilities by using a formula of mental and physical age to determine a ratio. -
Terman
Lewis Madison Terman is, perhaps, most famous for his work with intelligence in children. He believed that youth in the top one percent of IQs should be recognized early, isolated from average students, accelerated through education and cherished as leaders to the betterment of society. To indentify such chlidren, he developed the Standford-Binet tests. -
Thorndike (continued)
Years after completing his original human intelligence experiments and and categorizing it, Throndike created the foundation for the modern intelligence test. He used underlying logic to create a system of measuring this feature. -
Woodrow
In 1921, Herbert Woodrow, author of "Brightness and Dullness in Children," defined intelligence as "The capacity to aquire capacity." -
Wechsler
David Wechsler defined intelligence, not in terms of an capacity, but in terms of an individuals performance. This, and the unique testing system he devised, called the Wechsler Intelligence Scales, set him apart as a psychologist in the time. -
Intelligence Today
Currently, the definition of intelligence is still widely debated thoughout the psychological community. In general, people tend to think of it as consisting of four main parts: general, specific, aptitude and achievement.
