Intelligence - 3 dimensions

There are 3 dimensions that contribute to intelligence. They work together.

Neural dimension of intelligence

• It is influenced strongly by genetics and physical maturation. When there is neurological damage at birth, as a result of oxygen deprivation, the intelligence of the child is obviously impaired. Some substances can depress IQ, presumably by influencing neural development and general health. Prenatal alcohol consumption by mothers yields a trend toward slightly lower IQ as measured at age 4. Levels of lead, for instance from ingesting paint, relate to lower IQs. Vitamin and mineral supplements appear to affect IQ slightly, perhaps by impacting the nervous system or perhaps simply by improving general health.
• There is a correlation between general intelligence and brain size of the order of 0.3 not a high number but a real one.
• Although people with higher general intelligence might show faster reaction times through strategizing, the evidence is not very supportive of this interpretation. Sometimes teaaching strategies for reaction-time tasks imparis performance and sometimes it does not help. In some studies, teaching strategies actually increases the correlation between general intelligence and performance, suggesting that the participants with higher neural intelligence could learn and apply the strategies more effectively.

Experiental dimension of intelligence

• This contribution is learned, the result of extensive experience thinking and acting in particular situations over long period of time. The knowledge and know-how it yields figure in intelligent behaviour. You cannot play chess without knowing the rules of game. You cannot play politics without knowing who to talk to and what to say.
• Those who are intelligent acquire the critical mass of knowledge theyneed readily enough, and then use that knowledge; rather, intelligence is what equips us for acquiring a mass of knowledge and thinking with it.
• Experience is crystallized intelligence that reflect prior learning. Highly intelligent behavior always depends on a rich knowledge base. Experiential intelligence is context bound, a matter of narrow expertise. However, many areas of experiental intelligence are general, relevant over a considerable range of circumstances. For instance, experience in getting along with people, in handling basic arithemetic relationships, or in writing well has all sorts of applications in diverse contexts.

Reflective dimension of intelligence

• The contribution to intelligent behavior of strategies for various intellectually challenging tasks, attitudes conducive to persistence, systematicity, and imagination in the use of one's mind, and habits of self-monitoring and management.
• Teaching of strategies can dramatically improve basic information-processing operations such as memory storage and retrieval, at least in the short term
• Also, the teaching of strategies can greatly improve performance in plainly intellectually challenging areas such as mathematical problem solving. Moreover, teaching metacognitive self-monitoring can help to foster transfer of learning to other circumstances.
• High general intelligence and relevant knowledge often are not enough for intelligent behavior. Research on expertise shows that sometimes people are bright and knowledgeable in an area of expertise, but very brittle in their problem-solving abilities: they are only good in handling conventional problems in the domain and easily fall apart on more challenging problems.
• It's not the case that knowledge in an area always leads to better reasoning. People do not develop robust intelligent behavior in areas where they have a great deal of experience. We do not always and automatically learn from experience, even extended experience. For instance, people play chess or bridge for years without getting much better at it. Reflectiveness about our experience that leads to restructuring our approach and developing new methods may be one of the missing ingredients.

The three dimensions seem to amplify the impact of one another, rather than each just adding its share. To get a sense of how this happens with intelligent hehavior, imagine a student who has just begun high school algebra and discovered a fascination with it. Applying herself, she starts to accumulate some experiential intelligence in that domain. Her high neural intelligence helps her to learn algebra faster and with more precision, boosting her experiential intelligence. Also, her high neural intelligence gives her more information-processing power to be reflective with, self-monitoring her learning and steering it in fruitful directions. Moreover, her reflective intelligence leads her to manage her learning systematically and strategically, which boosts her accumulation of experiential intelligence all the more. As she builds experiential intelligence in algebra, concepts and procedures become more automatic, judgements more intuitive. This free up her neural intelligence for other aspects of algebra, such as complex problem solving. Also, her ripening intuitions allow her to reflect more insightfully and accurately on the course of her problems solving and indeed her learning.

For learnable Intelligence, reflective intelligence, as the control system for experiential and neural intelligence, offers the greatest hope for all-round improvement in people's intelligence behavior.