Structure of intelligence: one phenomenon – different approaches

Abstract

The article analyzes scientific attempts to define intelligence and represent it with certain structural components. According to Galton, intelligence is represented by a single mental construct that underlies success. Binet, together with Simon, primarily associated intelligence with common sense. Spearman singled out general intelligence in intelligence, marking it with the symbol g, and a number of special components that reflect the specifics of intellectual activity, and marked them with the symbol s. Thurstone found that intellectual behavior was determined not by a general factor, but rather by seven independent factors that he called primary abilities: vocabulary, verbal comprehension, spatial visualization, ability to manipulate numbers, associative memory, reasoning, and perceptual speed. Later he managed to find an elegant mathematical solution to these conflicting results, and the final version of his theory was a compromise that took into account both the general construct and the seven primary abilities. Vernon presented a hierarchical theory of the structure of intellectual abilities. At the top of this hierarchy was Spearman’s general construct (g). There are several specific group constructions below g. Because Vernon’s theory accounted for general and group constructs, it was seen as a compromise between Spearman’s two-factor theory (which had no group factors) and Thurstone’s multifactor theory (which had no general factor). Cattell-Horn's theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence suggests that general intelligence is a conglomerate of abilities that work together in different ways in different people. Current abilities are relatively
independent of education. Crystallized abilities depend on the effectiveness of the learning process. Wechsler concludes that Spearman’s theory of general intelligence (g) is too narrow. Because when he claims that there is a g-factor that can be diagnosed verbally or non-verbally, he really means that intelligence is not represented by a single ability. Renzulli moved away from Spearman’s view of psychometric, unitary intelligence to a more malleable concept that allowed for various forms of evaluative intelligence information. Sternberg’s triarchic theory of successful intelligence posits that intelligent behavior results from a balance between analytical, creative, and practical abilities. Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences posits that intelligent behavior is not explained by a single property of the mind, as g-oriented theories suggest, but rather that different types of intelligence are
generated from distinct sources of mental capacity. Hunt proposed an alternative concept of intelligence as an information processing system. As a result, Das believed that intelligence is a set of all cognitive processes that include planning, attention, simultaneous and sequential processing of information. Overall, Eysenck concludes that if we can build a model of intelligence based on the ideas reflected in the existing literature, then we must assume that a combination of Spearman’s g, Thurstone’s primary abilities and the IQ representation of speed, persistence, and error analysis may be the best conception of intelligence from those currently available.