What is contextualism and how does it apply to the study of intelligence?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

According to contextualism, intelligence must be understood in its real-world context. The context of intelligence may be viewed at any level of analysis. It may be focused narrowly, as on the home and family environment, or it may be extended broadly, to entire cultures. For example, even cross-community differences have been correlated with differences in performance on intelligence tests. Such context-related differences include those of rural versus urban communities, low versus high proportions of teenagers to adults within communities, and low versus high socioeconomic status of communities. Contextualists have been intrigued particularly by the effects of cultural context on intelligence.

Contextualists consider intelligence to be inextricably linked to culture. They view intelligence as something that a culture creates to define the nature of adaptive performance in that culture. It further accounts for why some people perform better than others on the tasks that the culture happens to value. Theorists who endorse this model study just how intelligence relates to the external world in which the model is being applied and evaluated. In general, definitions and theories of intelligence will more effectively encompass cultural diversity by broadening in scope.