The Multiple Facets of Intelligence

You may have heard the comments - ‘You dance so well!’, ‘She plays like the angels!’, ‘You never get lost anywhere!’. But while such comments have been around since the dawn of times, it’s been only recently that abilities such as dancing, playing an instrument or finding one’s way around a new city became associated with the term ‘intelligence’. And we owe it to the Multiple Intelligences Theory, one of the most intriguing cognitive theories that have emerged in the past decades.

Developed by Dr. Howard Gardner and published for the first time in 1983 in his book "Frames of Mind: the Theory of Multiple Intelligences", it caused a veritable revolution from the start, challenging our concept of what constitutes an ‘intelligence’, and capturing the attention of scholars, psychologists, educators and the general public.

Graduated from Harvard University College of Psychology, Howard Gardner first started the MI Theory in the late 1970's as a psychology theory. But over the years, he noticed how more educators than psychologists gravitated towards it, and how the theory seemed to adapt itself perfectly for the benefit the classroom. Then it slowly turned into more of an educational theory.

In fact, since its first 1983 edition, Dr. Gardner’s first book has been revised and edited four times, and he has published two other books on the subject of Multiple Intelligences: "Intelligence Reframed" (1999) and "Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons" (2006) , expanding and adding to his primary thesis, as new questions and applications for his theory arise.

But, what is really the Multiple Intelligences Theory? Is it really a ‘Theory’? In order to answer the first question, we should first define what is ‘intelligence’.

What is ‘Intelligence’?

According to the Webster Dictionary, ‘intelligence’ is: "The act or state of knowing; the exercise of the understanding", and "the capacity to know or understand; readiness of comprehension; the intellect, as a gift or an endowment". However, for Dr. Gardner, the term ‘intelligence’ refers to a set of human computational capacities - that is, the potential of the human brain to process and use information.

We capture information from our surroundings through our senses, bombarding our brain each second of the day with all kinds of data: images, movement, sounds, words, sensations, smells, etc. The brain separates, distributes and connects this information into coherent form and selects an appropriate response.

But although this general neurological activity is similar in all of us, each brain is slightly different. Each ability (language, visual recognition, spatial location, etc.) possess a characteristic neural process, with different levels of specialization from individual to individual. Which in turn explains the different levels of abilities across the spectrum of intelligences.

In reference to the ‘classic’ concept of intelligence, Dr. Gardner likes to compare the brain to a computer. Accepting that intelligence is based only on mathematic and language smarts is like stating that the brain is like a single computer. But in fact, the brain behaves more like an interconnected network of computers, each with its own particular specialization.

With this example, Dr. Gardner also makes a point: high performance of one of the computers in the network does not necessarily imply low performance of the rest, or any in particular. Thus, he tried to debunk the frustrating myth that low performance on traditional academic tests necessarily means poor smarts.

Many scholars and scientists do not agree with the Multiple Intelligences theory, and do not accept it as a real theory at all. Dr. Gardner himself is clear to admit that, although it does not follow the strict scientific standard required by scholars to be fully declared ‘a Theory’, it is based on the principles of the scientific method, and exhaustive gathering of evidence. Thus, the results yielded are reliable and coherent with serious scientific research.

What Are the Different Types of Intelligence?

In his first book, Dr. Gardner specified five types of intelligence, along to the already-accepted mathematical and linguistic types:

* Musical Intelligence : ability to memorize and recognize sounds, tunes, melodies, etc.

* Inter-personal Intelligence : ability to recognize and empathize with other people’s emotions.

* Intra-personal Intelligence : ability to recognize and understand one’s own emotions.

* Bodily-kinesthetic Intelligence : ability to move and control one’s body - from manual to athletic skill.

* Spatial Intelligence : ability to understand tridimensionality and location in space.

* Logical-Mathematical Intelligence : numerical ability and ease to understand abstract concepts.

* Linguistic : ability with words and languages in general.

In later years, he added the ‘Naturalist’ intelligence (the ability to connect with nature and understand natural phenomena), and he’s currently examining the possibility of adding ‘Existential’ intelligence (ability to understand life’s challenges), and ‘Pedagogical’ intelligence (ability to explain concepts and ideas to others) into the list.

However, not all skills can be added as an intelligence! Dr. Gardner is clear to note that, in order for an ability to be considered an ‘intelligence’, it has to comply with the conditions established by his theory and described in his first book. You will notice, for example, that the Multiple Intelligences Theory does not include ‘Emotional Intelligence’ (a term coined by Daniel Golem, author of the namesake theory ), and other skills such as ‘creativity’ or ‘memory’, simply because these do not fulfill the conditions set by his theory to be considered an ‘intelligence’ in their own right.

What is My Type of Intelligence?

Since the beginning of this theory, many tests and quizzes have been created to reveal our ‘hidden intelligence’, but in fact Dr. Gardner has never created any official test to evaluate the levels of a particular intelligence in individuals, and does not endorse any. He accepts the use of the MIDAS test, created by Dr. Brandon Shearer based on the Multiple Intelligences Theory, and the most widely used to determine a type of intelligence. But Dr. Gardner is wary of such classifications, concerned bout the negative impact (pigeonholing) that it may have on a student or a child.

According to Dr. Gardner, intelligences can’t be seen or studied directly, but always in relation to different behaviours and tasks. Thus, one can’t be certain if a determined type of intelligence is being applied during a determined action. For instance, an artist could be applying musical intelligence when painting a portrait, and a writer may apply mathematical intelligence when writing a play. Therefore, limiting the theory to our primary preconceptions (a student with a high level of logical-mathematic intelligence will do well in a mathematical career ) may not only be misleading, but also goes against the theory itself.

Moreover, as Dr. Gardner explains, all types of intelligence interact among them, a concept that is backed up by recent neurological findings.

For long, it was believed that the brain’s hemispheres worked separately and distinctively from each other: the right brain was artistic, the left brain was logic. But new advances in neurology have revealed that the neural activity for all tasks (writing, speaking, dancing, etc.) occur in several parts of the brain at once - they’re not localized in one section only, which comes to support Gardner’s theory in that all intelligences are interrelated and none really prevails over another. Instead, they support each other.

For instance, when working, a car mechanic may rely on his visual-spatial intelligence (to recognize the parts of the machine), his bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (to work with the tools), his logical-mathematical intelligence (to evaluate the possible fixing options), his musical intelligence (to recognize sounds of malfunction or when tuning an engine) and interpersonal and linguistic intelligences (to explain the customer what’s wrong with the car and negotiate a price).

If you’re still curious, you may take a test at the following link:
http://psych2go.net/9-types-of-intelligence/ , but keep in mind it’s more for the fun of it than for actual scientific results.

What’s the Use of this Theory?

From the beginning, the Multiple Intelligences Theory was embraced by educators worldwide, since it opened a new avenue for understanding the different set of skills found in a classroom, and bestowed a new tool for professors, teachers and instructors to reach out better to their students. In fact, the success of this theory has been such, that it even spawned the creation of specific schools based on this theory.

However, beyond the mere anecdotic, the Multiple Intelligences Theory helps students and educators in two specific ways: helping educators to sort out the individual strengths of each student in order to adapt the content to them (Individuation), and stimulating the teaching of consequential materials in several different ways, so that the information reaches to a broader audience (Pluralization).

For instance, if a math class is taught using colors, objects, music, group activities and even short stories, educators can tap into the different types of intelligence present in class, broadening the scope of their teaching, establishing their expertise on the subject and gaining the student’s respect in the process.

Dr. Gardner has received many honors and accolades for his work on the Multiple Intelligences theory, and is currently Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and also works on ‘Project Zero’, an educational project. His work on the multiple intelligences theory has opened new horizons to all of those who work with cognition and teaching, demonstrating the versatility of the human mind and its multiples facets, which we’re only now just starting to discover.

To Learn More...

Multiple Intelligences is an intriguing and practical theory, and as such is constantly evolving. If you want to learn more about this fascinating subject, you may go to Dr. Gardner’s official page https://howardgardner.com , or to the official Multiple Intelligences page www.multipleintelligencesoasis.org .