Intellect in psychology is human psyche ability, with the help of which he can successfully solve problems arising in the process of life activity, relying on experience and knowledge, acquire new skills and abilities.
Thanks to the intellect, people can effectively use all cognitive skills, including perception, attention, thinking, memory, imagination. It is intelligence in many ways. helped humanity survive throughout the entire period of existence.
Basic concept
Intelligence - the quality of the psyche, thanks to which people are able to adapt to new circumstances and extract valuable experience from them, make vital decisions, using previously acquired abilities and knowledge, successfully learn, work in areas closely related to mental work, engage in complex, heterogeneous activities that require thinking outside the box.
Intelligence - this is essentially a complex of various skills, such as the ability to work with information coming from outside, to search for logical chains, qualitatively use logical thinking and so on.
Despite the fact that there are animals with quite high intellectual abilities (monkeys, especially chimpanzees and orangutans, dogs, ravens, cats, dolphins, pigs, elephants), man is much better than them.
Intellectual behavior is characteristic of both developed animals and people, but usually this definition applies to animals.
Under intellectual behavior implies the actions of the creature, aimed at solving a vital task, up to inventing new methods, algorithms based on the analysis of the situation.
They are not connected with instincts. and the originally existing abilities of the creature directly. Some animals, having deduced a certain algorithm, keep it for life and even share their achievements with their offspring.
The higher the intelligence of the animal, the more noticeable the manifestations of intellectual behavior.
Zoologists are actively exploring the intellectual skills of animals using observations and experiments.
One of the most remarkable evidence of their intellectual behavior is the use of tools to solve the problem (which is usually getting directly inaccessible goodies): sticks, stones.
For example, in a well-known experiment on crows, researchers place two tall and narrow vessels. One is half filled with water, the other with sand. In each of the vessels lies a treat.
Crow can't get it. After some time, she begins to throw the stones lying next to the vessel with water, the water level rises, and she takes the treat.
Some animal species (such as chimpanzees) even were seen making gunssuitable for their tasks.
The concepts of "intelligence" and "thinking" are closely related. Intellect is often referred to as the ability to use thinking.
And thinking is already a specific cognitive ability, thanks to which a person cognizes the world around him, analyzes it.
But intelligence includes not only the ability to use thinking, but also ability to apply cognitive abilities in general, because without memory, attention, perception it is impossible to imagine.
Factor Information
Contrary to popular belief measure intelligence is extremely difficultBecause, as mentioned, it consists of many different abilities.
And even existing tests created by well-known psychologists cannot be considered an ideal way to measure: they often measure only some of the components intelligence.
It is convenient to use them to identify people with insufficient intellectual abilities, which helps in the diagnosis of certain diseases, but it is difficult to find geniuses with their help, because genius - also a complex structure consisting of many components.
Most famous testsidentifying IQ are:
- Hans Eysenck test;
- Raven's (Raven's) test;
- test Wechsler.
Tests showing IQ level repeatedly criticized various researchers, such as mathematician Viktor Vasilyev, who found errors in the Eysenck questionnaire.
It is also noted that the level of IQ is weakly correlated with the probability that a person will achieve success in life and be happy.
The type of intelligence that can be measured using the above tests is called psychometric. Its manifestations are simple enough to identify and fix.
Data:
- It is imperative that the person at the stage of formation (during gestation and in childhood) got enough iodine. The average IQ in regions where children and pregnant women do not receive iodine is 10-15 points lower than in regions where this problem does not exist.
- People with high IQ, more likely to suffer mental illnessespecially anxiety disorder.
- Marilyn Vos Savant - American woman with the highest IQ in the world: 228. She is engaged in journalistic activities and writes books.
Of great importance is the degree of development of emotional intelligence (EQ). It is easier for people with advanced EQ to interact with others, adapt to society and achieve success in work.
Intellectualization in Psychology
Intellectualization - one of the forms of psychological protection, in which a person closes from his sensual feelings and begins to perceive what he feels on an intellectual level. This helps to reduce the influence of emotions on behavior and decisions, to act more intelligently, correctly.
But any defense mechanisms of the psyche negatively affect how an individual perceives reality and himself. In this case, intellectualization leads to the fact that the individual ceases to realize the importance of his emotional state.
People actively using similar protection express emotions with difficulty, which complicates interaction with others, especially in the case of close social relationships (love, friendship).
Considered an integral part of the person schizoid (both schizoid accentuation and schizoid personality disorder are implied).
Types and types
These species began to secrete largely to prove the inefficiency of the IQ tests and the approach itself, which assumes that the intellect is something holistic, indivisible and can be fully measured.
According to the classification proposed by Howard Gardner, there are eight types of intelligence:
- Spatial. This is the ability to navigate in space, quickly determine where the top is, where is the bottom, where is the right and where is left, find the way through the maps, compare information from them with the actual situation.
It is well developed in people whose profession is in one way or another connected with orientation in space: drivers, dancers, architects, chess players.
- Interpersonal. The ability to interact with other people, to find an approach to each person, to feel their emotional state, to understand experiences, fears, to be able to provide psychological support, to correctly determine the attitude of a particular person, to create strong social connections. Highly developed among those who constantly interact with people: psychologists, psychotherapists. This type of intelligence is very close in meaning to the concept of "emotional intelligence." Poorly developed by social phobes and autistic people.
- Musical. The presence of increased sensitivity to sounds (not only those that emit musical instruments), the ability to combine them, to feel the rhythm. Good development in musicians, dancers, composers.
- Body-kinesthetic. The ability to qualitatively use motor abilities, to make accurate and correct movements, to move in time, to interact well with small and large objects. The high development of body-kinesthetic intelligence allows you to work better with various materials, to engage in applied art. Developed by choreographers, dancers, craftsmen in the fields of applied art, athletes.
- Linguistic. The ability to harmoniously combine words, build coherent sentences, memorize rules, correctly use complex terms, and express your own thoughts in verbal form. Developed by linguists, philologists, editors, writers, journalists.
- Logical and Mathematical. The ability to create logical connections between different characters, work with information, find a sequence.
Good development among specialists in the field of exact sciences: mathematicians, physicists and others.
- Intrapersonal. The ability to understand your own feelings, find ways to deal with psychological discomfort.
- Naturalistic. The ability to distinguish between plants and animals, to feel sympathy for them, to understand the feelings of certain animals, to determine what the fading plant needs in order for it to recover.
Also distinguish these types of intelligence:
- Overall. The combination of skills that allow you to adapt to the outside world, to effectively solve various problems, to achieve success.
- Special. It implies the presence of special abilities required to work in narrow areas of knowledge.
Structure
Joy Gilferd, a famous American psychologist, derived his own model of the structure of intelligence, which is called "cubic". According to his ideas, intelligence consists of three blocks:
- operations (includes a list of basic intellectual processes);
- content (includes categorization of information that is intellectually processed, by content);
- results (list of results obtained in the process of mental activity).
Its model is called “cubic” because for its description it is easiest to use a cube, each side of which is one of the mentioned blocks.
Since Gilferd's theory is flexible and open, it has already been determined about 150 components, in one way or another associated with intellectual work.
Theories
The main theories of intelligence that exist in psychology:
- General intelligence. Charles Spearman, a British psychologist, conducted several experiments on testing intellectual abilities with the help of tests. According to his conclusions, people who successfully passed one test are more likely to succeed and others. Low results for one test combined with low results in others. Therefore, he considered that intelligence is a holistic cognitive skill that can be measured with the help of special tests. His ideas were extremely popular in the twentieth century.
- Primary intellectual abilities. The creator of this idea is Louis Thurstone, who worked in the first half of the twentieth century. According to his theory, human intelligence consists of seven primary skills, including the understanding of verbal information, fluency, associative memory.
- Multiple intelligence. This theory was created by Howard Gardner. He derived eight varieties of intelligence, which were analyzed in detail in the section “Types of Intelligence in Psychology”. G. Gardner actively criticized ideas popular in the twentieth century, closely related to IQ tests, and his theory is an attempt to explain the many-sidedness of intelligence.
- Three-component theory of intelligence. This theory was created by Robert Sternberg. He derived a list of skills that, in his opinion, are part of the so-called "successful intellect." There are three factors of intelligence: component, practical and creative.
Research matters also Jean Piaget famous psychologist of the 20th century, who was the creator of the theory of cognitive development.
According to his ideas, a person in his intellectual development goes through three stages, gradually improving, becoming more complex. He considers formal-logical thinking to be the highest thinking ability.
Piaget's ideas were mainly related to childhood and adolescence. He brought out theory of children's intellectual skills, and, according to her, children think no worse than adults, not more primitive, but otherwise. Their intelligence has individual characteristics.
Also jean piaget Wrote Psychology of Intellect, which details how intellectual abilities and thinking work.
Psychiatry: Mental Disorders
Mental Disorders - a group of violations in which a person loses the ability to think coherently, learn, work with information and gradually degrades.
They also include pathological conditions in which complete range of intellectual capabilities not initially available (this concerns congenital abnormalities).
Intellectual disorders are divided into:
- Congenital These include all genetic diseases, accompanied by oligophrenia of varying severity (Down syndrome, Rett, Angelman and others) and intellectual disorders associated with congenital organic brain damage.
- Acquired: Alzheimer's syndrome, vascular dementia (which develops under the influence of vascular diseases such as hypertension, atherosclerosis), Pick's disease, Huntington's disease, complications from infectious diseases, organic brain damage, malignant and benign tumors in the brain tissues. Also, intellectual disabilities are observed in some mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia.
Acquired dementia can be partially or fully compensated if the treatment is started on time.
Forecast depends on the nature of the disease and its course (for example, modern medicine cannot cure Alzheimer's syndrome and Huntington's disease, and severe forms of schizophrenia are difficult to treat).
Restore intelligence with severe congenital abnormalities impossible. If the patient’s intellectual level allows, he can be given basic skills and abilities that will allow him to serve himself and sometimes work.
About what intelligence is, you can learn from the video:
