INTELLIGENCE

1) How should intelligence be defined?

Researchers have come up with many definitions of intelligence, yet I believe that intelligence is a concept that involves interaction with environment, rational thoughts, problem solving abilities, and the ability to use our knowledge to adapt to the situation. It is about how well a person can deal with a situation or a problem.

2) What are the elements of intelligence?

According to Gardner’s concept of multiple intelligence, our intelligence is divided into 10 sub-intelligence: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, spiritual, and existential. However, the psychologists are still skeptic of whether there are more fields of intelligence than those given by Gardner.

3) Is intelligence testing valid? Reliable? Ethical?

I believe that the intelligence tests being given nowadays are valid to some extent for its scores cannot be used to define whether a person fits to a job or not and that many of the tests do not evaluate the takers’ practical intelligence except for WAIS. However, the tests given are reliable and ethical since they produce consistent results and the takers are not threatened by the results.

4) How can variations in intelligence be explained?

Genes, disability, society, culture, and education are what account for the variations in our intelligence for they affect a person’s abilities to deal with problems. However, these factors do not always lower our intelligence for there are some cases that a person with disability is gifted with extraordinary intelligence.