Other angles on �Intelligence�

Beliefs about intelligence (mindsets)

Increasingly, reading about intelligence in an educational context will lead you to the work of Carol Dweck, under the heading of "self-theories" or "mindsets".

Her research is not so much about intelligence itself, as people's beliefs about it--their own in particular. She focuses on two possible (usually implicit) theories or assumptions about the characteristics of intelligence; they are implicit in that people (particularly children, to whom she pays most attention) rarely talk about them directly, but they betray them in how they discuss challenges, problems, difficulties, opportunities, successes and failures.

She gets at these mindsets with a simple self-test. Which of the following do you most agree with?

(from Dweck, 2006: 12)

To be fair, this may appear mind-bogglingly banal, but it is the simple bottom line of two decades or more of research: it is taken from Dweck's more recent book for a popular readership--you'll find it under "self-help" in the bookshop, rather than respectable psychology, as the title suggests: Mindset; how you can fulfil your potential London; Robinson, 2012.

Although the answers are arranged in a rough continuum, the first two represent what is currently referred to as a "fixed" mindset. (The labels have changed over the years, but I'll use the current versions.) The second two represent a "growth" mindset.

• A fixed mindset assumes that you are born with a certain amount of intelligence, and it remains static.
• A growth mindset assumes that your intelligence can be developed: you are not confined to what you were born with.

A little elaboration;

• This is not just a matter of intelligence�you can make the same distinction in relation to musical ability, sporting prowess, sociability, and other qualities.
• The history of the idea of intelligence has been riven with nature/nurture debates�which come down to this divide.
• It doesn't matter, for Dweck's purposes, which of the mindsets is "true" (and of course their expression is so crude that neither of them is accurate); she is interested in the difference it makes to a person to believe one rather than another.
• She takes pains to claim that one is not better than the other. But that is a little disingenuous; she treats the fixed position as without merit and destructive.
• When things are going well, she argues, which mindset you have doesn't matter much, and that is supported by her research evidence. It is when the going gets tough that the growth mindset wins hands down:

(based on graphic in Dweck, 2006:245)

• The tinted row of the table is the critical step in the argument, and it has been the focus of most of the empirical research reported in Dweck (2000).
• The basic take-home message is that student feedback ("student" here refers mainly to children) needs to focus on the amount of effort, concrete achievement and improvement the learner has demonstrated, in order to promote a growth mindset. To attribute success (or of course failure) to apparent qualities of the individual� "You're really bright!" or "That's stupid"�is to encourage a fixed mindset. This is actually harder than it sounds.

Here is Dweck's site based on the Mindset book.

Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence

The distinction between "fluid" (Gf) and "crystallized" (Gc) intelligence is probably mainly of interest to theorists, but it does also have some implications for teaching. The "G" in the abbreviated labels refers to Spearman's g factor, so this is not yet another attempt to deconstruct the possible components of intelligence. Instead, it draws attention to the interaction of what (very broadly and  roughly�I warned you!) we might call "native wit" and "experience" in the expression of intelligence in an individual. However, the theory does not suggest that fluid intelligence becomes "crystallized" with age; indeed, more recent work in the field suggests that the abilities associated with each type may be associated with different parts of the brain. The idea is particularly associated with Raymond Cattell and John L Horn, in a series of papers principally produced from the early 'sixties to the late 'seventies.

Fluid intelligence: Horn and Cattell (1967) defined it as "�the ability to perceive relationships independent of previous specific practice or instruction concerning those relationships." That is one of those definitions of limited use as we saw here. What appears to be more important is that it works through abstractions; it is through abstraction that we perceive the essences of objects and concepts and thus can compare them.

Crystallized intelligence, on the other hand draws on the stock of knowledge deposited in memory through experience.

Both work together, and in many practical situations, answers to problems can be arrived at with different mixes of the two. The research suggests that while both forms increase through childhood and adolescence, fluid intelligence peaks in adolescence and begins to decline from early middle age. Crystallized intelligence continues to grow as long as experience is accumulated and learned from.

References

• Cattell R B (1987). Intelligence: Its structure, growth, and action. New York: Elsevier Science Pub. Co.
• Horn J L & Cattell R B (1967) "Age differences in fluid and crystallized intelligence." Acta Psychologica, 26, 107-129.

up-dated 16 Oct 14