Until the 1960s, intelligence research was dominated by the factorial approach. However, with the development of cognitive psychology, with its emphasis on information processing models (see Chapter 9), a new approach has emerged. Different researchers define it somewhat differently, but the main idea is to explain intelligence in terms of the cognitive processes that occur when we perform intellectual activities (Hunt, 1990; Carpenter, Just & Shell, 1990). The information approach raises the following questions:

1. What mental processes are involved in various intelligence tests?

2. How fast and accurate are these processes?

3. What kind of mental representations of information are used in these processes?

Instead of explaining intelligence in terms of factors, the informational approach seeks to determine what mental processes are behind intelligent behavior. He assumes that individual differences in the solution of a particular problem depend on the specific processes involved in its solution by different individuals, and on the speed and accuracy of these processes. The goal is to use the information model of a particular task to find measures that characterize the processes involved in this task. These measures can be very simple, such as the response time to multiple choices, or the reaction rate of the subject, or the eye movements and cortical evoked potentials associated with that response. Any information necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of each component process is used.

Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences

Howard Gardner (Gardner, 1983) developed his theory of multiple intelligences as a radical alternative to what he calls the "classical" view of intelligence as the capacity for logical reasoning.

Gardner was struck by the variety of adult roles in different cultures - roles based on a wide variety of abilities and skills, equally necessary for survival in their respective cultures. Based on his observations, he came to the conclusion that instead of a single basic intellectual ability, or "g factor", there are many different intellectual abilities that occur in various combinations. Gardner defines intelligence as "the ability to solve problems or create products, due to specific cultural characteristics or social environment" (1993, p. 15). It is the multiple nature of intelligence that allows people to take on such diverse roles as doctor, farmer, shaman, and dancer (Gardner, 1993a).

Gardner notes that intelligence is not a “thing”, not a device located in the head, but “a potentiality, the presence of which allows an individual to use forms of thinking that are adequate to specific types of context” (Kornhaber & Gardner, 1991, p. 155). He believes that there are at least 6 various kinds intelligence, independent of one another and acting in the brain as independent systems (or modules), each according to its own rules. These include: a) linguistic; b) logical and mathematical; c) spatial; d) musical; e) bodily-kinesthetic and f) personality modules. The first three modules are familiar components of intelligence, and they are measured by standard intelligence tests. The last three, according to Gardner, deserve a similar status, but Western society has emphasized the first three types and virtually excluded the rest. These types of intelligence are described in more detail in Table. 12.6.

Table 12.6. Seven intellectual abilities according to Gardner

1. Verbal intelligence - the ability to generate speech, including the mechanisms responsible for the phonetic (speech sounds), syntactic (grammar), semantic (meaning) and pragmatic components of speech (the use of speech in various situations).

2. Musical intelligence - the ability to generate, transmit and understand the meanings associated with sounds, including the mechanisms responsible for the perception of pitch, rhythm and timbre (qualitative characteristics) of sound.

3. Logico-mathematical intelligence - the ability to use and evaluate the relationship between actions or objects when they are not actually present, that is, to abstract thinking.

4. Spatial intelligence - the ability to perceive visual and spatial information, modify it and recreate visual images without recourse to the original stimuli. Includes the ability to construct images in three dimensions, as well as mentally move and rotate these images.

5. Body-kinesthetic intelligence - the ability to use all parts of the body when solving problems or creating products; includes control over gross and fine motor movements and the ability to manipulate external objects.

6. Intrapersonal intelligence - the ability to recognize one's own feelings, intentions and motives.

7. Interpersonal intelligence - the ability to recognize and discriminate between the feelings, attitudes and intentions of other people.

(Adapted from: Gardner, Kornhaber & Wake, 1996)

In particular, Gardner argues that musical intelligence, including the ability to perceive pitch and rhythm, has been more important than logico-mathematical for much of human history. Body-kinesthetic intelligence includes control of one's body and the ability to skillfully manipulate objects: dancers, gymnasts, artisans, and neurosurgeons are examples. Personal intelligence consists of two parts. Intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to monitor one's feelings and emotions, distinguish between them, and use this information to guide one's actions. Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to notice and understand the needs and intentions of others and monitor their mood in order to predict their future behavior.

Gardner analyzes each type of intelligence from several positions: the cognitive operations involved in it; the appearance of child prodigies and other exceptional personalities; data on cases of brain damage; its manifestations in various cultures and the possible course of evolutionary development. For example, with certain brain damage, one type of intelligence may be impaired, while others remain unaffected. Gardner notes that the abilities of adult representatives of different cultures are different combinations of certain types of intelligence. Although all normal individuals are capable of exhibiting all varieties of intelligence to some degree, each individual has a unique combination of higher and lower intellectual abilities (Walters & Gardner, 1985), which explains the individual differences between people.

As we have noted, conventional IQ tests are good at predicting college grades, but they are less valid at predicting future job success or career advancement. Measures of other abilities, such as personal intelligence, may help explain why some excellent college performers become miserable failures later in life, while less successful students become worship leaders (Kornhaber, Krechevsky & Gardner, 1990). Therefore, Gardner and his colleagues call for an "intellectual-objective" assessment of students' abilities. This will allow children to demonstrate their abilities in ways other than paper tests, such as putting different items together to demonstrate spatial imagination skills.

Anderson's Theory of Intelligence and Cognitive Development

One of the criticisms of Gardner's theory indicates that a high level of ability related to any of the manifestations of intelligence he identifies, as a rule, correlates with high level abilities related to other manifestations of intelligence; that is, that none of the specific abilities are completely independent of the others (Messick, 1992; Scarr, 1985). In addition, psychologist Mike Anderson points out that Gardner does not clearly define the nature of multiple intellectual abilities - he calls them "behaviors, cognitive processes, brain structures" (1992, p. 67). Because of this uncertainty, Anderson tried to develop a theory based on the idea of ​​general intelligence put forward by Thurstone and others.

Anderson's theory states that individual differences in intelligence and developmental changes in intellectual competence are explained by a number of different mechanisms. Differences in intelligence are the result of differences in the "basic mechanisms of information processing", which involve thinking and, in turn, lead to the acquisition of knowledge. The speed at which recycling processes take place varies among individuals. Thus, an individual with a slow-functioning basic processing mechanism is likely to have greater difficulty in acquiring new knowledge than an individual with a fast-functioning processing mechanism. This is equivalent to saying that a slow processing mechanism is the cause of low general intelligence.

However, Anderson notes that there are cognitive mechanisms that are not characterized by individual differences. For example, individuals with Down syndrome may not be able to put two and two together, but they are aware that other people have beliefs and act on those beliefs (Anderson, 1992). The mechanisms that provide such universal abilities are called "modules". Each module functions independently, performing complex calculations. Modules are not affected by the underlying processing mechanisms; in principle, they are automatic. According to Anderson, it is the maturation of new modules that explains the growth of cognitive abilities in the process of individual development. For example, the maturation of the module responsible for speech explains the development of the ability to speak in full (expanded) sentences.

According to Anderson's theory, in addition to modules, intelligence includes two "specific abilities". One of them is related to propositional thinking (a linguistic mathematical expression), and the other is related to visual and spatial functioning. Anderson believes that tasks that require these abilities are performed by "specific processors". Unlike modules, specific processors are affected by underlying processing mechanisms. High-speed processing mechanisms allow the individual to use specific processors more efficiently and thereby score higher on tests and achieve more in real life.

Thus, Anderson's theory of intelligence suggests that there are two different "routes" to the acquisition of knowledge. The first involves the use of basic processing mechanisms, leading through specific processors to the acquisition of knowledge. From Anderson's point of view, it is this process that we understand by "thinking" and it is he who is responsible for individual differences regarding intelligence (from his point of view, equivalent to differences in knowledge). The second route involves using modules to acquire knowledge. Knowledge based on modules, such as the perception of three-dimensional space, comes automatically if the corresponding module is sufficiently matured, and this explains the development of intelligence.

Anderson's theory can be illustrated by the example of a 21-year-old young man, known by the initials M. A., who suffered from childhood convulsions and was diagnosed with autism. Upon reaching adulthood, he could not speak and received the lowest scores on psychometric tests. However, he was found to have an IQ of 128 and an extraordinary ability to operate on prime numbers, which he performed more accurately than a specialist with a degree in mathematics (Anderson, 1992). Anderson concluded that M.A.'s basic processing mechanism was not damaged, which allowed him to think in abstract symbols, but his linguistic modules were affected, which prevented him from mastering everyday knowledge and communication processes.

Sternberg's triarchic theory

Unlike Anderson's theory, Sternberg's triarchic theory considers individual experience and context, as well as the basic mechanisms of information processing. Sternberg's theory includes three parts, or sub-theories: a component sub-theory that considers thought processes; experimental (experiential) sub-theory, which considers the influence of individual experience on intelligence; a contextual sub-theory that considers environmental and cultural influences (Sternberg, 1988). The most developed of them is the component subtheory.

Component theory considers the components of thinking. Sternberg identifies three types of components:

1. Metacomponents used for planning, control, monitoring and evaluation of information processing in the process of solving problems.

2. Executive components responsible for the use of problem solving strategies.

3. Components of knowledge acquisition (knowledge), responsible for coding, combining and comparing information in the process of solving problems.

These components are interconnected; they all participate in the process of solving the problem, and none of them can function independently of the others.

Sternberg considers the functioning of the components of intelligence on the example of the following analogy task:

“A lawyer treats a client as a doctor treats: a) medicine; b) patient"

A series of experiments with such problems led Sternberg to conclude that the encoding process and the comparison process are critical components. The subject encodes each of the words of the proposed task by forming a mental representation of this word, in this case- a list of features of this word, reproduced from long-term memory. For example, a mental representation of the word "lawyer" might include the following attributes: college education, knowledge of legal procedures, representing a client in court, and so on. After the subject has formed a mental representation for each word from the presented problem, the comparison process scans these representations for matching features that lead to a solution to the problem.

Other processes are also involved in analogy problems, but Sternberg showed that individual differences in the solutions to this problem fundamentally depend on the efficiency of the coding and comparison processes. According to experimental data, individuals who perform better in solving analogy problems (experienced in solving) spend more time coding and form more accurate mental representations than individuals who perform poorly in such tasks (inexperienced in solving). At the comparison stage, on the contrary, those who are experienced in solving compare features faster than those who are inexperienced, but both are equally accurate. Thus, the better performance of proficient subjects is based on the greater accuracy of their encoding process, but the time it takes them to solve a problem is a complex mixture of slow encoding and fast comparison (Galotti, 1989; Pellegrino, 1985).

However, it is not possible to fully explain the individual differences between people observed in the intellectual sphere with the help of the component subtheory alone. An experiential theory has been developed to explain the role of individual experience in the functioning of the intellect. According to Sternberg, differences in people's experiences affect decision making. specific tasks. An individual who has not previously encountered a particular concept, for example, mathematical formula or analogy tasks, will have more difficulty using the concept than an individual who has already used it. Thus, individual experience associated with a particular task or problem can range from complete lack of experience to automatic completion of the task (that is, to the complete familiarity of the task as a result of long experience of contact with it).

Of course, the fact that an individual is familiar with certain concepts is largely determined by the environment. This is where contextual sub-theory comes into play. This subtheory considers the cognitive activity required to adapt to specific environmental contexts (Sternberg, 1985). It is focused on the analysis of three intellectual processes: adaptation, selection and formation of the environmental conditions that actually surround him. According to Sternberg, the individual first of all looks for ways to adapt or adapt to the environment. If adaptation is not possible, the individual tries to choose a different environment or to shape the conditions of the existing environment in such a way that he can more successfully adapt to them. For example, if a person is unhappy in a marriage, it may be impossible for him to adapt to his surroundings. Therefore, he or she may choose a different environment (for example, if he or she separates or divorces his or her spouse) or tries to shape existing conditions in a more acceptable way (for example, by going to family counseling) (Sternberg, 1985).

Bioecological theory of Cesi

Some critics argue that Sternberg's theory is so multi-component that its individual parts do not agree with each other (Richardson, 1986). Others point out that this theory does not explain how problem solving is carried out in everyday contexts. Still others point out that this theory largely ignores the biological aspects of intelligence. Stefan Ceci (1990) tried to answer these questions by developing Sternberg's theory and paying much more attention to the context and its influence on the process of problem solving.

Cesi believes that there are "multiple cognitive potentials", as opposed to a single basic intellectual ability or factor of general intelligence g. These multiple abilities or areas of intelligence are biologically determined and impose restrictions on mental (mental) processes. Moreover, they are closely related to the problems and opportunities inherent in the individual environment or context.

According to Cesi, context plays a central role in demonstrating cognitive abilities. By "context" he means areas of knowledge, as well as factors such as personality traits, level of motivation and education. The context can be mental, social and physical (Ceci & Roazzi, 1994). A particular individual or population may lack certain mental abilities, but in the presence of a more interesting and stimulating context, the same individual or population may demonstrate a higher level of intellectual functioning. Let's take just one example; in a well-known longitudinal study of children with high IQ by Lewis Terman (Terman & Oden, 1959), it was suggested that high IQ correlated with high levels of achievement. However, upon closer analysis of the results, it was found that children from wealthy families achieved greater success in adulthood than children from low-income families. In addition, those who grew up during the Great Depression achieved less in life than those who came of age later, at a time when career prospects were greater. According to Tsesi, “as a result ... the ecological niche that the individual occupies, including factors such as individual and historical development, turns out to be a much more significant determinant of professional and economic success than IQ” (1990, p. 62).

Cesi also argues against the traditional view of the relationship between intelligence and the ability to think abstractly, regardless of the subject area. He believes that the ability for complex mental activity is associated with knowledge acquired in certain contexts or areas. Highly intelligent individuals are not endowed with great abilities for abstract thinking, but have sufficient knowledge in specific areas, allowing them to think in a more complex way about problems in this field of knowledge (Ceci, 1990). In the process of working in a certain field of knowledge - for example, in computer programming - the individual knowledge base grows and becomes better organized. Over time, this allows the individual to improve his intellectual functioning - for example, to develop better computer programs.

Thus, according to Cexi's theory, everyday, or "life", intellectual functioning cannot be explained on the basis of IQ alone or some biological concept of general intelligence. Instead, intelligence is defined by the interaction between multiple cognitive potentials and a vast, well-organized knowledge base.

Theories of Intelligence: Summary

The four theories of intelligence discussed in this section differ in several respects. Gardner attempts to explain the wide variety of adult roles found in different cultures. He believes that such diversity cannot be explained by the existence of a basic universal intellectual ability, and suggests that there are at least seven different manifestations of intelligence, present in various combinations in each individual. According to Gardner, intelligence is the ability to solve problems or create products that have value in a particular culture. According to this view, a Polynesian navigator with developed skills in navigating the stars, a figure skater who successfully performs a triple Axel, or a charismatic leader who draws crowds of followers along with him are no less "intellectual" than a scientist, mathematician or engineer.

Anderson's theory attempts to explain various aspects of intelligence - not only individual differences, but also the growth of cognitive abilities in the course of individual development, as well as the existence of specific abilities, or universal abilities that do not differ from one individual to another, such as the ability to see objects in three measurements. To explain these aspects of intelligence, Anderson suggests the existence of a basic processing mechanism equivalent to Spearman's general intelligence, or g factor, along with specific processors responsible for propositional thinking and visual and spatial functioning. The existence of universal abilities is explained using the concept of "modules", the functioning of which is determined by the degree of maturation.

Sternberg's triarchic theory is based on the view that earlier theories of intelligence are not wrong, but only incomplete. This theory consists of three sub-theories: a component sub-theory that considers the mechanisms of information processing; experimental (experiential) sub-theory, which takes into account individual experience in solving problems or being in certain situations; contextual sub-theory that considers the relationship between the external environment and individual intelligence.

Cesi's bioecological theory is a development of Sternberg's theory and explores the role of context at a deeper level. Rejecting the idea of ​​a single general intellectual ability to solve abstract problems, Cesi believes that the basis of intelligence is multiple cognitive potentials. These potentials are biologically determined, but the degree of their manifestation is determined by the knowledge accumulated by the individual in a certain area. Thus, according to Cesi, knowledge is one of the most important factors of intelligence.

Despite these differences, all theories of intelligence have a number of common features. All of them try to take into account the biological basis of intelligence, whether it be a basic processing mechanism or a set of multiple intellectual abilities, modules or cognitive potentials. In addition, three of these theories emphasize the role of the context in which the individual functions, that is, environmental factors that influence intelligence. Thus, the development of a theory of intelligence implies further study of the complex interactions between biological and environmental factors that are at the center of modern psychological research.

1. Representatives of the behavioral sciences, as a rule, quantify the degree of difference of one group of people from another on the basis of a certain measure of personal quality or ability, calculating the variance of the obtained indicators. The more individuals in a group differ from each other, the higher the variance. Researchers can then determine how much of that variance is attributable to one cause or another. The proportion of the variance of a trait that is explained (or caused) by the genetic difference of individuals is called the heritability of that trait. Since heritability is a proportion, it is expressed as a number from 0 to 1. For example, the heritability of height is about 0.90: differences in people's height are almost entirely due to their genetic differences.

2. Heritability can be assessed by comparing correlations obtained for pairs of identical twins (who share all the genes) and correlations obtained for pairs of related twins (who, on average, share about half of the genes). If, for some trait, pairs of identical twins are more similar than pairs of related ones, then this trait has a genetic component. Heritability can also be assessed by correlation within identical pairs of twins raised apart from each other in different environments. Any correlation within such pairs must be explained by their genetic similarity.

3. Heritability is often misunderstood; therefore, it must be taken into account that: a) it indicates the difference between individuals. It does not show how much of a particular trait in an individual is due to genetic factors; b) it is not a fixed attribute of a feature. If something affects the variability of a trait in a group, then heritability also changes; c) heritability shows the variance in a group. It indicates the source of the mean difference between groups; d) heritability shows how changes in the environment can change the average indicator of a trait in a population.

4. Genetic and environmental factors do not act independently in the formation of personality, but are closely intertwined from the moment of birth. Because both a child's personality and home environments are a function of parental genes, there is a built-in correlation between a child's genotype (inherited personality traits) and that environment.

5. The three dynamic processes of interaction between the individual and the environment include: a) reactive interaction: different individuals experience and interpret the action of the same environment in different ways and react to it differently; b) evoked interaction: the personality of the individual causes different reactions in other people; c) proactive interaction: individuals choose and create their own environment. As the child grows, the role of proactive interaction increases.

6. A number of mysteries have been revealed in twin studies: the heritability estimated from identical twins raised apart is significantly higher than that estimated from comparing identical and consanguineous twins. Identical twins who grew up apart are just as similar to each other as twins who grew up together, but the similarity of related twins and single siblings decreases over time, even if they grew up together. This is partly due, apparently, to the fact that when all the genes are shared, they are more than twice as efficient as when only half of the genes are shared. These patterns can also be partially explained by the three processes of interaction between the person and the environment (reactive, evoked and proactive).

7. Except for genetic similarity, children from the same family are no more similar than children randomly selected from the group. This means that the variables that are usually studied by psychologists (the characteristics of upbringing and the socioeconomic situation of the family) hardly contribute to interindividual differences. Researchers should take a closer look at the differences in children within the same family. This result can also be partially explained by the three processes of interaction between the person and the environment.

8. Tests designed to assess intelligence and personality are required to give repeatable and consistent results (reliability) and measure exactly what they are designed to measure (validity).

9. The first intelligence tests were developed by the French psychologist Alfred Binet, who proposed the concept of mental age. In a gifted child, mental age is above chronological, and in a child with delayed development, it is below chronological. The concept of intelligence quotient (IQ) as the ratio of mental age to chronological age, multiplied by 100, was introduced when the Binet scales were revised and the Stanford-Binet test was created. Many intelligence test scores are still expressed as IQ scores, but they are no longer calculated using the old formula.

10. Both Binet and Wexler, the developer of the Wexler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), believed that intelligence is the general ability to think. Similarly, Spearman suggested that the general intelligence factor (g) determines an individual's performance in relation to various test items. The method of identifying the various abilities underlying achievement on intelligence tests is called factor analysis.

11. In order to identify a comprehensive but reasonable number of personality traits on which to evaluate an individual, the researchers first selected from the complete dictionary all the words (about 18,000) denoting personality traits; then their number was reduced. Individuals' scores on the traits anchored in the remaining terms were processed by factor analysis to determine how many parameters are required to explain the correlations between the scales. Although the number of factors varies from researcher to researcher, scientists recently agreed that a set of five factors would be the best compromise. They were called the "big five" and abbreviated as "OCEAN"; the five main factors are: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, compliance, and neuroticism.

12. Personality Questionnaires serve to report individuals on their opinions or reactions to certain situations indicated in the question. Responses to subgroups of test items are summarized to obtain scores on different scales or factors of the questionnaire. Most questionnaire items are compiled or selected on the basis of one theory or another, but they can also be selected by correlation with an external criterion - this method of compiling a test is called criterion binding. The best example available is the Minnesota Multidisciplinary Personality Inventory (MMPI), which was developed to identify individuals with mental disorders. For example, the point at which schizophrenics are much more likely than normal people, answer "correct", is selected as an item on the schizophrenia scale.

13. The informational approach to intelligence seeks to explain intellectual behavior in terms of the cognitive processes involved in an individual's solution of tasks from an intelligence test.

14. Recent theories of intelligence include Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, Anderson's theory of intelligence and cognitive development, Sternberg's triarchic theory, and Cesi's ecobiological theory. All of these theories, to varying degrees, consider the interaction between biological and environmental factors that affect the functioning of the intellect.

Key terms

Heredity

Reliability

Validity

Intelligence quotient (IQ)

Personality

Personality Questionnaire

Questions for reflection

1. If you have siblings, how different are you from them? Can you identify how these differences might be influenced by the person-environment interactions described in this chapter? Can you tell how the parenting strategies used by your parents differed for each of the children in your family, depending on their personality characteristics?

2. Standardized tests such as the SAT provide a nationwide measure of achievement, allowing graduates from any school in the country to compete equally for admission to top colleges. Prior to the introduction of standardized tests, students were often unable to demonstrate that they had the required level of achievement, and colleges favored students from well-known schools or those with "family ties." However, critics argue that the widespread popularity of standardized tests in selecting well-prepared students has led to admissions committees have begun to place too much weight on test scores, and schools have begun to tweak their learning programs for the tests themselves. In addition, critics claim that standardized tests are biased towards certain ethnic groups. Considering all these factors, do you think that the widespread use of standardized tests contributes to or hinders the achievement of the goal of equal opportunity for our society?

3. How would you rate yourself on the Big Five scales that measure personality traits? Do you think that your personality can be adequately described using this model? What aspects of your personality might be overlooked in this description? If you and a close friend (family member) had to describe your personality, what characteristics would you likely disagree on? Why? When describing what traits of your personality could your chosen person be more accurate than yourself? If there are such traits, why can another person describe you more accurately than yourself?

Spearman's two-factor theory of intelligence. The first work in which an attempt was made to analyze the structure of the properties of intelligence appeared in 1904. Its author, Charles Spearman, an English statistician and psychologist, the creator of factor analysis, drew attention to the fact that there are correlations between different intelligence tests: the one who is good performs some tests is, on average, quite successful in others. In order to understand the reason for these correlations, Spirzan developed a special statistical procedure that allows you to combine correlated intelligence measures and determine what minimal amount intellectual characteristics, which is necessary in order to explain the relationships between different tests. This procedure was, as we have already mentioned, called factor analysis, various modifications of which are actively used in modern psychology.

Having factorized different tests intelligence, Spearman came to the conclusion that correlations between tests are the result of a common factor underlying them. He called this factor the "g factor" (from the word general - general). The general factor is crucial for the level of intelligence: according to Spearman's ideas, people differ mainly in the degree to which they possess the g factor.

In addition to the general factor, there are also specific ones that determine the success of various specific tests. Thus, the performance of spatial tests depends on the g factor and spatial abilities, math tests- on the factor g and mathematical abilities. The greater the influence of the g factor, the higher the correlations between tests; the greater the influence of specific factors, the less is the relationship between the tests. The influence of specific factors on individual differences between people, according to Spearman, is of limited importance, since they do not appear in all situations, and therefore they should not be guided by when creating intelligence tests.

Thus, the structure of intellectual properties proposed by Spearman turns out to be extremely simple and is described by two types of factors - general and specific. These two types of factors gave the name of Spearman's theory - the two-factor theory of intelligence.

In a later revision of this theory, which appeared in the mid-1920s, Spearman acknowledged the existence of links between certain intelligence tests. These connections could not be explained

neither the factor g nor specific abilities, and therefore Spearman introduced to explain these relationships, the so-called group factors - more general than specific, and less general than the factor g. However, at the same time, the main postulate of Spearman's theory remained unchanged: individual differences between people in terms of intellectual characteristics are determined mainly by common abilities, i.e. factor g.

But it is not enough to single out the factor mathematically: it is also necessary to try to understand its psychological meaning. To explain the content of the common factor, Spearman made two assumptions. Firstly, the factor g determines the level of "mental energy" necessary for solving various intellectual problems. This level is not the same for different people, which leads to differences in intelligence. Secondly, the factor g is associated with three features of consciousness - with the ability to assimilate information (acquire new experience), the ability to understand the relationship between objects and the ability to transfer existing experience to new situations.

Spearman's first suggestion, regarding the level of energy, is difficult to see as anything other than a metaphor. The second assumption turns out to be more specific, determines the direction of the search for psychological characteristics and can be used to decide what characteristics are essential for understanding individual differences in intelligence. These characteristics should, firstly, be correlated with each other (since they should measure general abilities, i.e. the g factor); secondly, they can be addressed to the knowledge that a person has (since a person’s knowledge indicates his ability to assimilate information); thirdly, they must be associated with the solution of logical problems (understanding the various relationships between objects) and, fourthly, they must be associated with the ability to use existing experience in an unfamiliar situation.

Test tasks related to the search for analogies turned out to be the most adequate for identifying such psychological characteristics. An example of a technique based on the search for analogies is the Raven test (or Raven's Progressive Matrices), which was created specifically for the diagnosis of the g factor. One of the tasks of this test is shown in Figure 10.

The ideology of Spearman's two-factor theory of intelligence was used to create a number of intelligence tests, in particular, the Wechsler test, which is still used today. However, since the end of the 1920s, works have appeared in which doubts have been expressed about the universality of the factor g for understanding individual differences in intellectual characteristics, and at the end of the 30s, the existence of mutually independent factors of intelligence was experimentally proved.78

Rice. 10. An example of a task from Raven's text

Primary mental abilities. In 1938, Lewis Thurston's work "Primary Mental Powers" was published, in which the author introduced the factorization of 56 psychological tests diagnosing different intellectual characteristics. Based on this factorization, Thurston identified 12 independent factors. The tests that were included in each factor were taken as the basis for creating new test batteries, which in turn were carried out on different groups of subjects and again factorized. As a result, Thurston came to the conclusion that there are at least 7 independent intellectual factors in the intellectual sphere. The names of these factors and the interpretation of their content are presented in Table 9.

Letter designation and name of the factor

Verbal understanding

fluency

Operations with numbers

Spatial characteristics

The ability to perceive

spatial

ratios

Ability to remember verbal stimuli

The ability to quickly notice similarities and differences in stimulus objects

The ability to find general rules in the structure of the analyzed material

Table 9

Diagnostic methods

Dictionary texts (understanding of words, selection of synonyms and antonyms) Verbal analogies Completion of sentences

Selection of words for

certain

criteria (eg.

beginning

with a certain letter)

Anogram solution

Selection of rhymes

The speed of solving arithmetic problems

Rotation tests in 2D and 3D

Pair association test

Tests for comparing different objects Reading mirror reflection of text

Analogies

Continuation of digital and alphabetic sequences

cubic model structures of the intellect. Largest number The characteristics underlying individual differences in the intellectual sphere were named by J. Gilford. According to Guilford's theoretical ideas, the performance of any intellectual task depends on three components - operations, content and results.

Operations are those skills that a person must show when solving an intellectual problem. He may be required to understand the information that is presented to him, memorize it, search for the correct answer (convergent products), find not one, but many answers that equally correspond to the information he has (divergent products), and evaluate the situation in terms of right or wrong. , good bad.

The content is determined by the form of information submission. Information can be presented in visual form and in auditory form, it can contain symbolic material, semantic (i.e. presented in verbal form) and behavioral (i.e., detected when communicating with other people, when it is necessary to understand from the behavior of other people how respond appropriately to the actions of others).

Results - what a person who solves an intellectual problem eventually comes to can be presented in the form of single answers, in the form of classes or groups of answers. Solving a problem, a person can also find a relationship between different objects or understand their structure (the system underlying them). He can also transform the final result of his intellectual activity and express it in a completely different form than the one in which the source material was given. Finally, he can go beyond the information that is given to him in the test material and find the meaning or hidden meaning underlying this information, which will lead him to the correct answer.

The combination of these three components of intellectual activity - operations, content and results - forms 150 characteristics of intelligence (5 types of operations multiplied by 5 forms of content and multiplied by 6 types of results, i.e. 5x5x6=150). For clarity, Guilford presented his model of the structure of intelligence in the form of a cube, which gave the name of the model itself. Each face in this cube is one of three components, and the whole cube consists of 150 small cubes corresponding to different intellectual characteristics (see fig. P.)

For each cube (each intellectual characteristic), according to Guilford, tests can be created that will allow

6 M. Egorova 8

Operations Understanding Memory

Convergent products Divergent products Estimation Fig. eleven. Guilford's model of the structure of intelligence

diagnose this feature. For example, solving verbal analogies requires understanding the verbal (semantic) material and establishing logical connections (relationships) between objects. Determining what is incorrectly depicted in the picture (Fig. 12) requires a systematic analysis of the material presented in visual form and its evaluation.

Conducting almost 40 years of factor-analytical research, Guilford created tests for diagnosing two-thirds of his theoretical intellectual characteristics and showed that at least 105 independent factors can be distinguished (Guilford J.P., 1982). However, the mutual independence of these factors is constantly questioned, and Guilford's very idea of ​​the existence of 150 separate,

Rice. 12. An example of one of the Guildford tests

IQs that are not related to each other does not find sympathy among psychologists who study individual differences: they agree that the whole variety of intellectual characteristics cannot be reduced to one common factor, but compiling a catalog of one and a half hundred factors is the other extreme. It was necessary to look for ways that would help to streamline and correlate with each other the various characteristics of intelligence.

The opportunity to do this was seen by many researchers in finding such intellectual characteristics that would represent an intermediate level between the general factor (factor g) and individual adjacent characteristics (such as those identified by Thurston and Gilford).

Hierarchical models of intelligence. By the beginning of the 1950s, works appeared in which it is proposed to consider various intellectual characteristics as hierarchically organized structures.

In 1949, the English researcher Cyril Burt published a theoretical scheme according to which there are 5 levels in the structure of intelligence. The lowest level is formed by elementary sensory and motor processes. A more general (second) level is perception and motor coordination. The third level is represented by the processes of developing skills and memory. An even more general level (fourth) is the processes associated with logical generalization. Finally, the fifth level forms the general intelligence factor (g). Burt's scheme practically did not receive experimental verification, but it was the first attempt to create a hierarchical structure of intellectual characteristics.

The work of another English researcher, Philip Vernon, which appeared at the same time (1950), was confirmed by factor-analytic studies. Vernon identified four levels in the structure of intellectual characteristics - general intelligence,

major group factors, minor group factors, and] specific factors (see Figure 13).

General intelligence, according to Vernon's scheme, is divided into two "factors. One of them is associated with verbal and mathematical abilities and depends on education. The second is less influenced by education and relates to spatial and technical abilities and practical skills. These factors, in in turn, are subdivided into less general characteristics similar to Thurston's primary mental abilities, and the least general level is formed by features associated with the performance of specific tests.

The most famous in modern psychology hierarchical structure of the intellect was proposed by the American researcher Raymond Cattell (Cattell R., 1957, 1971). Cattell and his colleagues suggested that] certain intellectual characteristics identified on the basis of factor analysis (such as primary mental abilities

Thurston or independent Guildford factors) under secondary factorization will be combined into two groups or, in the terminology of the authors, into two broad factors. One of them, called crystallized intelligence, is associated with the knowledge and skills that a person has acquired - "crystallized" in the learning process. The second broad factor - fluid intelligence - is less related to learning and more to the ability to adapt to unfamiliar situations. The higher the fluid intelligence, the easier a person copes with new, unusual problem situations for him.

Initially, it was assumed that fluid intelligence is more connected with the natural inclinations of the intellect and is relatively free from the influence of education and upbringing (tests for its diagnostics were called so - tests free from culture). Over time, it became clear that both secondary factors, although to varying degrees, are still associated with education and in the same degree are influenced by heredity (Horn J., 1988). At present, the interpretation of fluid and crystallized intelligence as characteristics of a different nature is no longer used (one is more “social”, and the other is more “biological”).

An experimental verification of the assumption of the authors about the existence of these factors, more general than primary abilities, but less general than the g factor, was confirmed. Both crystallized and fluid intelligence turned out to be fairly general characteristics of intelligence that determine individual differences in the performance of a wide range of intelligence tests. Thus, the structure of intelligence proposed by Cattell is a three-level hierarchy. The first level is the primary mental faculties, the second level is the broad factors (fluid and crystallized intelligence) and the third level is the general intelligence.

Subsequently, with continued research by Cattell and his colleagues, it was found that the number of secondary, broad factors, is not reduced to two. There are grounds, besides fluid and crystallized intelligence, for singling out 6 more secondary factors. They combine a smaller number of primary mental faculties than fluid and crystallized intellect, but are nevertheless more general than primary mental faculties. These factors include visual processing ability, acoustic information processing ability, short-term memory, long-term memory, mathematical ability, and intelligence test speed.

Summing up the works that proposed hierarchical structures of intelligence, we can say that their authors sought to reduce the number of specific intellectual characteristics that

constantly appear in the study of the intellectual sphere. They tried to identify secondary factors that are less general than the g factor, but more general than the various intellectual characteristics related to the level of primary mental abilities. The proposed methods for studying individual differences in the intellectual sphere are test batteries that diagnose psychological characteristics described by these secondary factors.

2. COGNITIVE THEORIES OF INTELLIGENCE

Cognitive theories of intelligence suggest that the level of human intelligence is determined by the efficiency and speed of information processing processes. According to cognitive theories, the speed of information processing determines the level of intelligence: the faster information is processed, the faster the test task is solved and the higher the level of intelligence is. As indicators of the information processing process (as components of this process), any characteristics that can indirectly indicate this process can be selected - reaction time, brain rhythms, various physiological reactions. As a rule, various speed characteristics are used as the main components of intellectual activity in studies conducted in the context of cognitive theories.

As already mentioned in the discussion of the history of the psychology of individual differences, the speed of performing simple sensorimotor tasks was used as an indicator of intelligence by the creators of the first tests of mental abilities - Galton and his students and followers. However, the methods proposed by them poorly differentiated the subjects, were not associated with vital indicators of success (such as, for example, academic performance), and were not widely used.

The revival of the idea of ​​measuring intelligence using varieties of reaction time is associated with interest in the components of intellectual activity and, looking ahead, we can say that the result of modern verification of this idea differs little from the one that

got Galton.

To date, this direction has significant experimental data. Thus, it has been established that intelligence correlates weakly with the time of a simple reaction (the highest correlations rarely exceed -0.2, and in many studies they are generally close to 0). Over time, correlation choice responses are somewhat

higher (on average, up to -0.4), and the greater the number of stimuli from which one must be selected, the higher is the connection between reaction time and intelligence. However, in this case, in a number of experiments, the relationship between intelligence and reaction time was not found at all.

Relationships of intelligence with recognition time often turn out to be high (up to -0.9). However, data on the relationship between recognition time and intelligence were obtained from small samples. According to Vernon P.A., 1981, average value the sample in these studies by the beginning of the 80s was 18 people, and the maximum was 48. In a number of studies, the samples included mentally retarded subjects, which increased the spread in intelligence scores, but at the same time, due to the small sample size, overestimated the correlations. In addition, there are works in which this connection was not obtained: correlations of recognition time with intelligence vary in different works from -0.82 (the higher the intelligence, the shorter the recognition time) to 0.12 (Lubin M., FernenderS ., 1986).

Less inconsistent results were obtained when determining the execution time of complex intellectual tests. So, for example, in the works of I. Hunt, the assumption that the level of verbal intelligence is determined by the speed of retrieval of information stored in long-term memory was tested (Hunt E., 1980). Hunt recorded the time of recognition of simple verbal stimuli, for example, the rate of assigning the letters "A" and "a" to the same class, since it is the same letter, and the letters "A" and "B" - to different classes. Correlations of recognition time with verbal intelligence diagnosed by psychometric methods were equal to -0.30 - the shorter the recognition time, the higher the intelligence.

Thus, as can be seen from the magnitude of the correlation coefficients obtained between speed characteristics and intelligence, different reaction time parameters rarely show reliable relationships with intelligence, and if they do, these relationships turn out to be very weak. In other words, speed parameters cannot in any way be used to diagnose intelligence, and only a small part of individual differences in intellectual activity can be explained by the influence of information processing speed.

But the components of intellectual activity are not limited to speed correlates of mental activity. An example of a qualitative analysis of intellectual activity is the component theory of intelligence, which will be discussed in the next section.

In component intelligence Sternberg identifies three types of processes or components (Sternberg R., 1985). Performing components are the processes of perceiving information, storing it in short-term memory and retrieving information from long-term memory; they are also related to counting and comparing objects. The components associated with the acquisition of knowledge determine the processes of obtaining new information and its preservation. Metacompo-! nents control performance components and knowledge acquisition; they also define strategies for solving problem situations. As Sternberg's studies have shown, the success of solving intellectual problems depends, first of all, on the adequacy of the components used, and not on the speed of information processing. Often a more successful solution is associated with more time.

empiric intelligence includes two characteristics - the ability to cope with a new situation and the ability to automate some processes. If a person is faced with a new problem, the success of its solution depends on how quickly and effectively the metacomponents of activity responsible for developing a strategy for solving the problem are updated. In cases where problems X is not new for a person, when he encounters it not for the first time, the success of its solution is determined by the degree of automation of skills.

situational intelligence- this is the intelligence that manifests itself in everyday life when solving everyday problems (practical intelligence) and when communicating with others (social intelligence).

To diagnose component and empirical intelligence, Sternberg uses standard intelligence tests, i.e. The theory of triune intelligence does not introduce completely new indicators for defining two types of intelligence, but provides a new explanation for the indicators used in psychometric theories.

Since situational intelligence is not measured in psychometric theories, Sternberg developed his own tests to diagnose it. They are based on the resolution of various practical situations and turned out to be quite successful. The success of their implementation, for example, significantly correlates with the level of wages, i.e. with an indicator indicating the ability to resolve real life problems.

Hierarchy of intellects. The English psychologist Hans Eysenck distinguishes the following hierarchy of intelligence types: biological-psychometric-social.

Based on data on the associations of speed characteristics with intelligence measures (which, as we have seen, are not very reliable), Eysenck believes that much of the phenomenology of intelligence testing can be interpreted in terms of temporal characteristics - the speed of solving intelligence tests is considered by Eysenck to be the main reason for individual differences in intelligence points obtained during the testing procedure. The speed and success of performing simple tasks is considered in this case as the probability of the unhindered passage of encoded information through the "channels of the neural connection" (or, conversely, the probability of delays and distortions that occur in the conducting nerve pathways). This probability is the basis of "biological" intelligence.

Biological intelligence, measured by reaction time and psychophysiological measures, and determined, as Eysenck (1986) suggests, by genotype and biochemical and physiological patterns, determines to a large extent "psychometric" intelligence, that is, the one that we measure with IQ tests, but IQ (or psychometric intelligence) tests

there is the influence of not only biological intelligence, but also cultural factors - the socio-economic status of the individual, his education; niya, the conditions in which he was brought up, etc. Thus, there is reason to distinguish not only psychometric and biological, but; and social intelligence.

The IQs used by Eysenck are standard procedures for evaluating reaction time, psychophysiological measures related to the diagnosis of brain rhythm, and psychometric measures of intelligence. Eysenck does not propose any new characteristics for the definition of social intelligence, since the goals of his research are limited to the diagnosis of biological intelligence.

The theory of many intelligences. Howard Gardner's theory, like the Sternberg and Eysenck theories described here, uses a broader view of intelligence than that offered by psychometric and cognitive theories. Gardner believes that there is no single intelligence, but there are at least 6 separate intelligences. Three of them describe traditional theories of intelligence - linguistic, logico-mathematical And spatial. The other three, although they may seem at first glance strange and not related to the intellectual field, deserve, according to Gardner, the same status as traditional intelligences. These include musical intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence And personal intelligence(Gardner H., 1983).

Musical intelligence is related to rhythm and ear, which are the basis of musical ability. Kinesthetic intelligence is defined as the ability to control one's body. Personal intelligence is divided into two - intrapersonal and interpersonal. The first of them is associated with the ability to manage one's feelings and emotions, the second - with the ability to understand other people and predict their actions.

Using traditional intelligence testing, data on various brain pathologies, and cross-cultural analysis, Gardner came to the conclusion that the intelligences he singled out are relatively independent of each other.

The main argument for attributing musical, kinesthetic and personal characteristics specifically to the intellectual sphere, Gardner believes that these characteristics, to a greater extent than traditional intelligence, have determined human behavior since the dawn of civilization, were more valued at the dawn of human history and still in some cultures. determine the status of a person to a greater extent than, for example, logical thinking.

Gardner's theory caused a great deal of discussion. It cannot be said that his arguments convinced that the intellectual sphere makes sense.

interpret as broadly as he does. However, the very idea of ​​studying intelligence in a broader context is currently considered very promising: it is associated with the possibility of increasing the reliability of long-term predictions.

CONCLUSIONS

The history of the search and selection of characteristics that most clearly demonstrate the differences between people in the intellectual sphere is a constant, the emergence of more and more new characteristics associated with intellectual activity. Attempts to reduce them to a more or less observable number of intellectual parameters have proved to be the most effective in the psychometric tradition of intelligence research. Using factor-analytical techniques and focusing mainly on secondary factors, researchers identify the main intellectual parameters, the number of which does not exceed one dozen and which are decisive for individual differences in a variety of intellectual characteristics.

Studies of the structure of intelligence, carried out in cognitive theory, are associated with the search for correlates of intellectual activity and, as a rule, single out speed parameters for solving relatively simple problem situations. Data on the relationship of speed characteristics with intelligence indicators are currently quite contradictory and can only explain a small proportion of individual differences.

Intelligence research conducted in the last decade is not directly related to the search for new intellectual parameters. Their goal is to expand ideas about the intellectual sphere and include non-traditional ideas for the study of intelligence. In particular, in addition to the usual psychometric indicators of intelligence, all theories of multiple intelligence also consider social intelligence, i.e. the ability to effectively resolve real life problems.

CHAPTER 5 TEMPERAMENT AND PERSONALITY

No psychological features have such a long history of their study as temperament. When analyzing typological approaches to the study of individual differences, the main stages of this history were described. This chapter will tell you what new modern works have brought to the study of temperament - what are the modern ideas about temperament, and what features of temperament stand out in today's psychology of individual differences as the most important for understanding it.

The analysis of the characteristics of the personality sphere presented in this chapter is limited to the material obtained in the context of the theory of traits, i.e., the results of only those studies of personality that were carried out directly in the study of individual differences will be described here.

1. STRUCTURE OF TEMPERAMENT PROPERTIES

The topic of intelligence is one of the most controversial and controversial in psychology: among scientists there is no agreement even on its general definition. What is it - a separate ability or a combination of different talents? Paul Kleinman, author of Psychology. People, Concepts, Experiments, recently published by Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, recalls the main theories, classifications and tests related to the level of intelligence. Theories and Practices publishes an excerpt from the book.

For the most part, psychologists agree that intelligence is the ability to think logically and rationally, solve problems, understand social norms, traditions, and values, analyze situations, learn from experience, and overcome life's difficulties. But they still cannot decide whether intelligence can be accurately assessed. To solve this problem, scientists try to answer the following questions:

Is intelligence inherited?

Do external factors influence intelligence?

Does intelligence represent the presence of a set of skills and abilities?

stey or any one particular ability?

development) biased?

Can these tests measure intelligence?

Today there are many theories explaining what intelligence is. We list some of them - the most significant.

General intelligence

The British psychologist Charles Spearman proposed a two-factor theory of intelligence, according to which two factors can be distinguished in the structure of intelligence: the g-factor, that is, the general or general ability, and the s-factor, or specific to a particular mental activity. Thus, according to the scientist, there is a certain general intelligence that determines the mental abilities of a person as a whole, or g-factor; and it can be accurately measured by a special test. Spearman found that people who did well on one cognitive test also did well on other intelligence tests, and those who did poorly on one test did not do well on others. Based on this, the psychologist concluded that intelligence is a general cognitive ability that can be measured and quantified.

Primary Intellectual Ability

According to psychologist Louis Thurstone, there are seven "primary intellectual abilities" that define a person's intelligence: verbal comprehension, verbal fluency, numerical, spatial and inductive perception, perceptual speed, and associative memory.

Multiple intelligence

According to the theory of multiple intelligences proposed by psychologist Howard Gardner, it is impossible to quantify intelligence. The scientist argued that there are eight different types of intelligence based on relatively independent abilities and skills, and that some of these abilities can be developed in an individual better than others. Initially, he identified seven independent types of intelligence: spatial (the ability to perceive visual and spatial information), verbal (the ability to speak), logical-mathematical (the ability to logically analyze a problem, recognize relationships between objects and think logically), bodily-kinesthetic (the ability to move and exercise physical control over one's own body), musical (the ability to perceive the pitch, rhythm and timbre of sound and operate with sound patterns), interpersonal (the ability to understand and interact with other people) and intrapersonal (the ability to be aware of one's own feelings, emotions and motives). Subsequently, the scientist included naturalistic intelligence in his model - the ability of a person to live in harmony with nature, to explore environment, learn from the example of other biological species.

Triarchic theory of intelligence

According to psychologist Robert Sternberg's theory of intelligence, there are three different factors of intelligence: analytical or component (the ability to solve problems), creative or experiential (the ability to cope with new situations using past experience and existing skills), and practical or contextual (the ability to adapt to environmental changes).

Intelligence Tests

Methods for assessing the level of intellectual development have been created today no less than theories of intelligence. Since the inception of the very first, tools for measuring and evaluating intelligence have become increasingly accurate and standardized. We list them in chronological order.

In 1885, the French government invited the French psychologist Alfred Binet to develop a test to assess the level of intellectual development of children. The country had just passed laws requiring all children between the ages of six and fourteen to attend school, so a test was needed to screen out those who needed special learning conditions. Binet and his colleague Theodor Simon composed a series of questions on topics not directly related to school education. Among various other abilities, they assessed memory, attention, and problem solving. Binet found that some children answered more difficult questions more appropriate for older children, while their peers could only answer questions intended for younger children. Based on his observations, Binet developed the concept of mental age - a tool that allows you to evaluate intelligence based on the average abilities of children of a certain age group. The Binet-Simon scale was the first test of intellectual development and served as the basis for all tests used today.

After the Binet-Simon scale became known in the United States, Stanford University psychologist Lewis Terman standardized it and began to use it to test American children. An adapted version called "The Stanford-Binet Scale of Intelligence" was published in 1916. This test uses a single indicator - the intelligence quotient (IQ - intelligence quotient), which is calculated by dividing the mental age of the test person by his real age and then multiplying the resulting number by 100.

With the onset of World War I, the US Army had a need to evaluate the mental abilities of a huge number of conscripts. To solve this complex problem, psychologist Robert Yerkes (then president of the American Psychological Association and chairman of the Committee on the Psychological Assessment of Recruits) developed two tests, called the Army Alpha Test and the Army Beta Test. More than two million people have passed them; so the army personnel department determined what tasks could be entrusted to a recruit and what position he was able to fill.

In 1955, psychologist David Wexler developed another test for assessing the level of intellectual development - the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Adults. It was subsequently refined, and a modified third variant is in use today.

If in the Stanford - Binet test the level of intelligence is calculated on the basis of the mental and true age of a person, then when testing on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for adults, the test score is compared with the indicators of other people of his age group. The average score is 100. Today, this tool is considered the standard method for testing human intellectual development.

The term "intelligence", in addition to its scientific meaning (which each theorist has his own), like an old cruiser with shells, has acquired an endless number of everyday and popularizing interpretations. Abstracting the works of the authors, which in one way or another concerned this subject, would take more than one hundred pages. Therefore, we will spend short review and choose the most appropriate interpretation of the concept of "intelligence".

The main criterion for distinguishing the intellect as an independent reality is its function in the regulation of behavior. When they talk about intelligence as a certain ability, they primarily rely on its adaptive significance for humans and higher animals. 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 life task carried out through action with a mental (“mental”) equivalent of an object, through “action in the mind” (or, according to Ya. A. Ponomarev, “in the internal plan of action”). Thanks to this, the subject solves a certain problem here and now without external behavioral trials, correctly and one-time: trials, testing of hypotheses are carried out 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 secondary side of the process of applying knowledge in solving a life problem. It is important that the problem is really new, or at least has a novelty component. The problem of "transfer" - the transfer of "knowledge - operations" from one situation to another (new) is closely related to the problem of intellectual behavior.

But 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. Adjacent to this point of view is E. A. Golubeva, who believes that activity and self-regulation are the basic factors of intellectual productivity, and adds efficiency to them.

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. Even 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. If consciousness dominates at the stage of setting the task and analysis, then at the stage of “idea incubation” and the generation of hypotheses, the activity of the unconscious plays a decisive role. At the moment of “insight” (unexpected discovery, insight), the idea breaks into consciousness due to a “short circuit” according to the “key-lock” principle, which is accompanied by vivid emotional experiences. At the stage of selecting and testing hypotheses, as well as evaluating the solution, consciousness again dominates.

It can be concluded that during an intellectual act, consciousness dominates and regulates the decision process, and the subconscious acts as an object of regulation, that is, in a subdominant position.

For convenience, we draw the following diagram:

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”, according to Ponomarev’s terminology, which is realized or not realized by the subject.

It is possible to give a 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. However, this definition is as controversial as all others.

J. Thompson also believes that intelligence is only an abstract concept that simplifies and summarizes a number of behavioral characteristics.

Since the intellect as a reality existed before psychologists, as well as chemical compounds before chemists, it is important to know its "ordinary" characteristics. R. Sternberg was the first to attempt to define the concept of "intelligence" at the level of describing ordinary behavior. As a method, he chose factor analysis of expert judgments. Ultimately, three forms of intellectual behavior emerged: 1) verbal intelligence(vocabulary, erudition, ability to understand what is read), 2) the ability to solve problems, 3) practical intelligence (the ability to achieve goals, etc.).

Following R. Sternberg, M.A. Kholodnaya singles out a minimum of basic properties of the intellect: “1) level properties that characterize the achieved level of development of individual cognitive functions (both verbal and non-verbal) and the presentation of reality underlying 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.

However, one can wander for a long time in the darkness of the substantial definitions of intellect. In difficult cases of this kind, a measuring approach comes to the rescue. Intelligence can be defined through the procedure of its measurement as the ability to solve test problems designed in a certain way.

The position of the author of this book is that all psychological theories are not substantive, but operational (according to M. Bunge). That is, any psychological construct that describes a psychological property, process, state, makes sense only in combination with a description of the procedure for research, diagnosis, and measurement of the behavioral manifestations of this construct. When the procedure for measuring a construct changes, its content also changes.

Therefore, reasoning about what intelligence is should be carried out within the framework of an operational approach. It manifests itself most clearly in factorial models of intelligence.

The general ideology of the factorial approach boils down to the following basic prerequisites: 1) it is assumed that the intellect, like any other mental reality, is latent, that is, it is given to the researcher only through various indirect manifestations when solving life problems; 2) intelligence is a latent property of some mental structure (“functional system”), it can be measured, that is, intelligence is a linear property (one-dimensional or multidimensional); 3) the set of behavioral manifestations of intelligence is always greater than the set of properties, that is, you can come up with many intellectual tasks to identify just one property;

4) intellectual tasks objectively differ in the level of difficulty;

5) the solution of the problem may be correct or incorrect (or may approach the correct one arbitrarily); 6) any problem can be solved correctly in an infinitely long time.

A consequence of these provisions is the principle of a quasi-measuring procedure: the more difficult the task, the higher the level of intelligence development required for its correct solution.

When forming a measuring approach to intelligence, we implicitly rely on the idea of ​​some ideal intellectual or of an “ideal intelligence” as some kind of abstraction. A person with an ideal intellect can correctly and single-handedly solve a mental problem (or a set of problems) of arbitrarily high complexity in an infinitesimal time and, let us add, regardless of internal and external interference. Usually, people think slowly, often making mistakes, getting tired, periodically indulging in intellectual laziness and giving in to complex tasks.

There is a certain contradiction in the measuring approach. The fact is that in practice the universal reference point - "ideal intelligence" is not used, although its use is theoretically justified. Each test can potentially be completed with 100% success, so the subjects should be located on the same straight line, depending on the size of their backlog from the ideal intellectual. However, in practice, it is not the ratio scale that assumes an objective absolute reference point (“absolute zero”, as in the Kelvin temperature scale) that is currently accepted, but the interval scale, in which there is no absolute reference point. On the scale of intervals, people are located, depending on the level of development of individual intelligence, on the right or left side from the conventional "average" intellectual.

It is assumed that the distribution of people according to the level of intelligence, like most biological and social characteristics, is described by the law of normal distribution. An average intellectual person is the most common individual in a population who solves a problem of average difficulty with a probability of 50% or in an “average” time.

The main essence of the measuring approach lies in the procedure and content of test tasks. It is important to determine which tasks are aimed at diagnosing intelligence, and which ones are aimed at diagnosing other mental properties.

The emphasis is shifted to the interpretation of the content of tasks: are they new for the subject and whether their successful solution requires the manifestation of such signs of intelligence as autonomous actions in the mental space (in the mental plane).

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.

This point of view is based on the works of A. Binet, devoted to the diagnosis of the mental development of children. As an "ideal intellectual" Binet probably represented a person of Western European civilization who had mastered some basic knowledge and skills, and considered the rates of intellectual development of children of the "middle" class to be a sign of normal development.

In his first battery tests included such tasks as: “find a rhyme for the word “glass” (12 years old), “count from 20 to 1” (8 years old) and others (see Table 1).

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.

Recall that the psychology of intelligence is an integral part of differential psychology. Therefore, the central questions that theories of intelligence must answer are:

1. What are the reasons for individual differences?

2. What method can reveal these differences?

The reasons for individual differences in intellectual productivity may be the environment (culture) or neurophysiological features determined by heredity.

A method for identifying these differences can be an external expert review behavior based on common sense. In addition, we can identify individual differences in the level of intelligence development using objective methods: systematic observation or measurement (tests).

If we make a very rough and approximate classification of various approaches to the problem of intelligence, then we will identify two bases for classification:

1. Culture - neurophysiology (environment - heredity).

2. Psychometrics - everyday knowledge.

The scheme shown here (Fig. 3) indicates the options for approaches to the study of intelligence and the names of their most prominent representatives and propagandists are indicated.

As for the cultural-historical approach to the problem of the differential psychology of intelligence, it is most clearly and consistently stated in Michael Cole's book Cultural-Historical Psychology (Moscow: Kogito-Center, 1997). I refer interested readers to it.

Other approaches are presented in one way or another on the pages of this book.

The main one today is the psychometric approach in its factorial version.

Factor Models of Intelligence

Conventionally, all factor models of intelligence can be divided into four main groups according to two bipolar features: 1) what is the source of the model - speculation or empirical data, 2) how the model of intelligence is built - from individual properties to the whole or from the whole to individual properties (Table 2). ). The model can be built on some a priori theoretical assumptions, and then verified (verified) in an empirical study. A typical example of this kind is Guilford's model of intelligence.

More often, the author conducts a voluminous experimental study, and then theoretically interprets its results, as do numerous authors of tests of the structure of intelligence. Of course, this does not exclude the author's ideas that precede empirical work. Ch. Spearman's model can serve as an example.

Typical variants of a multidimensional model, in which many primary intellectual factors are assumed, are the models of the same 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.

Finally, hierarchical models (C. Spearman, F. Vernon, P. Humphreys) are multilevel. Factors are placed at different levels of generality: at the top level - the factor of general mental energy, at the second level - its derivatives, etc. The factors are interdependent: the level of development of the general factor is connected with the level of development of particular factors.

Of course, the real relationship between models of intelligence is more complex, and not all of them fit into this classification, but the proposed scheme can be used, in my opinion, at least for didactic purposes.

Let's move on to the characteristics of the most famous models of intelligence.

Model J. Gilford

J. Gilford proposed a model of "structure of intelligence (SI)", systematizing the results of his research in the field of general abilities. However, this model is not the result of factorization of the primary experimentally obtained correlation matrices, but refers to a priori models, since it is based only on theoretical assumptions. In its implicit structure, the model is neobehavioristic, based on the scheme: stimulus - latent operation - reaction. The place of the stimulus in Guilford's model is occupied by "content", by "operation" is meant a mental process, by "reaction" - the result of applying the operation to the material. The factors in the model are independent. Thus, the model is three-dimensional, the intelligence scales in the model are naming scales. Guilford interprets the operation as a mental process: cognition, memory, divergent thinking, convergent thinking, evaluation.

Results - the form in which the subject gives the answer: element, classes, relationships, systems, types of transformations and conclusions.

Each factor in Guildford's model results from combinations of categories of the three dimensions of intelligence. Categories are combined mechanically. The names of the factors are conditional. There are 5 x 4 x 6 = 120 factors in Guilford's classification scheme.

He believes that more than 100 factors have now been identified, that is, appropriate tests have been selected for their diagnosis. The concept of J. Gilford is widely used in the USA, especially in the work of teachers with gifted children and adolescents. On its basis, training programs have been created that allow you to rationally plan the educational process and direct it to the development of abilities. The Guilford model is used at the University of Illinois in teaching 4-5 year olds.

Many researchers consider the separation of divergent and convergent thinking to be the main achievement of J. Guilford. Divergent thinking is associated with the generation of many solutions based on unambiguous data and, according to Guilford, is the basis of creativity. Convergent thinking is aimed at finding the only correct result and is diagnosed by traditional intelligence tests. The disadvantage of the Guilford model is the inconsistency with the results of most factor-analytical studies. The “subjective rotation” algorithm invented by Guilford, which “squeezes” data into the “Procrustean bed” of his model, is criticized by almost all researchers of intelligence.

R. B. Cattell Model

The model proposed by R. Cattell can only conditionally be attributed to the group of hierarchical a priori models. He distinguishes three types of intellectual abilities: general, partial and operation factors.

Two factors Cattell called "bound" intelligence and "free" (or "fluid") intelligence. The factor of "connected intelligence" is determined by the totality of knowledge and intellectual skills of the individual acquired in the course of socialization from early childhood to the end of life and is a measure of mastering the culture of the society to which the individual belongs.

The factor of connected intelligence is closely positively correlated with verbal and arithmetic factors, it manifests itself in solving tests that require learning.

The factor of "free" intellect positively correlates with the factor of "connected" intellect, since "free" intellect determines the primary accumulation of knowledge. From Cattell's point of view, "free" intelligence is absolutely independent of the degree of cultural involvement. Its level is determined by the general development of the "tertiary" associative zones of the cerebral cortex, and it manifests itself in solving perceptual tasks, when the subject is required to find the relationship of various elements in the image.

Partial factors are determined by the level of development of individual sensory and motor areas of the cerebral cortex. Cattell himself singled out only one partial factor - visualization - which manifests itself during operations with visual images. The concept of “factors-operations” is the least clear: Cattell defines them as separate acquired skills for solving specific problems, i.e., as an analogue of Spearman’s S-factors, which are part of the structure of “connected” intelligence and include operations needed to perform new test tasks. . The results of studies of the development (more precisely, involution) of cognitive abilities in ontogenesis, at first glance, correspond to the Cattell model.

Indeed, by the age of 50-60, people's ability to learn worsens, the speed of processing new information decreases, the amount of short-term memory decreases, etc. Meanwhile, intellectual professional skills are preserved until old age.

But the results of factorial analytical testing of Cattell's model showed that it is not sufficiently substantiated.

Indicative in this sense is the study by E. E. Kuzmina and N. I. Militanskaya. They found a high correlation of the level of "free intelligence" on the Cattell test with the results of a battery of tests of general mental abilities (Differential Aptitude Test - DAT), which diagnoses verbal thinking (Thurstone's V factor), numerical abilities (N), abstract-logical thinking (R), spatial thinking (S) and technical thinking.

It can be assumed that in the course of a structural study it is impossible (this is what Cattell himself says) to completely separate the "free" intelligence from the "bound" one, and when tested, they merge into a single general Spearman factor. However, in a genetic age study, these sub-factors can be diluted.

The level of development of partial factors is largely determined by the experience of the interaction of the individual with the outside world. However, it is also possible to single out both “free” and “bound” components in their composition.

The very difference of partial factors is determined not by the modality (auditory, visual, tactile, etc.), but by the type of material (spatial, physical, numerical, linguistic, etc.) of the task, which ultimately confirms the idea of ​​a greater dependence of partial factors on the level involvement in culture (or, more precisely, from the cognitive experience of the individual).

However, Cattell tried to construct a culture-free test on a very specific spatial-geometric material (Culture-Fair Intelligence Test, CFIT). The test was published in 1958. Cattell developed three variations of this test:

1) for children 4-8 years old and mentally retarded adults;

2) two parallel forms (A and B) for children aged 8-12 and adults without higher education;

3) two parallel forms (A and B) for high school students, students and adults with higher education.

The first version of the test includes 8 subtests: 4 "free from the influence of culture" and 4 diagnosing "connected intelligence". The test takes 22 minutes. The second and third versions of the test consist of 4 different subtests, the tasks in which differ in the level of difficulty. The time to complete all tasks is 12.5 minutes. The test is applied in two versions: with restriction and without restriction of task execution time. According to Cattell, the reliability of the test is 0.7-0.92. The correlation of results with data on the Stanford-Binet scale is 0.56.

All tasks in subtests are ordered by difficulty level: from simple to complex. Only one correct solution is supposed to be chosen from the proposed set of answers. Answers are entered on a special form. The test consists of two equivalent parts (4 subtests each).

The first version of the test is used only for individual testing. The second and third options can be used in a group. The most commonly used is the 2nd scale, which includes subtests: 1) "series" - to find a continuation in the rows of figures (12 tasks); 2) "classification" - a test for finding common features of figures (14 tasks); 3) "matrices" - searching for additions to sets of figures (12 tasks) and 4) "inferences to establish identity", - where you need to mark the picture corresponding to the given one with a dot (8 tasks).

As a result, the intelligence quotient (IQ) is calculated with an average of 100, and r = 15, based on the summation of the results of both parts of the test, with the subsequent translation of the average score into a standard assessment.

Cognitive Models of Intelligence

Cognitive models of intelligence are indirectly related to the psychology of abilities, since their authors mean by the term "intelligence" not a property of the psyche, but a certain system of cognitive processes that provide problem solving. Very rarely, researchers of cognitive orientation approach the problems of individual differences and resort to the data of measuring psychology.

Psychologists deduce individual differences in the success of completing tasks from the characteristics of the individual structure that ensures the process of information processing. Factor-analytical data are usually used to verify cognitive models. Thus, they serve as an intermediate link connecting factor-analytical concepts with general psychological ones.

The concept of mental experience by M. A. Kholodnaya

There are not too many original concepts of intelligence as a general ability in Russian psychology. One of these concepts is the theory of M.A. Kholodnaya, developed within the framework of the cognitive approach (Fig. 12).

The essence of the cognitive approach lies in the reduction of intelligence to the properties of individual cognitive processes. Less well known is another direction that reduces intelligence to the characteristics of individual experience (Fig. 13).

It follows that psychometric intelligence is a kind of epiphenomenon of mental experience, which reflects the properties of the structure of individual and acquired knowledge and cognitive operations (or “productions” - units of “knowledge - operation”). The following problems remain beyond the scope of explanation: 1) what is the role of the genotype and environment in determining the structure of individual experience; 2) what are the criteria for comparing the intelligence of different people; 3) how to explain individual differences in intellectual achievements and how to predict these achievements.

The definition of M.A. Kholodnaya is as follows: intellect, in its ontological status, is a special form of organizing individual mental (mental) experience in the form of available mental structures, the mental space predicted by them, and the mental representations of what is happening are built within this space.

M.A. Kholodnaya includes substructures of cognitive experience, metacognitive experience and a group of intellectual abilities in the structure of intellect.

In my opinion, metacognitive experience is clearly related to the regulatory system of the psyche, and intentional experience is related to the motivational system.

Paradoxically, almost all supporters of the cognitive approach to intelligence expand the theory of intelligence by involving non-intellectual components (regulation, attention, motivation, "metacognition", etc.). Sternberg and Gardner follow this path. M.A. Kholodnaya argues similarly: one aspect of the psyche cannot be considered in isolation from others, without indicating the nature of the connection. The structure of cognitive experience includes ways of encoding information, conceptual mental structures, "archetypal" and semantic structures.

As for the structure of intellectual abilities, it includes: 1) convergent ability - intelligence in the narrow sense of the term (level properties, combinatorial and procedural properties); 2) creativity (fluency, originality, receptivity, metaphor); 3) learning (implicit, explicit) and additionally 4) cognitive styles (cognitive, intellectual, epistemological).

The most controversial issue is the inclusion of cognitive styles in the structure of intellectual abilities.

The concept of "cognitive style" characterizes individual differences in the way information is received, processed and applied. X. A. Vitkin, the founder of the concept of cognitive styles, specifically tried to form criteria that separate the cognitive style and abilities. In particular: 1) cognitive style is a procedural characteristic, not an effective one; 2) cognitive style is a bipolar property, and abilities are unipolar; 3) cognitive style - a characteristic that is stable over time, manifesting itself at all levels (from sensory to thinking); 4) value judgments are not applicable to style, representatives of each style have an advantage in certain situations.

The list of cognitive styles identified by various researchers is extremely long. Cold leads ten: 1) field dependence - field independence; 2) impulsiveness - reflexivity; 3) rigidity - the flexibility of cognitive control; 4) narrowness - the breadth of the range of equivalence; 5) category width; 6) tolerance for unrealistic experience; 7) cognitive simplicity - cognitive complexity; 8) narrowness - the width of the scan; 9) concrete - abstract conceptualization; 10) smoothing - sharpening differences.

Without going into the characteristics of each cognitive style, I note that field independence, reflexivity, the breadth of the equivalence range, cognitive complexity, the breadth of scanning and the abstractness of conceptualization significantly and positively correlate with the level of intelligence (according to the tests of D. Raven and R. Cattell), and field independence and tolerance to unrealistic experiences are linked to creativity.

Let us consider here only the most common characteristic "field-dependence-field independence". Field dependence was first discovered in Witkin's experiments in 1954. He studied the influence of visual and proprioceptive stimuli on a person's orientation in space (maintenance of their vertical position by the subjects). The subject sat in a darkened room in an armchair. He was presented with a luminous rod inside a luminous frame on the wall of the room. The rod deviated from the vertical. The frame changed its position independently of the rod, deviating from the vertical, along with the room in which the subject was sitting. The subject had to bring the rod to a vertical position with the help of a handle, using either visual or proprioceptive sensations about the degree of his deviation from the vertical during orientation. The position of the rod was determined more precisely by the subjects who relied on proprioceptive sensations. This cognitive feature was called field independence.

Then Witkin discovered that field independence determines the success of isolating a figure from a holistic image. Field independence correlates with the level of non-verbal intelligence according to D. Wexler.

Later Witkin came to the conclusion that the characteristic "field dependence - field independence" is a manifestation in perception of a more general property, namely "psychological differentiation". Psychological differentiation characterizes the degree of clarity, dissection, distinctness of the reflection of reality by the subject and manifests itself in four main areas: 1) the ability to structure the visible field; 2) differentiation of the image of one's physical "I"; 3) autonomy in interpersonal communication; 4) the presence of specialized mechanisms of personal protection and control of motor and affective activity.

To diagnose "field dependence-field independence", Witkin proposed using the "Inline Figures" test by Gottschald (1926), converting black and white pictures into color ones. In total, the test includes 24 samples with two cards in each. On one card a complex figure, on the other - a simple one. 5 minutes are allotted for each presentation. The subject must as quickly as possible detect simple figures in the structure of complex ones. The indicator is the average time of detection of figures and the number of correct answers.

It is easy to see that the "bipolarity" of the "field dependence-field independence" construct is nothing more than a myth: the test is a typical achievement test and is similar to the subtests of perceptual intelligence (Thurstone's P factor).

It is no coincidence that high positive correlations of field independence with other properties of intelligence are: 1) indicators of non-verbal intelligence; 2) flexibility of thinking; 3) higher learning ability; 4) the success of solving tasks for quick wit (the factor "adaptive flexibility" according to J. Gilford); 5) the success of using the object in an unexpected way (Dunker's tasks); 6) ease of changing settings when solving Lachins problems (plasticity); 7) the success of the restructuring and reorganization of the text.

Field-independent learn well with internal motivation for learning. For their successful learning, error information is important.

Field addicts are more sociable.

There are many more prerequisites for considering "field dependence-field independence" as one of the manifestations of general intelligence in the perceptual-figurative sphere.

The cognitive approach, contrary to its name, leads to a broader interpretation of the concept of "intelligence". Various researchers include numerous additional external factors in the system of intellectual (cognitive in nature) abilities.

The paradox is that the strategy of the adepts of the cognitive approach leads to the identification of functional and correlational relationships with other (extra-cognitive) properties of the individual's psyche and ultimately serves to multiply the original subject content of the concept of "intelligence" as a general cognitive ability.

Howard Gardner (Gardner, 1983) developed his theory of multiple intellect as a radical alternative to what he calls the "classical" view of intelligence as the capacity for logical reasoning.

Gardner was struck by the variety of adult roles in different cultures - roles based on a wide variety of abilities and skills, equally necessary for survival in their respective cultures. Based on his observations, he came to the conclusion that instead of a single basic intellectual ability, or "g factor", there are many different intellectual abilities that occur in various combinations. Gardner defines intelligence as "the ability to solve problems or create products, due to specific cultural characteristics or social environment" (1993, p. 15). It is the multiple nature of intelligence that allows people to take on such diverse roles as doctor, farmer, shaman, and dancer (Gardner, 1993a).

Gardner notes that intelligence is not a "thing", not a device located in the head, but "a potential, the presence of which allows an individual to use forms of thinking that are adequate to specific types of context" (Kornhaber & Gardner, 1991, p. 155). He believes that there are at least 6 different types of intelligence that do not depend on each other and act in the brain as independent systems (or modules), each according to its own rules. These include:

a) linguistic;

b) logical and mathematical;

c) spatial;

d) musical;

e) bodily-kinesthetic and

f) personality modules.

The first three modules are familiar components of intelligence, and they are measured by standard intelligence tests. The last three, according to Gardner, deserve a similar status, but Western society has emphasized the first three types and virtually excluded the rest. These types of intelligence are described in more detail in the table:

Seven intellectual abilities according to Gardner

(adapted from: Gardner, Kornhaber & Wake, 1996)

Verbal intelligence - the ability to generate speech, including the mechanisms responsible for the phonetic (speech sounds), syntactic (grammar), semantic (meaning) and pragmatic components of speech (the use of speech in various situations).

Musical intelligence is the ability to generate, transmit and understand the meanings associated with sounds, including the mechanisms responsible for the perception of pitch, rhythm and timbre (qualitative characteristics) of sound.

Logico-mathematical intelligence - the ability to use and evaluate the relationship between actions or objects when they are not actually present, i.e. to abstract thinking.

Spatial intelligence is the ability to perceive visual and spatial information, modify it and recreate visual images without recourse to the original stimuli. Includes the ability to construct images in three dimensions, as well as mentally move and rotate these images.

bodily- kinesthetic intelligence - the ability to use all parts of the body when solving problems or creating products; includes control over gross and fine motor movements and the ability to manipulate external objects.

Intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to recognize one's own feelings, intentions, and motives.

Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to recognize and discriminate between the feelings, attitudes, and intentions of other people.

In particular, Gardner argues that musical intelligence, including the ability to perceive pitch and rhythm, has been more important than logico-mathematical for much of human history. Body-kinesthetic intelligence includes control of one's body and the ability to skillfully manipulate objects: dancers, gymnasts, artisans, and neurosurgeons are examples. Personal intelligence consists of two parts. Intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to monitor one's feelings and emotions, distinguish between them, and use this information to guide one's actions. Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to notice and understand the needs and intentions of others and monitor their mood in order to predict their future behavior.

Gardner analyzes each type of intelligence from several positions: the cognitive operations involved in it; the appearance of child prodigies and other exceptional personalities; data on cases of brain damage; its manifestations in various cultures and the possible course of evolutionary development. For example, with certain brain damage, one type of intelligence may be impaired, while others remain unaffected. Gardner notes that the abilities of adults of different cultures are different combinations of certain types of intelligence.

Although all normal individuals are capable of exhibiting all varieties of intelligence to some degree, each individual has a unique combination of higher and lower intellectual abilities (Walters & Gardner, 1985), which explains the individual differences between people.

As we have noted, conventional IQ tests are good at predicting college grades, but they are less valid at predicting future job success or career advancement. Measures of other abilities, such as personal intelligence, may help explain why some excellent college performers become miserable failures later in life, while less successful students become worship leaders (Kornhaber, Krechevsky & Gardner, 1990). Therefore, Gardner and his colleagues call for an "intellectual-objective" assessment of students' abilities. This will allow children to demonstrate their abilities in ways other than paper tests, such as matching items together to demonstrate spatial imagination skills.

15.1. Theories of intelligence of the twentieth century

15.1.1. Intelligence or intellects?

Before interpreting the classical ideas about the activity of the intellect with the help of the new model of intelligence XX, we will make the necessary and natural refinement of it. So, the main assumption is that all cognitive models available to a person are in an inactive state, and the cognitive process consists only in their activation. Consequently, in the human nervous system, long-term memory (LTM) and potential intelligence (PI) topographically coincide, that is, they are in the same place, and their difference lies in the fact that LTM is a set of activated cognitive models, and PI is still not activated. Thus, in the figures, it is possible to combine long-term memory and potential intelligence (DVP / PI on rice. 15.1, For example). In this case, the activated cognitive models (denoted by solid lines) in this general block of DEP/PI are DEP, and the non-activated models (dashed lines) are PI. And the previously described transfer of the cognitive model from PI to LTP will now be reflected in the figures in this section as activation in the LTP/PI block of a genetically determined, innate inactive cognitive model.

From a neurophysiological point of view, any cognitive model is a specially organized network of neurons, which encodes the idea of ​​some natural phenomenon and the intellectual reaction of the organism to it. In this case, such a network of neurons can be activated in a special way (we will consider this process in detail below), which is the transformation of a potential (non-activated) into an actual (activated) cognitive model.

In the field of intelligence research, two competing hypotheses stand out today - K. Spearman and L. Thurstone. According to K. Spearman, intelligence is “... some ( single, auth.) characteristic (feature, property), which is presented at all levels of its functioning. According to L. Thurstone "there is no common beginning of intellectual activity, but there is only a set of independent intellectual abilities."

But then, taking into account the structure of intelligence XX ( rice. 15.1), the definition of intelligence according to K. Spearman, can be considered as a description of the process of actualization (activation) of potential (inactive) cognitive models, which, in his opinion, should not depend on what intellectual task a person solves.

On the other hand, it is obvious that in the process of vocational training, an “autonomous” complex of activated cognitive models can be formed in a person. Let's say one of the sections of mathematics has been mastered, topology, for example, which does not affect the musical education received by a person, that is, another "autonomous" complex. Then L. Thurstone is also right, since from his point of view, a person has at least two independent and differently developed intellects - mathematical and musical. Therefore, the definition of L. Thurstone characterizes the saturation of DVP with activated models.

So, it would seem contradictory L. Thurstone and K. Spearman’s points of view on the intellect, in fact, reflect various and irreducible aspects of the function and structure of a single intellect, if considered from the point of view of the new theory of the activity of the intellect XX ( rice. 15.1).

To bring the classical theories of intelligence into line with the proposed new structure and function of intelligence XX, we first detail the activation process of the cognitive model ( rice. 15.1). At the same time, we will distinguish between the activation of a cognitive model in the process of learning and self-learning (creativity).

When teaching, a cognitive model new to the student, on the one hand, is known to the teacher, and, on the other hand, the student is placed by the teacher in an artificially created intellectual environment that forces the student's nervous cognitive network to work in such a way that the cognitive model expected by the teacher is extracted from his PI. With self-learning, the process of activation of cognitive models takes place in a natural intellectual environment, that is, in the process ordinary life person.

Let's consider the process of activation of the cognitive model using a simple example of learning the line of the multiplication table: "2 x 3 = 6" ( rice. 15.1). This line of the multiplication table is a cognitive model, and if the student does not know it, then it is not activated for him. "Learning" this line is the process of activating the student's potential cognitive model.

Suppose that the student has previously formed ideas about the numbers 2, 3 and 6, as well as about the operation “equal to”. Therefore, before getting acquainted with the multiplication operation “2 x 3 = 6”, only the indicated cognitive models are activated in the DWT (representations of the numbers 2, 3 and 6, as well as the “equals” operation, which are shown in Fig. rice. 15.1 in the form of parallelograms with solid sides). Then the non-activated cognitive model is the chain of relationships between the numbers 2, 3, 6, as well as the “multiplication” and “equal” operators (scattered in disorder in the DWP / PI before parallelogram learning) and the “multiplication” operator itself (a parallelogram with dotted contours ) (Fig. 15.1).

Now let the student be shown the operation of multiplying 2 by 3, which causes the formation of electrical impulses in the visual analyzer, which are transmitted through the neural network to the STC (short-term memory). In this case, the "two", for example, does not correspond to such a structure of connections of neurons excited in the retina, as, for example, to the "three". This is due to the different configuration of the light spot that hits the retina from the numbers "two" and "three". That is, for each element of the intellectual task, a nerve impulse of a specific structure is formed that enters the CEP from any sense organ (not necessarily visual, as in this example), which we will call information activator. Its role is to interact specifically with information receptor cognitive models of DVP/PI. It is natural to call the result of the interaction between the activator and the receptor the "excitation" of the cognitive model.

Since the student has no idea about the operation of multiplication, the activator first transfers the cognitive model "multiplication" from an inactive to an active state (dotted contour in the figure 15.1 becomes solid). Outwardly, this looks like the student's assimilation of ideas about the operation of multiplication.

From a neurophysiological point of view, the structure information activator is determined by the spatial relationship of excited neurons that conduct an electrical impulse from the retina to the CVJ. Information receptor this is a group of neurons that can perceive an information activator as a special structure of a nerve impulse. Or, in other words, a nerve impulse in the form of an information activator easily and without interference passes through a group of neurons that make up an information receptor. Moreover, this group of neurons (receptor) that conducts the nerve impulse-activator is part of a network of neurons that encodes a cognitive model. This is the difference between the information receptor and neurons that only conduct electrical impulses from the eye to the CEP (let's call them router neurons) and do not encode any cognitive model. The interaction of the information activator and the receptor excites the entire nervous network that encodes the cognitive model to which the information receptor belongs. Just as the activation of a specific receptor of a cell of an organism causes processes of a strictly defined type in it. For example, the interaction of the hormone insulin ("information activator") with insulin receptors in muscle cells stimulates the uptake of glucose by these cells.

That is, if a nerve impulse, in the form of an information activator, reaches a neural network in which, for example, an unactivated representation of the multiplication operation (potential cognitive model) is encoded, then its interaction with the information receptor of the non-activated “multiplication operation” model causes the excitation of all neurons that encode genetically determined representation of the operation of multiplication. Repeated excitation by the information activator through the receptor of the potential cognitive model "multiplication operation" and transfers it from an inactive to an active state, that is, it becomes part of the DWP, and therefore it is easier to access from the CWP. In fact, cognitive model activation is a process of facilitating the neural connection between CEP and genetically determined cognitive models, which becomes easier the more often this connection is activated.

After all the models necessary for mastering the string “2 x 3 = 6” are activated, the entire string as a whole is “learned”, that is, the activated cognitive models are connected into an activated cognitive network. In order to be able to form an activated network of cognitive models, information activators must simultaneously excite all network models involved in the implementation of a particular cognitive process. Repeatedly repeated simultaneous excitation of activated cognitive models in the MTP is probably necessary condition their networking. Similar to the formation mechanism conditioned reflex, which was discussed in detail earlier. On rice. 15.1 this process is depicted as a transformation of cognitive models randomly scattered before training in DVP/PI into a row of connected blocks "2", "x", "3", "=" and "6" after training. Subjectively, this is perceived by the student as “learning” and looks like repeated repetition of educational material.

From the standpoint of neurophysiology, the simultaneous excitation of two sections of the nervous network contributes to the exchange of nerve impulses between them, that is, the formation of a neural connection. With repeated excitation of the nerve pathway, the passage of a nerve impulse along it is facilitated - this is the material embodiment of the mechanism for the formation of a new neural connection between brain structures that encode previously independent cognitive models (the conditioned reflex mechanism). Several neural structures that encode cognitive models, connected by connections facilitated for the conduction of a nerve impulse, form a network of activated cognitive models.

On rice. 15.2. reflects the process of using the multiplication table, after it has already been learned. When the teacher shows the student the image “2 x 3 = ?”, then the student must, in fact, use the network of cognitive models activated during the learning process in order to give the correct answer to the question posed by the teacher. As in training, nerve impulses in the form of information activators for all activated cognitive models of the task, with the exception of block "6", come from the visual analyzer to the CEP. As a result, in the DWT, all cognitive models of the network are simultaneously excited by activators, with the exception of the model representing the number 6. Further, it is natural to propose the following mechanism for solving an intellectual problem using a neural cognitive network activated in a trained student:

1) information activators block the receipt of impulses from the DVP to the KVP from their cognitive models, united in a network;

2) the interaction of the information activator with the receptor excites the corresponding cognitive model and, in this case, the resulting excitation is transmitted to other cognitive models (but not in the CEP!), united by an activated cognitive network;

3) the cognitive models excited by the network and not blocked by the information activator transmit the excitation to the CVP;

4) the excitation received by the CWP from the DWT from the models of the cognitive network is perceived as a signal to use unblocked network models as a solution to an intellectual problem. These models are presented to consciousness, which can either reject the solution (model) obtained in the DWT or use it as a response to the problem (task) that has arisen.

In particular, in our example, the CVP, as a solution to the problem, receives an impulse from the DWP from the only cognitive model not blocked by the activator, which contains the representation of the number 6 ( rice. 15.2). It should be noted that in the activated neural network of cognitive models, much more complex algorithms for solving intellectual problems can be implemented, in comparison with the considered simple arithmetic problem. But now it is important for us to get an idea of ​​the principle of interaction of the sense organs, CEP, DVP and consciousness, in the process of solving an intellectual problem, which, I believe, became obvious after the example analyzed above, and which will be used for a new interpretation of the classical hypotheses of the functioning of the intellect.

Thompson J. (1984) argues that general intelligence is characterized by "tasks to identify connections that require going beyond the limits of learned skills, suggesting the detailing of experience and the possibility of conscious mental manipulation of the elements of a problem situation." This definition of the follower of the idea of ​​K. Spearman clearly indicates that the subject of his scientific interest was the activation (actualization) processes of cognitive models that make up the PN.

The high correlation revealed by K. Spearman between tests similar in content can be easily explained using the above-described principle of the activity of the intellect. Correlation reflects the participation of subjects in an intersecting set of activated cognitive models (networks) in solving similar tests. Since the tasks are similar, the information activators generated by the test are also similar, and, consequently, similar networks of cognitive models are excited in the DWT. Hence the correlation (connection) between similar tests.

Thurstone L. (1938) rejects the idea of ​​general intelligence and identifies 7 "primary mental abilities":

S - "spatial" (operating with spatial relations)

P - "perception" (detailing of visual images)

N - "computing" (operating with numbers)

V - "verbal understanding" (meaning of words)

F - "fluency of speech" (selection of the right words)

M - "memory"

R - "logical reasoning" (identifying patterns in a series of numbers, letters, figures).

Qualities from S to M are characterized by the interaction of CWP and DWP, that is, the work of the intellect with activated cognitive models (networks) and therefore L. Thurstone's view of the intellect cannot in any way coincide with the views of C. Spearman. They explored completely different aspects of intellectual activity. Only the R-capacity, when not associated with stereotyped inferences such as numerical manipulation, could characterize the activation of potential cognitive models.

At the same time, it is difficult to imagine that when performing any of the tests of the S-R type, the subject did not generate new knowledge for him (activated potential cognitive models). Consequently, to one degree or another, the subject must have activated the mechanisms of activation of potential cognitive models. And indeed, later it turned out that a high correlation is found between these abilities and they can be combined into a generalized factor characterizing intelligence, similar to that proposed by K. Spearman.

Later, R. Cattell (1971) divided the Spearman intelligence indicator (g-factor) into 2 components:

a) "crystallized intelligence" - vocabulary, reading, taking into account social standards;

b) "fluid intelligence" - identifying patterns in a series of figures and numbers, the amount of RAM, spatial operations, etc.

From the point of view of R. Cattell, crystallized intelligence is the result of education and various cultural influences, and its main function is to accumulate and organize knowledge and skills. This definition of "crystallized" intelligence corresponds exactly to the description of the properties of DWT. On the other hand, fluid intelligence, according to R. Cattell, characterizes the biological capabilities of the nervous system and its main function is to quickly and accurately process current information. Therefore, fluid intelligence is the effectiveness of the interaction between the CWP and the DWP.

The following are the three additional abilities of the intellect, identified by R. Cattell, which characterize the activities of the KVP:

Manipulation of images ("visualization");

Saving and reproduction of figures ("memory");

Maintaining a high rate of response (“speed”),

It is obvious that the functioning of the CEP depends on the content of the LWP, and, therefore, the correlation between crystallized and fluid intelligences revealed later is not surprising. In particular, the CEP interacts with the DEP the better, the more the DEP is saturated with cognitive models. Or in terms of information receptors, the more information receptors an activated network of cognitive models contains, reflecting some kind of natural phenomenon. Otherwise, that is, if there is no receptor for the information activator on the activated cognitive model, the CVP has to turn to the PI to activate the desired potential model, which significantly slows down intellectual activity.

Let's compare, for example, the process of learning a piece of music and its performance at a concert by a professional. In both cases, the CVP interacts with the fiberboard. But the performer at the concert does not, besides this, turn to the PI, but the one who is learning it constantly. As a result, the tempo of performance of a work at a concert is higher than in the process of learning it.

Consequently, the "bad" characteristics of the CEP observed by the researcher reflect not only the properties of the CEP itself, but also the filling of the DEP with cognitive models. Hence, the correlation between tests aimed at studying the properties of CVP and fiberboard is simply inevitable.

Of particular interest is the test of J. Raven (1960), since it is used to study the mechanisms of activation of cognitive models, that is, their movement from PI to MTP. J. Raven identifies two mental abilities:

Productivity, that is, the ability to identify connections and relationships, to come to conclusions that are not directly presented in a given situation;

Reproductivity, that is, the ability to use past experience and learned information.

Reproductivity characterizes the interaction of CVP and DVP. But productivity is the activation of cognitive patterns. To study productivity, J. Raven created a special test (“progressive matrices”), focused on diagnosing learning ability based on the generalization (conceptualization) of one’s own experience in the absence of external guidance. Let's translate this definition of the J. Ravenna test into the language of intelligence XX ( rice. 15.1). The subject's DWP contains a certain set of cognitive models (networks), for example, ideas about geometric shapes of varying degrees of complexity. However, before testing, in the subject's DVP, for example, there are no cognitive models that reflect possible connections between geometric shapes, which the subject must discover, forced to do so by the conditions of the test. "Coercion" lies in the fact that the conditions of the test cause a combination of previously uncombined information activators to appear in the sense organs, which simultaneously excite certain cognitive models of the MTP. This unusual for the subject simultaneous excitation of certain cognitive models of the MTP activates a new connection between them (we emphasize that it is new for the MTP, but not for PI!). As a result, the subject’s repeated appeal to the conditions of the task forms a new network of cognitive models in the DWP, which is felt by the subject as “learning”, and the researcher evaluates it as “generalization (conceptualization)”.

Thus, J. Ravenn managed to develop a test that explores the process of extracting new knowledge from PNs for the test subject. Since the process of learning and self-learning is implemented in a similar way in life, it is not surprising that the "productive" test predicted a person's intellectual achievements very well compared to the reproductive test.

To assess intelligence, L. Gutman (1955) introduced the concept of test complexity. Hence, the "power" of the intellect can be seen as the ability to solve complex problems. Let us consider how one can interpret the “complexity” of a test (cognitive task) from the point of view of intelligence XX ( rice. 15.1). Let's try to answer the question, is the task - "What is twice two?" difficult? Yes and no! If the subject has no idea about mathematics, this task for him is not only difficult, but also insurmountable. On the other hand, a very small amount of mathematical knowledge is required for its successful solution. And in this regard, it is not difficult. What about Fermat's theorem? Its formulation is not much more complicated than the 2 x 2 multiplication problem. At the same time, the proof of Fermat's theorem is considered one of the most difficult in mathematics. It turned out that until recently, mathematicians did not have sufficient mathematical knowledge to solve it. Auxiliary theorems necessary for solving Fermat's theorem were not formulated and proved. So, the problem is easily solved if the subject in the DWT has suitable cognitive models (network) for solving it. Hence, the complexity of the cognitive task can be considered from different points of view.

First, let's assume that the tests are designed in such a way that any person can solve them right away, that is, any person in the DWT has cognitive models for successfully solving the proposed tests. Then that test is more complex, for the solution of which a more complex cognitive model is used in the DWT. How to determine the complexity of a cognitive model was discussed in the previous sections.

Secondly, suppose that in order to solve the test, the cognitive model must first be activated (that is, the subject had it before the test in PI). Then the complexity of the test can be determined through the number of information activators that are necessary for its activation. Obviously, in this case, the complexity will turn out to be subjectively dependent - a person who is more prepared for solving a problem will need fewer activators to extract new knowledge from PI than an unprepared person.

So, on the one hand, the complexity of the task is reduced to the complexity of the cognitive models that are in the DFT, which the subject uses to solve the test. Therefore, from the described point of view, the strength of intelligence can be determined through the complexity of the proposed test. But, on the other hand, it will be only a force at the current moment, and not a potential one, since, having provided any subject with the same set of cognitive models necessary for solving the test, the researcher will always observe his successful overcoming. That is, in fact, the researcher will not be able to single out the person with the strongest intellect, but will only be able to divide the subjects into those who are more or less aware of the subject to which the test relates.

The potential strength of the intellect can only be determined through the ability to activate the necessary set of cognitive models to solve the test. But a natural question arises: are there normal people who, in principle, are not able to activate the cognitive models of their PI? Moreover, it seems unclear whether the apparent inability of preschool children to solve intellectual "adult" tasks is "technical" or "physiological"? If children are not able to cope with an "adult" intellectual task just because the DWP is simply not equipped with the cognitive models necessary for this, then this is a purely "technical" obstacle. From this point of view, no tests can reflect the strength of children's intelligence. A good example is the brilliant children who, for example, were forced to study music from an early age. Already in childhood, in this narrow field of knowledge, they not only do not concede, but even surpass many adults (Mozart, for example).

But if the neural structures of the brain responsible for intellectual activity continue to develop with age (at least until puberty), then there must be a physiological obstacle to the development of intelligence.

Installed by V.N. Druzhinin, the hierarchical sequence of the formation of intelligence should not necessarily be associated with morphological changes in the neural network. He and his colleagues found that verbal intelligence (language acquisition) is formed first, then spatial intelligence is formed on its basis, and finally, formal (sign-symbolic) intelligence appears last.

The revealed sequence reflects only the features of the activation of cognitive models. Consequently, these data do not answer the question of whether intelligence at the stage of verbal development is less powerful than at the stage of formal intelligence. In both cases, the PI of the subject does not change, which means that the potential capabilities of the intellect cannot be affected by the filling of the DVP with cognitive models. So, if the power of intelligence is determined by non-activated cognitive models, then at all stages of its development diagnosed by psychologists, it remains potentially unchanged.

It is also not clear whether the discovered sequence of DWT formation is natural; genetically determined, or just a cultural phenomenon? Are there alternative and no less, and maybe even more effective ways of filling the DWT with cognitive models, for example, first spatial and then verbal?

Let's pose an even more general question. Can one human intellect (let's say a psychologist-researcher) formulate a task of such complexity to another human intellect (let's say a subject) that the latter, in principle, cannot cope with it? It is assumed that the solution of the problem is available to the psychologist. Suppose the subject is not able to solve the task (test) of a psychologist. Does this indicate a less powerful intellect of the subject compared to the intellect of the psychologist? I believe that it is not, but only indicates that in the psychologist's DVP, such a cognitive model, suitable for solving, is activated that the subject does not have. But one has only to help the subject activate a suitable cognitive model, and he will immediately cope with the task.

Consider, as an example, a well-known puzzle - two metal rings connected in a special way, which the magician easily separates, but the viewer does not. But as soon as the viewer is shown a way to separate such rings, he becomes more difficult to repeat the trick. Was the intellect of the spectator less powerful than the intellect of the conjurer before "training"? Obviously not. The viewer was only less aware - he did not have a suitable cognitive model in the DWP.

So, in fact, any testing or evaluation of the method of solving a problem determines not the power of the intellect, but only the filling of the DWT with cognitive models. The real power is concentrated only in the PI - the more cognitive models it contains, the more powerful the intellect. As a result, the power of the human intellect can be compared with the power of the intellect of, say, an animal, if we evaluate the knowledge available to humanity and the animal. But it is basically impossible to compare the power of two separate human intellects, if by this we mean the cognitive models contained in the PI, that is, not activated. Hence, all studies of the power of intelligence today are focused on assessing the “awareness” of the subject regarding a particular cognitive problem. And if in the end it turns out that someone is not sufficiently knowledgeable in some area of ​​knowledge, this does not mean at all that the subject cannot or could not, in due time, saturate his DWT with the necessary cognitive models that he draws from PN.

Above were reinterpreted the classical theories of researchers who recognize the existence of a single intelligence (followers of Spearman). Now let's move on to the analysis of theories that reflect the plurality of intellectual abilities (followers of Thurstone). In fact, researchers in this area tested the structure of the DEP and its interaction with the CEP in the subject. In contrast to the researchers of general intelligence, whose main efforts were directed to studying the interaction of CSP and PI. But it was shown above that when solving test problems, the interaction of KVP and DVP, to one degree or another, is supported by PI and, conversely, the interaction of KVP and PI is supported by DVP. As a result, researchers of general intelligence had to recognize some heterogeneity of it (a characteristic feature of DWT, by definition), and researchers of multiple intelligences identified some generalized quality of intelligence (a characteristic feature of PI, by definition). The lack of a clear separation of tests aimed at studying the properties of PI and the properties of the DWT ultimately led to the convergence of these two areas in the study of intelligence and to a pessimistic conclusion: “... it is pointless to discuss a question that has no answer - the question of what actually represents the intellect” (A. Jensen, 1969).

Let's look at some examples. G. Gardner identifies several independent types of intelligence: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. It is obvious that such a division concerns the current structure of the DEP of the subject, which is formed in him as a result of selective extraction from the PN of the corresponding complexes of cognitive models (linguistic, musical, etc.).

R. Meili identifies 4 intellectual abilities:

Distinguish and connect elements of the test problem (complexity);

Quickly and flexibly rebuild images (plasticity);

From an incomplete set of elements to build a holistic meaningful image (globality);

Generate multiple ideas quickly about an initial situation (fluency).

It is obvious that "global" characterizes the interaction of CWP and PI, when it is necessary to activate the models to solve the problem. Otherwise, the interaction of CWP and DWP.

“Fluency” most likely reflects the effectiveness of the interaction between the CWP and the CWP, when the test task stimulates the call from the CWP to the CWP of the most appropriate cognitive model as a solution. But if this enumeration turns out to be inconclusive, then the KVP, in the end, turns to the PI. That is, in part, “fluency” also affects PI. "Complexity" also characterizes the interaction of CWP and DWP.

The psychological basis of theories is intelligence. In general, intellect is a system of mental mechanisms that determine the possibility of constructing a subjective picture of what is happening “inside” the individual. In their higher forms such a subjective picture can be rational, i.e., embody that universal independence of thought that relates to every thing in the way that the essence of the thing itself requires. The psychological roots of rationality (as well as stupidity and madness), therefore, should be sought in the mechanisms of the structure and functioning of the intellect.

There are the following types of theories:

1. Psychometric theories of intelligence

These theories state that individual differences in human cognition and mental abilities can be adequately calculated by special tests. Psychometric theorists believe that people are born with unequal intellectual potential, just as they are born with different physical characteristics, such as height and eye color. They also argue that no social programs will be able to turn people with different mental abilities into intellectually equal individuals.

2. Cognitive theories of intelligence

Cognitive theories of intelligence suggest that the level of human intelligence is determined by the efficiency and speed of information processing processes. According to cognitive theories, the speed of information processing determines the level of intelligence: the faster information is processed, the faster the test task is solved and the higher the level of intelligence is. As indicators of the information processing process (as components of this process), any characteristics that can indirectly indicate this process can be selected - reaction time, brain rhythms, various physiological reactions. As a rule, various speed characteristics are used as the main components of intellectual activity in studies conducted in the context of cognitive theories.

3. Multiple theories of intelligence

The theory of multiple intelligences confirms what educators deal with every day: people think and learn in many different ways.

4. Gestalt psychological theory of intelligence

The nature of intelligence was interpreted in the context of the problem of organizing the phenomenal field of consciousness.

5. Ethological theory of intelligence

Intelligence, according to this theory, is a way of adapting a living being to the requirements of reality, which has been formed in the process of evolution.

6. Operational theory of intelligence (J.Piaget)

Intelligence is the most perfect form of adaptation of the organism to the environment, which is a unity of the process of assimilation (reproduction of the elements of the environment in the psyche of the subject in the form of cognitive mental schemes) and the process of accommodation (change of these cognitive schemes depending on the requirements of the objective world). Thus, the essence of intelligence lies in the ability to carry out flexible and at the same time stable adaptation to physical and social reality, and its main purpose is to structure (organize) the interaction of a person with the environment.

7. Structural-level theory of intelligence

Intelligence is a complex mental activity, which is a unity of cognitive functions of different levels.

Spearman's two-factor theory of intelligence.

The first work in which an attempt was made to analyze the structure of the properties of intelligence appeared in 1904. Its author, Charles Spearman, an English statistician and psychologist, the creator of factor analysis, he drew attention to the fact that there are correlations between different intelligence tests: the one who performs well in some tests and is, on average, quite successful in others. In order to understand the reason for these correlations, Ch. Spearman developed a special statistical procedure that allows you to combine correlated intelligence indicators and determine the minimum number of intellectual characteristics that is necessary in order to explain the relationship between different tests. This procedure was called factor analysis, various modifications of which are actively used in modern psychology.

Having factorized various tests of intelligence, Ch. Spearman came to the conclusion that correlations between tests are the result of a common factor underlying them. He called this factor "factor g" (from the word general - general). The general factor is decisive for the level of intelligence: according to Ch. Spearman's ideas, people differ mainly in the degree to which they possess the g factor.

In addition to the general factor, there are also specific ones that determine the success of various specific tests. The influence of specific factors on individual differences between people, according to Ch. Spearman, is of limited importance, since they do not appear in all situations, and therefore they should not be guided by when creating intellectual tests.

Thus, the structure of intellectual properties proposed by C. Spearman turns out to be extremely simple and is described by two types of factors - general and specific. These two types of factors gave the name to Ch. Spearman's theory - the two-factor theory of intelligence.

But it is not enough to single out the factor mathematically: it is also necessary to try to understand its psychological meaning. Ch. Spearman made two assumptions to explain the content of the common factor. First, the factor g determines the level of "mental energy" needed to solve various intellectual problems. This level is not the same in different people, which leads to differences in intelligence. Secondly, the g factor is associated with three features of consciousness - the ability to assimilate information (acquire new experience), the ability to understand the relationship between objects, and the ability to transfer existing experience to new situations.

The ideology of Ch. Spearman's two-factor theory of intelligence was used to create a number of intelligence tests.

Cubic model of the structure of intelligence by J. Gilford.

The largest number of characteristics underlying individual differences in the intellectual sphere was named by J. Gilford. According to the theoretical ideas of J. Gilford, the performance of any intellectual task depends on three components - operations, content and results.

Operations are those skills that a person must show when solving an intellectual problem. He may be required to understand the information that is presented to him, memorize it, search for the correct answer (convergent products), find not one, but many answers that equally correspond to the information he has (divergent products), and evaluate the situation in terms of right - wrong , good bad.

The content is determined by the form of information submission. Information can be presented in visual form and in auditory form, it can contain symbolic material, semantic (i.e. presented in verbal form) and behavioral (i.e., detected when communicating with other people, when it is necessary to understand from the behavior of other people how respond appropriately to the actions of others).

Results - what a person who solves an intellectual problem eventually comes to can be presented in the form of single answers, in the form of classes or groups of answers. Solving a problem, a person can also find a relationship between different objects or understand their structure (the system underlying them). He can also transform the final result of his intellectual activity and express it in a completely different form than the one in which the source material was given. Finally, he can go beyond the information that is given to him in the test material and find the meaning or hidden meaning underlying this information, which will lead him to the correct answer.

The combination of these three components of intellectual activity - operations, content and results - forms 150 characteristics of intelligence (5 types of operations multiplied by 5 forms of content and multiplied by 6 types of results, i.e. 5x5x6= 150).

For clarity, J. Gilford presented his model of the structure of intelligence in the form of a cube, which gave the name of the model itself. Each face in this cube is one of three components, and the whole cube is made up of 150 small cubes corresponding to different intellectual characteristics. For each cube (each intellectual characteristic), according to J. Gilford, tests can be created that will allow this characteristic to be diagnosed. For example, solving verbal analogies requires understanding the verbal (semantic) material and establishing logical connections (relationships) between objects.

21. Cognitive theories of intelligence. The theory of triple intelligence (R. Sternberg). Hierarchy of intellects (G. Eysenck). Theory of many intelligences (H. Gardner). Cognitive theories of intelligence suggest that the level of human intelligence is determined by the efficiency and speed of information processing processes. According to cognitive theories, the speed of information processing determines the level of intelligence: the faster information is processed, the faster the test task is solved and the higher the level of intelligence is. As indicators of the information processing process (as components of this process), any characteristics that can indirectly indicate this process can be selected - reaction time, brain rhythms, various physiological reactions. As a rule, various speed characteristics are used as the main components of intellectual activity in studies conducted in the context of cognitive theories.

Triune intelligence theory. The author of this theory, American researcher Robert Sternberg, believes that a holistic theory of intelligence should describe its 3 aspects - internal components associated with information processing (component intelligence), the effectiveness of mastering a new situation (empirical intelligence) and the manifestation of intelligence in a social situation (situational intelligence). ).

In component intelligence Sternberg identifies three kinds of processes or components. Performing components are the processes of perceiving information, storing it in short-term memory and retrieving information from long-term memory; they are also related to counting and comparing objects. The components associated with the acquisition of knowledge determine the processes of obtaining new information and its preservation. Metacomponents control performance components and knowledge acquisition; they also define strategies for solving problem situations. As Sternberg's studies have shown, the success of solving intellectual problems depends, first of all, on the adequacy of the components used, and not on the speed of information processing. Often a more successful solution is associated with more time.

empiric intelligence includes two characteristics - the ability to cope with a new situation and the ability to automate some processes. If a person is faced with a new problem, the success of its solution depends on how quickly and effectively the metacomponents of activity responsible for developing a strategy for solving the problem are updated. In cases where the problem of self is not new to a person, when he encounters it not for the first time, the success of its solution is determined by the degree of automation of skills.
situational intelligence- this is the intelligence that manifests itself in everyday life when solving everyday problems (practical intelligence) and when communicating with others (social intelligence).

Sternberg uses standard intelligence tests to diagnose component and empirical intelligence. Since situational intelligence is not measured in psychometric theories, Sternberg developed his own tests to diagnose it.

Hierarchy of intellects. Hans Eysenck identifies the following hierarchy of intelligence types: biological-psychometric-social.
Based on data on the associations of speed characteristics with intelligence measures (which, as we have seen, are not very reliable), Eysenck believes that much of the phenomenology of intelligence testing can be interpreted through temporal characteristics - the speed of solving intelligence tests is considered by Eysenck to be the main reason for individual differences in scores intelligence obtained during the testing procedure. The speed and success of performing simple tasks is considered in this case as the probability of the unhindered passage of encoded information through the "channels of the neural connection" (or, conversely, the probability of delays and distortions that occur in the conducting nerve pathways). This probability is the basis of "biological" intelligence.
Biological intelligence, measured by reaction time and psychophysiological measures, and determined, as Eysenck suggests, by genotype and biochemical and physiological patterns, determines to a large extent "psychometric" intelligence, that is, the one that we measure using IQ tests. But IQ (or psychometric intelligence) is influenced not only by biological intelligence, but also by cultural factors - the socio-economic status of the individual, his education, the conditions in which he was brought up, etc. Thus, there is reason to single out not only psychometric and biological, but and social intelligence.
The IQs used by Eysenck are standard procedures for evaluating reaction time, psychophysiological measures related to the diagnosis of brain rhythm, and psychometric measures of intelligence. For determining social intelligence no new characterizations are proposed by Eysenck, as the aims of his research are limited to the diagnosis of biological intelligence.
The theory of many intelligences. Gardner believes that there is no single intelligence, but there are at least 6 separate intelligences. Three of them describe traditional theories of intelligence - linguistic, logical-mathematical and spatial. The other three, although they may seem at first glance strange and not related to the intellectual field, deserve, according to Gardner, the same status as traditional intelligences. These include musical intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence and personality intelligence
Musical intelligence is related to rhythm and ear, which are the basis of musical ability. Kinesthetic intelligence is defined as the ability to control one's body. Personal intelligence is divided into two - intrapersonal and interpersonal. 1 of them is associated with the ability to manage one's feelings and emotions, 2 - with the ability to understand other people and predict their actions.
Using traditional intelligence testing, data on various brain pathologies, and cross-cultural analysis, Gardner came to the conclusion that the intelligences he singled out are relatively independent of each other.
Gardner believes that the main argument for attributing musical, kinesthetic and personal characteristics to the intellectual sphere is that these characteristics, to a greater extent than traditional intelligence, have determined human behavior since the dawn of civilization.

22. The concept of cognitive style. Cognitive styles identified in various studies. Psychological content of cognitive styles.

IN In the most general form, cognitive styles can be defined as ways of processing information - its receipt, storage and use. It is assumed that these methods are relatively independent of the content of information, differ from person to person, and are stable for each individual.

Cognitive styles identified in different areas of research. 1.Field dependence - field independence. For the first time, these styles were introduced into scientific use by G. Witkin in 1954. Cognitive styles of field dependence - field independence reflect the features of solving perceptual (perception) tasks. Field dependence is characterized by the fact that a person is guided by external sources of information and therefore is more influenced by the context when solving perceptual tasks (for example, isolating a figure from a background), which creates great difficulties for him. Field independence is associated with a person's orientation to internal sources of information, so he is less influenced by the context, and more easily solves perceptual tasks.

2. (D.Kagan) Reflexive-impulsive CS. For its diagnosis, a special method was developed - a test for the selection of a paired figure. When performing this test, the subject is shown a reference picture and is asked to find exactly the same among the other 6 (for an older age 8) similar ones. Of these, only one fully corresponds to the standard, but their similarity provokes rash answers.

The main indicator of reflexivity-impulsivity is the number of mistakes that the subject makes before finding the correct answer. With high reflexivity, the number of these errors will be minimal, since reflexivity is associated with analysis test task and testing all possible hypotheses. With high impulsivity, the subject gives the answer without hesitation, seeing the first similar picture.

3. Meninger's study of the CS. G. Klein and R. Gardner, who headed the psychological research center at the Meninger Clinic, which gave the name to this area, sought to explore the principles of cognitive organization based on psychoanalytic ideas. They suggested that styles of information processing (in their terminology, cognitive controls) appear in early ontogeny and represent the basis on which defense mechanisms are formed.

1. Leveling-sharpening is a way of perceiving
different features of objects: some people may not notice
even significant differences between objects, others - draw
attention to the mismatch of the smallest details. It was assumed that
these individual characteristics are related to how detailed
man remembers information

The subject is asked to estimate the size of geometric figures presented one after another, for example, squares, the size of which increases sequentially. The more correct the assessment of the progressive increase in stimuli, the more the style of cognitive activity indicates "sharpening", the ability to distinguish differences between details. The greater the error, the more the differences between stimuli are "smoothed out" in memory.

2. High-Low Tolerance for Unrealistic Experiences manifests itself in unstable or unusual conditions that have no analogue in human life experience. Individual differences in this cognitive control indicate how easily facts are accepted that contradict the person's knowledge and skills.

A drum rotates in front of the subject, on the wall of which pictures are drawn depicting successive stages of movement (for example, a person whose position of the legs changes). At first, at a slow rotation speed, the pictures are perceived separately from each other (as pictures of people standing in different poses); At increasing the speed of rotation, the pictures merge and an illusion of movement arises (a person is walking). Thus, the subject sees movement, but knows that there is actually no movement. The greater the tolerance for unrealistic experiences (i.e. the greater the willingness to admit that your knowledge is contrary to what you feel, eat at the moment), the faster movement is noticed.

3. narrow-wide range equivalence(or conceptual differentiation) testifies to individual differences that manifest themselves in the free classification of objects. Some people tend to divide classified objects into a small number of groups, focusing on the similarities between these objects. These people have a wide range of equivalence. Others note first of all the differences, combine a small number of objects into one group, and as a result of the classification, many groups are obtained. These people select as equivalent (those that can be assigned to the same group) only very similar objects: they have a narrow range of equivalence.

Sorting tests (geometric shapes, meaningless abstract pictures, drawings of various objects, photographs, or even just the names of objects).

4. Focus-scan associated with the characteristics of the distribution
attention when performing a test task. Focusing
indicates the ability to focus on the most
more important details of information, without being distracted by interference that interferes
completing the task. Scanning shows low concentration
attention, inability to highlight important and minor details
or in the unsystematic analysis of the material.

5. Rigid-flexible cognitive control testifies to the ratio of voluntary and involuntary regulation of cognitive activity. Individual differences in this cognitive control are determined mainly by the characteristics of the performance of the Stroop word-color interference test.

In this test, the subject must complete three tasks: in the first series, he must read the names of the colors presented to him (red, green, etc.), in the second series - name the colors in which the cards are painted, in the third - name the color of the ink with which names of flowers are written. At the same time, the meaning of the word and the color in which it is written do not match: the word red, for example, is written in green ink, the word yellow is written in red. In the third series, the speed of responses decreases because the subject needs time to separate the two types of signals that are in conflict with each other. The degree of increase in the task execution time in the third series, compared with the first two, is the main indicator of the test. The more time is increased, the more verbal and perceptual stimuli interfere and the more rigid is cognitive control.

The contribution of performance characteristics to the indicators of different cognitive styles turns out to be different. According to the classification of N. Kogan, who studied the features of the methods of cognitive activity in children, There are three levels of cognitive styles.
To the first among them are those diagnostic methods that are based on solving problems that have one correct solution. Depending on what way of information processing is inherent in a person, he either finds or does not find a solution to the problem. These styles include, for example, field dependence-field independence or reflexivity-impulsivity.
Cognitive styles of this level reveal connections with a variety of productive characteristics of activity. Children who are not dependent on the field perform many intellectual tests better than those who are dependent on the field, they have a higher level of selective attention, they choose more rational strategies for memorizing and reproducing material, they generalize their knowledge and skills more easily and apply them more successfully in an unfamiliar situation. . Reflexive children are characterized by higher academic performance than impulsive ones, they have better memory and attention.
To the second level cognitive styles include those of them, in determining which the question of the correctness of the decision is not raised, but one of the styles is given great value. Preference usually has a theoretical basis - one of the poles is associated with a higher level of ontogenetic development (i.e. it is assumed that some decisions are more characteristic of younger age, while others are older). To the third level cognitive styles include those styles whose opposite poles are of equal value. These include, for example, the breadth of the range of equivalence, which in children is not associated with any productive characteristics.

Conclusion: Regarding the place of cognitive styles in the structure of human psychological characteristics, it is suggested that cognitive styles are highly generalized characteristics that integrate indicators of cognitive and personal spheres.