“a relatively stable structure of the individual's mental abilities.

In a number of psychological concepts, intelligence is identified with a system of mental operations, with a style and strategy for solving problems, with the effectiveness of an individual approach to a situation that requires cognitive activity, with a cognitive style, etc.

Intelligence– a relatively stable structure of the individual's mental abilities, which includes acquired knowledge, experience and the ability to further accumulate and use them in mental activity. The intellectual qualities of a person are determined by the range of his interests, the amount of knowledge.

In a broad sense, intelligence is the mental abilities of a person, the totality of all cognitive processes. In a narrower sense - the mind, thinking. In the structure of human intelligence, the leading components are thinking, memory and the ability to behave intelligently in problem situations.

The concepts of "intelligence" and "intellectual features" of a person are close to more frequently used concepts - abilities, general and special abilities. General abilities include, first of all, the properties of the mind, and therefore often general abilities are called general mental abilities or intellect.

Here are some definitions of intelligence: intelligence as the ability to learn, intelligence as the ability to think abstractly, intelligence as the ability to adapt and solve problems.

The definition of intelligence as a set of general abilities is associated with the works of S. L. Rubinshtein and B. M. Teplov. We can say that the intellectual characteristics of the individual play a big role in the overall success of the activity. Abilities are considered as regulators of activity, and intellectual activity is singled out as a unit in which mental abilities and the motivational structure of the personality are synthesized.

In general, the concept of "intelligence" in the psychological literature has at least three meanings: 1) the general ability to learn and solve problems, which determines the success of any activity and underlies other abilities; 2) the system of all cognitive abilities of the individual (from sensation to thinking); 3) the ability to solve problems without external trial and error (in the mind), the opposite of the ability to intuitive knowledge.

Intelligence, as V. Stern believed, is a certain general ability to adapt to new living conditions. An adaptive act, according to Stern, is a solution to a vital task, carried out through action with a mental (“mental”) equivalent of an object, through “action in the mind”, or, according to Ya. D. Ponomarev, “in the internal plan of action”. According to L. Polanyi, intelligence refers to one of the ways of acquiring knowledge. But, in the opinion of most other authors, the acquisition of knowledge (assimilation, according to J. Piaget) is only a side effect of applying knowledge in solving a life problem. In general, a developed intellect, according to J. Piaget, manifests itself in universal adaptability, in achieving “balance” of an individual with the environment.

Any intellectual act implies the activity of the subject and the presence of self-regulation in its implementation. According to M.K. Akimova, the basis of intelligence is precisely mental activity, while self-regulation only provides the level of activity necessary to solve the problem. E.A. adjoins this point of view. Golubeva, who believes that activity and self-regulation are the basic factors of intellectual productivity, adding efficiency to them.

One way or another, but in the view of the nature of the intellect as an ability contains a rational grain. It becomes noticeable if we look at this problem from the point of view of the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious in the human psyche. More V.N. Pushkin considered the thought process as the interaction of consciousness and subconsciousness. At different stages of solving the problem, the leading role from one structure passes to another. In an intellectual act, consciousness dominates, regulates the decision process, and the subconscious acts as an object of regulation, that is, in a subdominant position.

Intellectual behavior is reduced to the adoption of the rules of the game, which the environment imposes on a system with a psyche. The criterion of intellectual behavior is not the transformation of the environment, but the discovery of the possibilities of the environment for the adaptive actions of the individual in it. At least, the transformation of the environment (a creative act) only accompanies the purposeful activity of a person, and its result (creative product) is a “by-product of activity”, in Ponomarev's terminology, which is realized or not realized by the subject.

V.N. Druzhinin gives the primary definition of intelligence as some ability that determines the overall success of a person's adaptation to new conditions. The mechanism of intellect is manifested in solving the problem in the internal plan of action (“in the mind”) with the dominance of the role of consciousness over the unconscious. V.N. Druzhinin sets out the concept of intelligence from the point of view of "cognitive resource". There are two explications of the content of the concept of "cognitive resource". The first - structural - can be called the "display-screen" model. Let's assume that there is a minimal structural unit responsible for processing information - a cognitive element. Similar elements are connected each with each. The number of cognitive elements determines the success of solving intellectual problems. The complexity of any task is related to the number of cognitive elements representing it in the cognitive resource. If the set of elements required to represent the task is greater than the cognitive resource, the subject is unable to construct an adequate representation of the situation. The representation will be incomplete in any essential detail.

An individual cognitive resource may be appropriate for the task. In this case, the problem is solved as a particular one, without attempts to generalize the solution methods to others. Finally, the individual cognitive resource may exceed the resource required by the task. The individual has a free reserve of cognitive elements that can be used to: 1) solve another parallel task (“the phenomenon of Julius Caesar”); 2) attracting additional information (inclusion of the task in a new context); 3) variation of the conditions of the task (transition from one task to a set of tasks); 4) expansion of the search area ("horizontal thinking").

M. A. Kholodnaya identifies a minimum of basic properties of intelligence: 1) level properties that characterize the achieved level of development of individual cognitive functions (both verbal and non-verbal) and the presentation of reality that underlie the processes (sensory difference, working memory and long-term memory, volume and distribution of attention, awareness in a certain content area, etc.); 2) combinatorial properties, characterized by the ability to identify and form various kinds of connections and relationships in the broad sense of the word - the ability to combine in various combinations (spatio-temporal, causal, categorical-meaningful) components of experience; 3) procedural properties that characterize the operational composition, methods and reflection of intellectual activity up to the level of elementary information processes; 4) regulatory properties that characterize the effects of coordination, management and control of mental activity provided by the intellect.

The operational understanding of intelligence has grown from the primary idea of the level of mental development, which determines the success of performing any cognitive, creative, sensorimotor and other tasks and is manifested in some universal characteristics of human behavior.

From the point of view of modern ideas about intelligence, not all tasks can be somehow correlated with it. But the idea of the universality of intelligence as an ability that affects the success of solving any problems has been reinforced in models of intelligence.

Typical variants of a multidimensional model, which assumes a lot of primary intellectual factors, are the models of J. Gilford (a priori), L. Thurstone (a posteriori) and, from domestic authors, V. D. Shadrikov (a priori). These models can be called spatial, single-level, since each factor can be interpreted as one of the independent dimensions of the factor space.

Hierarchical models (C. Spearman, F. Vernon, P. Humphreys) are multilevel. Factors are placed at different levels of generality: at the top level

- factor of general mental energy, at the second level

- its derivatives, etc. Factors are interdependent: the level of development of the general factor is associated with the level of development of particular factors.

Thinking is an active function of the intellect and is improved according to the laws and logic. Such mental operations as analysis, synthesis, comparison, judgment and conclusion are independent categories, but are carried out on the basis of intellectual capabilities, experience and knowledge.

Thinking is intelligence in action.

By the nature (depth, breadth of coverage, independence, degree of correspondence to the truth) of judgments and conclusions, which are the end results of the thinking process and the completion of complex mental operations, we judge the human intellect.

Intelligence is a relatively stable structure of an individual's mental abilities, which includes acquired knowledge, experience and the ability to further accumulate and use them in mental activity. The intellectual qualities of a person are determined by the range of his interests, the amount of knowledge.

Some definitions of intelligence can be given: intelligence as the ability to learn, intelligence as the ability to think abstractly, intelligence as the ability to adapt and solve problems.

In general, the concept of "intelligence" in the psychological literature has at least three meanings: 1) the general ability to know and solve problems, which determines the success of any activity and underlies other abilities; 2) the system of all cognitive abilities of the individual (from sensation to thinking); 3) the ability to solve problems without external trial and error (in the mind), the opposite of the ability to intuitive knowledge.

V.N. Druzhinin gives the primary definition of intelligence as some ability that determines the overall success of a person's adaptation to new conditions.

The mechanism of intellect is manifested in solving the problem in the internal plan of action (“in the mind”) with the dominance of the role of consciousness over the unconscious. V.N. Druzhinin sets out the concept of intelligence from the point of view of "cognitive resource". There are two explications of the content of the concept of "cognitive resource". The first - structural - can be called the "display-screen" model. Let's assume that there is a minimal structural unit responsible for processing information - a cognitive element. Similar elements are connected each with each. The number of cognitive elements determines the success of solving intellectual problems. The complexity of any task is related to the number of cognitive elements representing it in the cognitive resource. If the set of elements required to represent the task is greater than the cognitive resource, the subject is unable to construct an adequate representation of the situation. The representation will be incomplete in any essential detail.

Hierarchical models (C. Spearman, F. Vernon, P. Humphreys) are multilevel. Factors are placed at different levels of generality: at the top level

- factor of general mental energy, at the second level

- its derivatives, etc. Factors are interdependent: the level of development of the general factor is associated with the level of development of particular factors.

Thinking is intelligence in action.

In everyday communication, the concepts of "ability" and "intelligence" are often used as synonyms. This is not surprising, since it is difficult to imagine a capable, gifted or brilliant person with low intelligence. In this regard, it is advisable to consider intelligence within the framework of the problem of abilities.

Intelligence is one of the most complex mental abilities of a person.. In understanding its essence, the opinions of psychologists differ. Difficulties arise even in the very definition of intelligence. Here are some of the definitions.

Intelligence is the ability to think.
Intelligence is a kind of adaptive behavior aimed at achieving a goal.
Intelligence is a characteristic of the rational mental functions of the human psyche.
Intelligence is a holistic characteristic of human cognitive processes.
Intelligence is the ability of a person to adapt to the environment.
Intelligence is a concept designed to explain the reasons for the differences between people in solving complex problems.
Intelligence is the global ability of a person to act intelligently, think rationally and cope well with life circumstances.
Intelligence is a relatively stable structure of the mental abilities of an individual.

There is a crisis of the concept of "intelligence". In this regard, there are proposals to abandon this concept altogether (D. Carroll, S. Maxwell) or replace it with others, for example, “adaptability” or “mental structure” (D. Meller and others).

A generalized definition can look like this: intelligence is a system of mental processes that allow a person to use his abilities to assess the situation, make rational decisions and organize appropriate behavior in a changing environment.

In the problem of intellect, there is no clear boundary between the concepts of "intelligence", "mind" and "thinking", which consider different, but interconnected aspects of the personality. An attempt to correlate these concepts within the framework of the general problem of human abilities leads to the following scheme.

Intelligence can be thought of as the ability to think. At the same time, intelligence is not linked with morality, empathy, philanthropy, profession, and even with elite education. Obviously, this is exactly what A. Einstein had in mind: “You should not deify the intellect. He has powerful muscles, but no face."

Thinking is a process through which the intellect is manifested, realized. Mind is a generalized characteristic of the cognitive capabilities of a person, the process of thinking. The mind is a whole complex of qualities so closely related that, taken separately, they manifest themselves in a different way. When a person is called smart, this assessment refers simultaneously to many of his qualities.

As for the structure of the intellect, at present, due to the complexity of both the phenomenon itself and the imperfection of its formulation, it is difficult to offer a full-fledged model of it. There is an accumulation of information on this unique mental education. In the meantime, the available results are largely due to the specifics of the scientific positions of scientists. The concept of intelligence includes from several to dozens of factors. Naturally, this makes it difficult to assess intelligence as a holistic phenomenon.

In the structure of intelligence, various researchers distinguish several components.:

General intelligence(factor G, from English general - general) - a set of mental properties of a person that predetermine the success of any activity, adaptation to the environment and a high rate of information processing. General intelligence is provided by general abilities. For example, human communication skills are in demand by many types of activities: managerial, pedagogical, artistic, diplomatic.

Special intelligence(factor S, from English spesial - special) - a set of mental properties that are necessary to solve narrow problems in a particular type of activity. This type of intelligence is provided by the special abilities of a person. Examples of special intelligence are:
- professional intellect, focused on the specialization of activities (musical, mathematical);
- social intelligence focused on the problems of interpersonal relationships, the interaction of business partners.

Potential Intelligence- determines the ability of a person to think, abstract and reason. The name is due to the fact that this intellect "matures" by about 20 years (according to R. Kettell).

Crystalline Intelligence- "crystallized" in a person in the process of accumulating knowledge, skills and abilities while adapting to the environment and assimilating the values of society.

Intellect A is an innate part of the intellect, its "humus".

Intelligence B is the result of the interaction of intelligence A with the human environment in the course of his life.

There are other approaches to understanding the structure of human intelligence. So, L. Thurstone singled out a set of 12 independent abilities that determine intelligence, calling them primary mental potencies (speed of perception, associative memory, verbal flexibility, etc.). D. Gilford's "cubic" model of intellect includes 120 components that characterize the content of mental activity (what the individual's thoughts are doing), its operations (how it is implemented) and the result of mental activity (what form the processed information takes).

Thus, with all the differences in views on the problem, what is common is the multicomponent nature of the “intelligence” phenomenon, its close connection with cognitive mental processes, innate and social factors.

Intelligence is a relatively stable structure of the mental abilities of an individual.

Intelligence includes: acquired knowledge,

experience and ability for their further accumulation and use in mental activity. The intellectual qualities of a person are determined by the range of his interests, the amount of knowledge.

The concept of intelligence and intellectual personality traits are close to more commonly used concepts.

Abilities, general and special abilities. General abilities include, first of all, the properties of the mind, and therefore often general abilities are called general mental abilities or intellect.

Some definitions of intelligence can be given: intelligence as the ability to learn, intelligence as the ability to think abstractly, intelligence as the ability to adapt and solve problems.

The definition of intelligence as a set of general abilities is associated with the work of the SL. Rubinstein and B.M. Heat. We can say that the intellectual characteristics of the individual play a big role in the overall success of the activity. Abilities are considered as regulators of activity, and intellectual activity is singled out as a unit in which mental abilities and the motivational structure of the personality are synthesized.

Thinking is an active function of the intellect and is improved according to the laws of logic. Such mental operations as analysis, synthesis, comparison, judgment and conclusion are independent categories, but are carried out on the basis of intellectual capabilities, experience and knowledge. Thinking is intelligence in action.

Thinking and intelligence are examined with the help of a survey, in addition, special tables, experimental psychological tests and samples can be used. The study of the ability to analyze and synthesize, criticize ridiculous drawings, tasks for ingenuity, speed of associations, etc. The associative experiment is of great importance. For example, the psychological tests of Wien - Simon and Wexler, Eysenck.

Intelligence General mental ability to overcome difficulties in new situations.

Brief explanatory psychological and psychiatric dictionary. Ed. igisheva. 2008 .

Intelligence

(from lat. intellectus - understanding, understanding, comprehension) - a relatively stable structure of the individual's mental abilities. In a number of psychological concepts, I. is identified with a system of mental operations, with a style and strategy for solving problems, with the effectiveness of an individual approach to a situation that requires cognitive activity, with cognitive style and others. In modern Western psychology, the most common is the understanding of I. as a biopsychic adaptation to the actual circumstances of life (V. Stern, J. Piaget, and others). An attempt to study the productive creative components of I. was made by representatives gestalt psychology(M. Wertheimer, W. Köhler), who developed the concept of insight. At the beginning of the twentieth century. French psychologists A. Binet and T. Simon proposed to determine the degree of mental giftedness through special tests (see). Their work laid the foundation for the pragmatist interpretation of I., which has been widely used to date, as the ability to cope with the corresponding tasks, to be effectively included in sociocultural life, and to adapt successfully. At the same time, the idea is put forward of the existence of basic structures of I., regardless of cultural influences. In order to improve the method of diagnosing And. (see), were carried out (usually with the help of factor analysis) various studies of its structure. At the same time, different authors single out a different number of basic “factors of I.”: from 1–2 to 120. Such a fragmentation of I. into many components hinders understanding of its integrity. Domestic psychology proceeds from the principle of the unity of I., its connection with the personality. Much attention is paid to the study of the relationship between practical and theoretical I., their dependence on the emotional and volitional characteristics of the individual. The meaningful definition of the I. itself and the features of the tools for its measurement depend on the nature of the corresponding socially significant activity of the individual's sphere (, production, politics, etc.). In connection with the success of the scientific and technological revolution - the development of cybernetics, information theory, computer technology - the term " artificial I.". AT comparative psychology I. animals are being investigated.

Brief psychological dictionary. - Rostov-on-Don: PHOENIX. L.A. Karpenko, A.V. Petrovsky, M. G. Yaroshevsky. 1998 .

Intelligence

This concept is defined quite heterogeneously, but in general terms, it refers to individual characteristics related to the cognitive sphere, primarily to thinking, memory, perception, attention, etc. A certain level of development of the mental activity of the individual is implied, providing the opportunity to acquire all new knowledge and to use them effectively in the course of life, - the ability to carry out the process of cognition and to effectively solve problems, in particular - when mastering a new range of life tasks. Intelligence is a relatively stable structure of the mental abilities of an individual. In a number of psychological concepts, it is identified:

1 ) with a system of mental operations;

2 ) with style and problem solving strategy;

3 ) with the effectiveness of an individual approach to a situation that requires cognitive activity;

4 ) with a cognitive style, etc.

There are a number of fundamentally different interpretations of intelligence:

1 ) in the structural-genetic approach of J. Piaget, intellect is interpreted as the highest way of balancing the subject with the environment, characterized by universality;

2 ) in the cognitivist approach, intelligence is considered as a set of cognitive operations;

3 ) with a factor-analytical approach, based on a set of test indicators, stable factors of intelligence are found (C. Spearman, L. Thurstone, X. Eysenck, S. Barth, D. Wexler, F. Vernoy). It is now generally accepted that there is a general intelligence as a universal mental ability, which can be based on the genetically determined property of the nervous system to process information with a certain speed and accuracy (X. Eysenck). In particular, psychogenetic studies have shown that the proportion of genetic factors calculated from the variance of the results of intellectual tests is quite large - this indicator has a value from 0.5 to 0.8. At the same time, verbal intelligence is especially genetically dependent. The main criteria by which the development of the intellect is assessed are the depth, generalization and mobility of knowledge, mastery of the methods of coding, recoding, integration and generalization of sensory experience at the level of representations and concepts. In the structure of the intellect, the importance of speech activity, and especially internal speech, is great. A special role belongs to observation, operations of abstraction, generalization and comparison, which create internal conditions for combining diverse information about the world of things and phenomena into a single system of views that determine the moral position of the individual, contribute to the formation of his orientation, abilities and character.

In Western psychology, the understanding of intelligence as a biopsychic adaptation to the current circumstances of life is especially widespread. An attempt to study the productive creative components of the intellect was made by representatives of Gestalt psychology, who developed the concept of insight. At the beginning of the XX century. French psychologists A. Binet and T. Simon proposed to determine the degree of mental giftedness through special intelligence tests; this was the beginning of the pragmatist interpretation of intelligence, which is still widespread today, as the ability to cope with the corresponding tasks, to be effectively included in sociocultural life, and to adapt successfully. This puts forward the idea of the existence of basic structures of intelligence, independent of cultural influences. In order to improve the methodology for diagnosing intelligence, various studies of its structure were carried out (usually with the help of factorial analysis). At the same time, different authors single out a different number of basic "intelligence factors" from one or two to 120. Such a fragmentation of intelligence into many components hinders the understanding of its integrity. Domestic psychology proceeds from the principle of the unity of the intellect, its connection with the personality. Much attention is paid to the study of the relationship between practical and theoretical intelligence, their dependence on the emotional and volitional characteristics of the individual. The inconsistency of statements about the innate conditionality of differences in the level of intellectual development among representatives of various nations and social groups was shown. At the same time, the dependence of the abilities of an intellectual person on the socio-economic conditions of life is recognized. The meaningful definition of intelligence itself and the features of the tools for measuring it depend on the nature of the corresponding socially significant activity of the individual's sphere (production, politics, etc.). In connection with the success of the scientific and technological revolution, the term artificial intelligence has become widespread.

Dictionary of practical psychologist. - M.: AST, Harvest. S. Yu. Golovin. 1998 .

Intelligence Etymology.

Comes from lat. intellectus - mind.

Category.

The ability to learn and effectively solve problems, in particular when mastering a new range of life tasks.

Research.

There are a number of fundamentally different interpretations of intelligence.

In the structural-genetic approach of J. Piaget, intellect is interpreted as the highest way of balancing the subject with the environment, characterized by universality. In the cognitivist approach, intelligence is viewed as a set of cognitive operations. In the factor-analytical approach, based on a set of test indicators, stable factors are found (C. Spearman, L. Thurstone, H. Eysenck, S. Barth, D. Wexler, F. Vernon). Eysenck believed that there is a general intelligence as a universal ability, which may be based on the genetically determined property of an unequal system to process information with a certain speed and accuracy. Psychogenetic studies have shown that the proportion of genetic factors calculated from the variance of the results of intellectual tests is quite large, this indicator ranges from 0.5 to 0.8. At the same time, verbal intelligence turns out to be the most genetically dependent.

Psychological Dictionary. THEM. Kondakov. 2000 .

INTELLIGENCE

(English) intelligence; from lat. intellectus- understanding, knowledge) - 1) general to the knowledge and solution of problems, which determines the success of any activities and underlying other ability; 2) the system of all cognitive (cognitive) abilities of an individual: Feel,perception,memory, ,thinking,imagination; 3) the ability to solve problems without trial and error "in the mind" (see. ). The concept of I. as a general mental ability is used as a generalization of behavioral characteristics associated with successful adaptation to new life challenges.

R. Sternberg singled out 3 forms of intellectual behavior: 1) verbal I. (vocabulary, erudition, ability to understand what is read); 2) the ability to solve problems; 3) practical I. (the ability to achieve goals, etc.). In the beginning. 20th century I. was considered as the level of mental development achieved by a certain age, which manifests itself in the formation of cognitive functions, as well as in the degree of assimilation of mental skills and knowledge. Currently accepted in testology dispositional interpretation of I. as a mental property (): predisposition to act rationally in a new situation. There is also an operational interpretation of I., which goes back to BUT.Binet: I. is "what the tests measure."

I. is studied in various psychological disciplines: for example, in general, developmental, engineering and differential psychology, pathopsychology and neuropsychology, in psychogenetics, etc. There are several theoretical approaches to the study of I. and its development. Structural genetic approach based on ideas F.Piaget, who considered I. as the highest universal way of balancing the subject with the environment. Piaget singled out 4 types of forms of interaction between the subject and the environment: 1) lower-type forms formed by instinct and directly arising from the anatomical and physiological structure of the body; 2) integral forms formed skill and perception; 3) holistic irreversible forms of operating, formed by figurative (intuitive) pre-operational thinking; 4) mobile, reversible forms capable of being grouped into various complex complexes formed by "operational" I. Cognitivist approach based on the understanding of I. as a cognitive structure, the specificity of which is determined by the experience of the individual. Proponents of this direction analyze the main components of the implementation of traditional tests to reveal the role of these components in the determination of test results.

The most widespread factor-analytical approach, whose founder is English. psychologist Charles Spearman (1863-1945). He put forward the concept "general factor", g, considering I. as a general "mental energy", the level of which determines the success of any tests. This factor has the greatest influence when performing tests for the search for abstract relationships, and the least when performing sensory tests. C. Spearman also identified "group" factors of I. (mechanical, linguistic, mathematical), as well as "special" factors that determine the success of individual tests. Later L. Thurstone developed multifactorial model I., according to which there are 7 relatively independent primary intellectual abilities. However, studies by G. Eysenck and others have shown that there are close links between them, and when processing the data obtained by Thurstone himself, a common factor stands out.

Also gained fame hierarchical models S. Bart, D. Wexler and F. Vernon, in which intellectual factors are arranged in a hierarchy according to levels of generalization. Among the most common is also the concept of Amer. psychologist R. Cattell about 2 types of I. (corresponding to 2 factors he singled out): "fluid"(fluid) and "crystallized"(crystallized). This concept occupies, as it were, an intermediate position between views on I. as a single general ability and ideas about it as a set of mental abilities. According to Cattell, "fluid" I. appears in tasks, the solution of which requires adaptation to new situations; it depends on the factor heredity; “crystallized” I. appears in solving problems that clearly require an appeal to past experience ( knowledge,skills,skills), largely borrowed from the cultural environment. In addition to 2 general factors, Cattell also identified partial factors associated with the activity of individual analyzers (in particular, the visualization factor), as well as operation factors that correspond in content to Spearman's special factors. I.'s researches at advanced age confirm Cattell's model: with age (after 40-50 years) indicators of "fluid" I. decrease, and indicators of "crystallized" remain in norm almost unchanged.

No less popular is the Amer. psychologist J. Gilford, who singled out 3 “dimensions of I.”: mental operations; features of the material used in the tests; the resulting intellectual product. The combination of these elements ("the cube" of Guilford) gives 120-150 intellectual "factors", some of which have been identified in empirical studies. The merit of Guilford is the allocation of "social I." as a set of intellectual abilities that determine the success of interpersonal assessment, prediction and understanding of people's behavior. In addition, he highlighted the ability to divergent thinking(the ability to generate many original and non-standard solutions) as the basis creativity; this ability is opposed to the ability to convergent thinking, which is revealed in tasks that require a unique solution, found with the help of learned algorithms.

Today, despite attempts to identify all the new "elementary intellectual abilities", most researchers agree that the general I. exists as a universal mental ability. According to Eysenck, it is based on a genetically determined property of n. s., which determines the speed and accuracy information processing. In connection with the successes in the development of cybernetics, systems theory, information theory, artificial and. et al., there has been a tendency to understand I. as the cognitive activity of any complex systems capable of learning, purposeful processing of information, and self-regulation (see. ). The results of psychogenetic studies indicate that the proportion of genetically determined variance in the results of performing intellectual tests usually ranges from 0.5 to 0.8. The greatest genetic conditionality was found in verbal I., somewhat less in non-verbal. Non-verbal I. (“I. actions”) are more trainable. The individual level of development of I. is also determined by a number of environmental influences: the "intellectual age and climate" of the family, the profession of parents, the breadth of social contacts in early childhood, etc.

In ros. psychology of the 20th century. research I. developed in several directions: the study of psychophysiological makings general mental abilities(B.M.Teplov,AT.D.Nebylitsyn, E. A. Golubeva, V. M. Rusalov), emotional and motivational regulation of intellectual activity ( O. To.Tikhomirov), cognitive styles (M.A. Kholodnaya), “the ability to act in the mind” ( .BUT.Ponomarev). In recent years, new areas of research have been developed, such as "implicit"(or ordinary) theories of I. (R. Sternberg), regulatory structures (A. Pages), I. and creativity (E. Torrens), etc. (V. N. Druzhinin)

Big psychological dictionary. - M.: Prime-EVROZNAK. Ed. B.G. Meshcheryakova, acad. V.P. Zinchenko. 2003 .

Intelligence

INTELLIGENCE (with. 269)

The scientific development of the problem of intelligence has a very short history and a long prehistory. Why is one person smart, and the other (no matter how distressing it is to admit the supporters of universal equality) - alas, stupid? Is the mind a natural gift or the fruit of education? What is true wisdom and how does it manifest itself? From time immemorial, thinkers of all times and peoples have been looking for answers to these questions. However, in their research, they relied mainly on their own everyday observations, speculative reasoning, generalizations of everyday experience. For millennia, the task of a detailed scientific study of such subtle matter as the human mind was practically not even posed as in principle unsolvable. It is only in this century that psychologists have dared to approach it. And, it must be admitted, they have succeeded a lot in experimental and theoretical developments, in the production of hypotheses, models and definitions. Which, however, allowed them to get very close to the vague philosophical maxims of the past and rooted worldly ideas. Today there is no unified scientific theory of intelligence, but there is a kind of fan of contradictory tendencies, from which the most desperate eclecticists find it difficult to draw a vector. To this day, all attempts to enrich the theory come down to expanding the fan, leaving the practicing psychologist with a difficult choice: which of the tendencies to prefer in the absence of a unified theoretical platform.

The first real step from reasoning about the nature of the mind to its practical study was the creation in 1905 by A. Binet and T. Simon of a set of test tasks to assess the level of mental development. In 1916 L. Termen modified the Binet-Simon test, using the concept of the IQ - IQ, introduced three years earlier by V. Stern. Having not yet come to a consensus on what intelligence is, psychologists from different countries began to design their own tools for its quantitative measurement.

But very soon it became obvious that the use of seemingly similar, but somewhat dissimilar tools gives different results. This stimulated a lively (though somewhat belated) discussion about the very subject of measurement. In 1921, the American Journal of Educational Psychology published the most complete collection of definitions put forward by the participants of the correspondence symposium "Intelligence and Its Measurement" by that time. A cursory glance at the various proposed definitions was enough to understand that theorists approached their subject precisely from the positions of measurement, that is, not so much as psychologists, but as testologists. At the same time, voluntarily or unwittingly, an important fact was overlooked. The intelligence test is a diagnostic, not an exploratory technique; it is not aimed at revealing the nature of intelligence, but at a quantitative measurement of the degree of its severity. The basis for compiling the test is the idea of its author about the nature of intelligence. And the results of using the test are designed to substantiate the theoretical concept. Thus, a vicious circle of interdependencies arises, completely determined by an arbitrarily formulated subjective idea. It turned out that the methodology, originally created to solve specific narrowly practical problems (and, by the way, preserved to this day in almost its original form), has outgrown the boundaries of its powers and has become a source of theoretical constructions in the field of psychology of intelligence. This gave rise to E. Boring with frank sarcasm to derive his tautological definition: "Intelligence is what intelligence tests measure."

Of course, it would be an exaggeration to deny the psychology of intelligence any theoretical basis whatsoever. For example, E. Thorndike, in a frankly behavioristic manner, reduced the intellect to the ability to operate with life experience, that is, an acquired set of stimulus-reactive connections. However, this idea was supported by few. In contrast to his other, later idea of the combination of verbal, communicative (social) and mechanical abilities in the intellect, which many followers find confirmation.

Until a certain time, the majority of testological research to some extent gravitated towards the theory proposed back in 1904 by C. Spearman. Spearman believed that any mental action, from boiling an egg to memorizing Latin declensions, requires the activation of some general ability. If a person is smart, then he is smart in every way. Therefore, it is not even very important with the help of which tasks this general ability, or G-factor, is revealed. This concept has been established for many years. For decades, psychologists have referred to intelligence, or mental ability, as Spearman's G-factor, which is essentially an amalgam of logical and verbal abilities as measured by IQ tests.

Until recently, this idea remained dominant, despite individual, often very impressive, attempts to decompose the intellect into the so-called basic factors. The most famous such attempts were made by JGilford and L. Thurstone, although their work does not exhaust the opposition to the G-factor. With the help of factor analysis in the structure of intelligence, different authors identified a different number of basic factors - from 2 to 120. It is easy to guess that this approach made practical diagnostics very difficult, making it too cumbersome.

One of the innovative approaches was the study of the so-called creativity, or creative abilities. A number of experiments have found that the ability to solve non-standard, creative problems correlates weakly with intelligence, as measured by IQ tests. On this basis, it has been suggested that general intelligence (G-factor) and creativity are relatively independent psychological phenomena. To "measure" creativity, a number of original tests were developed, consisting of tasks that required unexpected solutions. However, supporters of the traditional approach continued to insist, and quite reasonably (certain correlations were nevertheless identified), that creativity is nothing more than one of the characteristics of the good old G-factor. To date, it has been reliably established that creativity does not manifest itself with low IQ, however, high IQ does not serve as an unambiguous correlate of creative abilities. That is, a certain interdependence exists, but it is very difficult. Research in this direction is ongoing.

In a special direction, studies of the correlation of IQ and personal qualities stood out. It was found that when interpreting test scores, personality and intelligence cannot be separated. An individual's performance on IQ tests, as well as his study, work or other type of activity, is affected by his desire for achievement, perseverance, value system, ability to free himself from emotional difficulties and other characteristics traditionally associated with the concept of "personality". But not only personality traits affect intellectual development, but the intellectual level also affects personality development. Preliminary data confirming this relationship were obtained by V. Plant and E. Minium. Using data from 5 longitudinal studies of young college graduates, the authors selected in each sample of intelligence test scores the top 25% of the students who did the best on the tests and the bottom 25% of the students on the tests. The obtained contrast groups were then compared according to the results of personality tests, which were presented to one or more samples and included the measurement of attitudes, values, motivation, and other non-cognitive qualities. An analysis of these data showed that more "capable" groups, compared with less "capable" ones, are much more susceptible to "psychologically positive" personality changes.

The development of an individual and the use of his abilities depends on the characteristics of emotional regulation, the nature of interpersonal relationships and the formed idea of himself. In the ideas of the individual about himself, the mutual influence of abilities and personal qualities is especially clearly manifested. The success of the child in school, play and in other situations helps him to create an idea of himself, and his idea of himself at this stage affects his subsequent performance of activities, etc. in a spiral. In this sense, the self-image is a kind of individually self-fulfilling prediction.

K. Hayes's hypothesis about the correlation of motives and intelligence can be attributed to more theoretical ones. Defining intelligence as a set of learning abilities, K. Hayes argues that the nature of motivation affects the type and amount of perceived knowledge. In particular, the intellectual development is affected by the strength of "motives developed in the process of life." Examples of such motives include exploration, manipulative activity, curiosity, play, baby babbling, and other intrinsically motivated behaviors. Referring primarily to research on animal behavior, Hayes argues that "lifetime motives" are genetically determined and are the only heritable basis for individual differences in intelligence.

One way or another, the concept of general intellectuality remained the standard of culture and education until the appearance at the turn of the 70-80s. a new generation of theorists who have attempted to dismember the G-factor or even completely abandon this concept. R. Sternberg from Yale University developed an original three-component theory of intelligence, which claims to radically revise traditional views. G. Gardner from Harvard University and D. Feldman from Tufts University went even further in this respect.

Although Sternberg believes that IQ tests are "a relatively acceptable way to measure knowledge and analytical and critical thinking ability", he argues that such tests are still "too narrow". “There are a lot of people with high IQs who make a lot of mistakes in real life,” says Sternberg. "Other people who don't do as well on the test do well in life." According to Sternberg, these tests do not touch upon a number of important areas, such as the ability to determine the essence of the problem, the ability to navigate in a new situation, to solve old problems in a new way. Moreover, in his opinion, most IQ tests focus on what a person already knows, and not on how capable he is of learning something new. Sternberg believes that a good benchmark for measuring intelligence would be immersion in a completely different culture, because this experience would reveal both the practical side of intelligence and its ability to perceive new things.

Although Sternberg essentially takes the traditional view of general mental development, he introduces changes to this concept that include some often neglected aspects of mental abilities. He develops the "theory of three principles", which according to; posits the existence of three components of intelligence. The first covers the purely internal mechanisms of mental activity, in particular the ability of a person to plan and evaluate the situation in order to solve problems. The second component includes the functioning of a person in the environment, i.e. his capacity for what most people would call just common sense. The third component concerns the relationship of intelligence with life experience, especially in the case of a person's reaction to the new.

Professor of the University of Pennsylvania J. Baron considers the disadvantage of existing IQ tests that they do not assess rational thinking. Rational thinking, i.e. deep and critical inquiry into problems, as well as self-assessment, are a key component of what Baron calls "a new theory about the components of intelligence." He argues that such thinking can easily be assessed using an individual test: “You give the student a problem and ask him to think aloud. Is he capable of alternatives, of new ideas? How does he respond to your advice?

Sternberg disagrees: "Insight is an integral part of my theory of intelligence, but I don't think insight is a rational process."

Baron, on the contrary, believes that thinking almost always goes through the same stages: articulating possibilities, evaluating data, and setting goals. The difference is only in what is given more importance, for example, in the artistic field, the definition of goals rather than the evaluation of data prevails.

Although Sternberg and Baron attempt to dissect intelligence into its component parts, the traditional notion of general intelligence is implicitly present in the concept of each of them.

Gardner and Feldman take a different direction. Both are leaders of the Spectrum Project, a collaborative effort to develop new ways of assessing intelligence. They argue that a person has not one intellectuality, but several. In other words, they are not looking for "something", but "plurality". In Forms of the Intellect, Gardner put forward the idea that there are seven aspects of intelligence inherent in man. Among them there is linguistic intelligence and logical-mathematical, assessed by the IQ test. He then lists abilities that traditional scholars would never consider intellectual in the full sense of the word - musical ability, spatial vision ability, and kinesthetic ability.

To the even greater indignation of supporters of traditional tests, Gardner adds "intrapersonal" and "interpersonal" forms of intelligence: the first approximately corresponds to self-awareness, and the second - sociability, the ability to communicate with others. One of Gardner's main points is that you can be "smart" in one area and "stupid" in another.

Gardner's ideas developed in the course of his research on both individuals suffering from impaired brain activity and child prodigies. The former, he found, were capable of certain mental functions and incapable of others; the second showed brilliant abilities in a certain area and only mediocre in other areas. Feldman also came up with his ideas about multiple intelligences in connection with the study of child prodigies. He puts forward the main criterion: the ability to be studied must correspond to a certain role, profession or purpose of a person in the world of adults. He says that “this limitation allows us not to increase the number of forms of intelligence to a thousand, ten thousand, or a million. One can imagine hundreds of forms of intelligence, but when you're dealing with human activities, it doesn't seem like an exaggeration."

These are just some of the many different approaches that today make up the motley mosaic called "theories of intelligence." Today we have to recognize that intelligence is more of an abstract concept that combines many factors, rather than a specific given that can be measured. In this respect, the concept of "intelligence" is somewhat akin to the concept of "weather". People have been talking about good and bad weather since time immemorial. Not so long ago, they learned how to measure air temperature and humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind speed, magnetic background... But they never learned how to measure the weather! It has remained in our perception of good or bad. Just like intelligence and stupidity.

Such reflections are suggested by acquaintance with one of the recent issues of the American popular science magazine Scientific American, which is entirely devoted to the problem of intelligence. Particular attention is drawn to several policy articles written by leading American experts on this problem. R. Sternberg's article is called "How intelligent are intelligence tests?" G. Gardner's article titled "The Varieties of Intellect" has a lot in common with it. Strikingly dissonant is an article by a less eminent specialist, Linda Gottfredson (University of Delaware), in which the author defends traditional testing and, in particular, the much-criticized G-factor (the article is called “General Intelligence Factor”). staff writer Scientific American Tim Beardsley reviews the sensational book by R. Hernstein and C. Murray "The Bell Curve" - a somewhat belated review (the book was published in 1994, and one of the authors, R. Hernstein, has already left this world), but invariably relevant in view of acute relevance of the topic itself. The journalistic pathos of the review is reflected in its title - "For Whom Does the Bell Curve Toll?".

In Hernstein and Murray's book, The Bell Curve, we are talking about a curve of normal statistical distribution of IQ measured in a fairly large group of people. In a random sample from the entire population (for example, the US population), the average value (, or the top of the bell) is taken as one hundred, and the extreme five percent on both sides account for the lower IQ values - 50-75 (mentally retarded) and the upper ones - 120-150 (highly gifted). If the sample is specially selected, for example, it is made up of students from a prestigious university or the homeless, then the entire bell shifts to the right or left. For example, for those who, for one reason or another, could not finish school, the average IQ is not 100, but 85, and for theoretical physicists, the top of the curve falls at 130.

Journalists usually start criticizing a book with doubts that the IQ value really characterizes intelligence, since this concept itself is not strictly defined. The authors understand this well and use a narrower but more precise concept - cognitive abilities. (cognitivability), which they estimate by IQ.

Hundreds of works are devoted to what is actually measured in this case, in which, in particular, a high correlation between the IQ of schoolchildren and their academic performance and, most importantly, their further successes, was unambiguously revealed. Children with IQs above 100 not only perform better on average, but they are more likely to continue their studies in colleges, get into more prestigious universities and successfully graduate from them. If they then go into science, they get higher degrees, in the army they reach higher ranks, in business they become managers or owners of larger and more successful companies, and have a higher income. On the contrary, children who had an IQ below the average were more likely to drop out of school later, a greater percentage of them divorced, had illegitimate children, became unemployed, lived on welfare.

Like it or not, it should be recognized that IQ testing is a method that allows you to evaluate mental or cognitive abilities, that is, the ability to learn and mental work, as well as achieving success in the lifestyle and according to the criteria that are accepted in developed democracies - such as modern America. Of course, survival in the Australian desert or the Guinean jungle requires abilities of a different kind and is evaluated by other criteria, but we and our kind live, thank God, not in the desert and jungle, hundreds of generations of our ancestors took care to provide us with something more complicated than rock scribbles and stone chop.

It is important to remember that the correlations between IQ and social success or failure are statistical, that is, they do not apply to individuals, but to groups of individuals. A particular boy with an IQ of 90 may study better and achieve more in life than another boy with an IQ of 110, but it is certain that a group with an average IQ of 90 will perform worse on average than a group with an average IQ of 110.

The question of whether the abilities measured by IQ tests are inherited has been hotly debated for several decades. Now the discussion has somewhat subsided due to the presence of reliably established patterns confirming the fact of inheritance, as well as due to the obvious unsubstantiated arguments of the opposite side. Hundreds of serious works have been devoted to the transmission of IQ by inheritance, the results of which sometimes differ significantly from each other. Therefore, it is now customary to rely not on any one, maybe very thorough work, but to use the results of each study only as a point on the graph. The dependence of IQ similarity in two people on the degree of relationship between them, that is, on the number of common genes, is expressed by correlation and heritability coefficients (they are not the same thing), which can vary from 0 in the absence of any dependence to 1.0 with absolute dependence. This correlation is quite significant (0.4-0.5) in parents and children or siblings. But in monozygotic twins (MZ), in which all genes are identical, the correlation is especially high - up to 0.8.

However, with a strict approach, this still does not allow us to assert that IQ is entirely determined by genes. After all, usually siblings live together, that is, under the same conditions, which can affect their IQ, bringing their values closer. Observations on separated twins, that is, those rare cases when twins were brought up in different conditions from childhood (and not just apart, since conditions in families of relatives may differ slightly), are decisive. Such cases are carefully collected and studied. In most scientific studies devoted to them, the correlation coefficient turned out to be 0.8. However, Hernstein and Murray, out of caution, write that IQ depends on genes by 60-80 percent, and the remaining 20-40 percent from external conditions. Thus, the cognitive abilities of a person are mainly, although not exclusively, determined by his heredity. They also depend on the surrounding conditions, on upbringing and training, but to a much lesser extent.

There are two fundamental questions that I would like to discuss in more detail. One is about ethnic differences in IQ, which caused the most buzz. The second question is about the isolation in American society of two extreme groups with high and low IQ. For some reason, this question - important and new - is hardly mentioned in the reviews, although the book itself is devoted to it.

The fact that people belonging to different races and nations differ in appearance, frequency of blood types, national character, etc., is well known and does not cause objections. Usually they compare the criteria for the normal distribution of quantitative traits that overlap each other in different peoples, but may differ in the average value, that is, the top of the "bell". Average cognitive abilities measured by IQ, being, as it has been convincingly shown, predominantly hereditary, can serve as a characteristic of race or nation, such as skin color, nose shape or eye shape. Numerous measurements of IQ in different ethnic groups, mainly in the United States, have shown that the largest and most significant differences are found between black and white Americans. Representatives of the yellow race, who assimilated in America from China, Japan, and Southeast Asia, have a significant, albeit slight, advantage over whites. Among the whites, Ashkenazi Jews stand out somewhat, who, unlike the Palestinian Sephardim, lived for two millennia in dispersion among the European peoples.

If the entire population of America has an average IQ of 100, then it is 85 for African Americans and 105 for whites. nor for accusing psychologists of tendentiousness.

Racism, that is, the assertion that one race is superior to another and therefore they should have different rights, has nothing to do with the scientific discussion about IQ. The higher average IQ of the Japanese does not give them an advantage in rights, just as these rights do not decrease due to their smaller height on average.

Not too serious are the objections of biased critics who say that the lower IQ of blacks is due to the "white mentality" of the test compilers. This is easily refuted by the fact that, given the same IQ, blacks and whites are the same in terms of the criteria by which we generally judge what is measured by intelligence tests. The group of African Americans with an average IQ of 110 (their proportion among blacks is noticeably smaller than among whites) does not differ from the group of whites with the same IQ either in school and university success or in other manifestations of cognitive abilities.

Belonging to a group with a lower average IQ should not make the individual feel doomed. Firstly, his own IQ may turn out to be higher than the average for his group, and secondly, his personal fate may develop more successfully, since the correlation between IQ and social success is not absolute. And finally, thirdly, his own efforts, expressed in obtaining a better education, play, although not decisive, but quite a definite role.

However, being in a group with a lower average IQ poses serious problems that are hard to ignore. The share of the unemployed, low-paid, poorly educated and living on state benefits, as well as drug addicts and criminals, is significantly higher among the black population of America. In no small measure this is determined by the vicious circle of social conditions, but cannot but depend on their lower IQ. To break this vicious circle, as well as compensate for natural “injustices,” the US authorities have introduced an “affirmative action” program that provides a number of benefits to blacks, some Hispanics, the disabled, and some other minorities who might otherwise be discriminated against. Hernstein and Murray discuss this difficult situation, often perceived as racism in reverse, that is, discrimination against whites based on skin color (as well as on gender, health status, non-membership of sexual minorities). There is a bitter joke among Americans: “Who has the best chance of being hired right now? One-legged black lesbian!” The authors of the book believe that the artificial attraction of individuals with insufficiently high IQ to activities that require high intelligence does not so much solve as creates problems.

As for the second question, it seems to be even more significant. Around the beginning of the 60s. in the United States, the stratification of society began, the separation of two little mixing groups from it - with high and low IQ. According to cognitive ability (IQ), Hernstein and Murray divide modern American society into five classes: I - very high (IQ = 125-150, there are 5% of them, that is, 12.5 million); II - high (110-125, 20% of them, or 50 million); III - normal (90-110, 50% of them, 125 million); IV - low (75-90.20%, 50 million) and V - very low (50-75.5%, 12.5 million). According to the authors, in recent decades, a separate intellectual elite has formed from members of the first class, which increasingly occupies the most prestigious and highly paid positions in government, business, science, medicine, and jurisprudence. In this group, the average IQ is increasing, and it is increasingly fenced off from the rest of society. A genetic role in this isolation is played by the preference shown by carriers of high IQs to each other when entering into marriages. With a high heritability of intelligence, this creates a kind of self-reproducing caste of people belonging to the first class.

A distorted mirror image of the privileged group in the USA looks like the group of "poor", consisting of persons with low cognitive ability (V and partly IV classes with IQ = 50-80). They differ from the middle classes, not to mention the upper classes, in a number of respects. First of all, they are poor (of course, by American standards). To a large extent, their poverty is determined by their social background: the children of poor parents, growing up, are poor 8 times more often than the children of the rich. However, the role of IQ is more significant: in parents with low IQ (grade V), children become poor 15 times (!) More often than in parents with high IQ (grade I). Children with low IQs are significantly more likely to drop out of school without finishing. Among people with low IQ, there are significantly more of those who cannot and those who do not want to find a job. They live on state benefits (welfare) mainly for people with low IQ. The average IQ for law breakers is 90, but for repeat offenders it is even lower. Demographic problems are also related to OQ: women with high IQ (grades I and II) give birth less and later. In the US, there is an increasing group of women who, while still at school age, have illegitimate children, do not look for work and live on welfare. Their daughters, as a rule, choose the same path, thus creating a vicious circle, reproducing and increasing the lower caste. Not surprisingly, in terms of IQ, they belong to the two lowest classes.

The authors of the book draw attention to the negative consequences that the increased attention of the government and society to the lower strata of society leads to. In an effort to achieve social justice and reduce differences in levels of education and income, the American administration directs the main attention and funds of taxpayers to the strained and hopeless pulling up of the lower to the higher. The reverse trend exists in the school system, where programs are not aimed at the best and not even at the average, but at the lagging behind. In the United States, only 0.1% of the funds allocated for education goes to the education of gifted students, while 92% of the funds are spent on pulling up those who are lagging behind (with low IQ). As a result, the quality of school education in the United States is declining, and the mathematical problems that were given to fifteen-year-old schoolchildren at the beginning of the last century cannot be solved by their peers today.

Thus, the purpose of the Bell Curve is not at all to show ethnic differences in cognitive abilities, nor is it to show that these differences are largely genetically determined. These objective and repeatedly confirmed data have not been the subject of scientific discussion for a long time. A seriously justified and disturbing observation is the separation of two "castes" in American society. Their isolation from each other and the degree of their differences increase over time. In addition, the lower caste has a more pronounced tendency towards active self-reproduction, threatening the entire nation with intellectual degradation (which is worth thinking about for the advocates of increasing the birth rate at any cost).

Popular psychological encyclopedia. - M.: Eksmo. S.S. Stepanov. 2005 .

Intelligence

Despite early attempts to define intelligence in terms of the so-called common factor, most modern definitions emphasize the ability to function effectively in the environment, implying the adaptive nature of intelligence. The concept of intelligence in psychology is inevitably combined with the concept of IQ (), which is calculated from the results of tests for mental development. Because these tests measure adaptive behavior in a specific cultural context, they are almost always culturally biased; in other words, it is difficult to measure the degree of adaptability and effectiveness of behavior outside of a given culture.

Psychology. AND I. Dictionary-reference book / Per. from English. K. S. Tkachenko. - M.: FAIR-PRESS. Wikipedia