Intelligence

   1) Child Development and the Intellectual Life

   There is no mystery about it: the child who is familiar with books, ideas, conversation-the ways and means of the intellectual life-before he begins school, indeed, before he begins consciously to think, has a marked advantage. He is at home in the House of intellect just as the stableboy is at home among horses, or the child of actors on the stage. (Barzun, 1959, p. 142)

   2) Comparison of Sensory-Motor Intelligence and Conceptual Thought

   It is . . . no exaggeration to say that sensory-motor intelligence is limited to desiring success or practical adaptation, whereas the function of verbal or conceptual thought is to know and state truth. (Piaget, 1954, p. 359)

   3) The Epistemological and Heuristic Parts of Intelligence

   ntelligence has two parts, which we shall call the epistemological and the heuristic. The epistemological part is the representation of the world in such a form that the solution of problems follows from the facts expressed in the representation. The heuristic part is the mechanism that on the basis of the information solves the problem and decides what to do. (McCarthy & Hayes, 1969, p. 466)

   4) Comparison of Intelligence in Human and Nonhuman Primates

   Many scientists implicitly assume that, among all animals, the behavior and intelligence of nonhuman primates are most like our own. Nonhuman primates have relatively larger brains and proportionally more neocortex than other species . . . and it now seems likely that humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas shared a common ancestor as recently as 5 to 7 million years ago. . . . This assumption about the unique status of primate intelligence is, however, just that: an assumption. The relations between intelligence and measures of brain size is poorly understood, and evolutionary affinity does not always ensure behavioral similarity. Moreover, the view that nonhuman primates are the animals most like ourselves coexists uneasily in our minds with the equally pervasive view that primates differ fundamentally from us because they lack language; lacking language, they also lack many of the capacities necessary for reasoning and abstract thought. (Cheney & Seyfarth, 1990, p. 4)

   5) Four Approaches to the Study of Intelligence

   Few constructs are asked to serve as many functions in psychology as is the construct of human intelligence. . . . Consider four of the main functions addressed in theory and research on intelligence, and how they differ from one another.

   1. Biological. This type of account looks at biological processes. To qualify as a useful biological construct, intelligence should be a biochemical or biophysical process or at least somehow a resultant of biochemical or biophysical processes.

   2. Cognitive approaches. This type of account looks at molar cognitive representations and processes. To qualify as a useful mental construct, intelligence should be specifiable as a set of mental representations and processes that are identifiable through experimental, mathematical, or computational means.

   3. Contextual approaches. To qualify as a useful contextual construct, intelligence should be a source of individual differences in accomplishments in "real-world" performances. It is not enough just to account for performance in the laboratory. On [[i]sic] the contextual view, what a person does in the lab may not even remotely resemble what the person would do outside it. Moreover, different cultures may have different conceptions of intelligence, which affect what would count as intelligent in one cultural context versus another.

   4. Systems approaches. Systems approaches attempt to understand intelligence through the interaction of cognition with context. They attempt to establish a link between the two levels of analysis, and to analyze what forms this link takes. (Sternberg, 1994, pp. 263-264)

   5) High Intelligence Combined with the Greatest Degrees of Persistence

   High but not the highest intelligence, combined with the greatest degrees of persistence, will achieve greater eminence than the highest degree of intelligence with somewhat less persistence. (Cox, 1926, p. 187)

   6) Intelligence Is Not Marked by Definitive Criteria

   There are no definitive criteria of intelligence, just as there are none for chairness; it is a fuzzy-edged concept to which many features are relevant. Two people may both be quite intelligent and yet have very few traits in common-they resemble the prototype along different dimensions. . . . [Intelligence] is a resemblance between two individuals, one real and the other prototypical. (Neisser, 1979, p. 185)

   7) Synthesis of Differential and Information-Processing Approaches to the Study of Intelligence

   Given the complementary strengths and weaknesses of the differential and information-processing approaches, it should be possible, at least in theory, to synthesise an approach that would capitalise upon the strength of each approach, and thereby share the weakness of neither. (Sternberg, 1977, p. 65)