Compare and contrast the views of intelligence held by Charles Spearman and Howard Gardner

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

ANSWER:
?A century ago, British statistician Charles Spearman argued that because test scores of separate mental abilities (such as verbal skills, mathematical ability, deductive reasoning skills) tend to correlate, there must be one general level of intelligence that underlies these separate mental abilities (Spearman, 1904). Spearman referred to this general intelligence as g. In Spearman’s view, one’s level of g would determine how well he or she functioned on any number of cognitive tasks. The idea that intelligence is a single, unitary factor helped lead to the rapid expansion of intelligence testing in schools, the workplace, and the military. But the notion of g would soon be challenged.
?
In the early 1980s, Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner proposed a theory of intelligence that views humans as possessing many different intelligences. According to Gardner, an intelligence is “a biopsychological potential to process information that can be activated in a cultural setting to solve problems or create products that are of value in a culture.” This definition emphasizes the fact that intelligence allows us to function efficiently in our own environment, and it also highlights the fact that different cultures and environments place different demands on our intelligence. Gardner has identified nine different intelligences and allowed for the possibility that more may someday be identified.