Intelligence Theories XI

 It's a category error to lump all these together and to call them intelligence. Professor Gardner is convinced we have at least eight relatively separate intelligences. This is completely opposite to IQ which assumes that we all have just one general intelligence. So you might be wonderful at understanding other people but a disaster at doing crossword puzzles or flying an airplane. So we do know that an individual's high-performance in one area simply doesn't predict high performance in other areas.
 Horizon put its line-up of high-flyers through Professor Gardner's new intelligence tests to see if the outcome would be any different to the standard IQ tests. But there's no agreed system for measuring them.

Intelligence Theories X About IQ

 The IQ test consists of many sections that seem unconnected. What does an entomologist study? There are sections on vocabulary and general knowledge. What's the capital of Jordan? Amman. What's the distance between London and Hong Kong in miles? I would suspect it's around a third of the way around the globe so about miles. A section on memory. Eight one seven five backwards. Five seven one eight.
And a section to test spatial ability. You're doing just fine. Wow that was tough. Do a lot of people get this one in two minutes? I can't see how that works. Common sense might tell us that we're good at some of these sections and bad at others. But that's not the case. On average if we're good at one of these sections we tend to be good at all of them. And from this comes the idea that intelligence is some kind of general all-round ability.