Discuss the theoretical debate on whether intelligence is best conceived of as a single general intelligence...

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Psychology

Discuss the theoretical debate on whether intelligence is bestconceived of as a single general intelligence or as multipleintelligences. What are some criticisms of each approach?

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In the last decade of the nineteenth century a French physician named Alfred Binet was commissioned by the school system to develop a way to differentiate those students who were uneducable or severely mentally handicapped from the other students He developed an intelligence test to do so The very first intelligence tests introduced a decade earlier emphasized sensory tasks physical measures and simple processes Unlike these tests Binet developed an intelligence test that consisted of items that required complex processes of the mind and examined the comprehensive individual Consequently the results from Binets scales were successful in discriminating between the two types of students The success of Binets test led to a much greater question to be asked what exactly are these tests measuring What the tests claimed to measure was intelligence But if they measured intelligence then the next question that arose was this what exactly is intelligence It is at this point that the great debate on the definition of intelligence began There is a general consensus that there are different levels of intelligence and that different individuals have different capacities of intelligence In other words 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 Neisser et al 1996 But how many and what kinds of different types of intelligences exist and how to define intelligence is still at debate Two Theories on the Nature of Intelligence Today there are two major schools of thought on the nature of intelligence The first supported by such psychologists as Eysenck Galton Jensen and Spearman believe that all intelligence comes from one general factor known as g The proponents of the other school of thought include Gardner Sternberg and Thurstone These psychologists think that there is more than one general type of intelligence or in other words that there are different types of intelligences An interesting note about this school of thought is that there is disagreement even within that camp on exactly how many different types of intelligences there are One General Intelligence There are strong arguments to support the theory of one general type of intelligence The most convincing evidence for a single general intelligence model is the fact that there is proof of a single general factor that governs the level of intelligence of an individual This is also known as the positive manifold Spearman 1904 Furthermore there is a very high correlation between IQ and very simple cognitive tasks which supports the theory of one general intelligence Eysenck 1982 Positive manifold The first argument in support of one general intelligence is the fact that there is a high positive correlation between different tests of cognitive ability Spearman 1904 in doing his research administered to many people different types of tests covering several different areas of cognitive See Answer

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