10.1.1 Theories of intelligence, emotional and artificial intelligence

Explained

1. Psychometric vs information-processing, side by side

Gardner's theory is usually taught with the modern "multiple abilities" views; it rests on evidence from brain damage, prodigies and savants, not on factor analysis.

2. From one factor to many. Spearman noticed that people who do well on one mental test tend to do well on others (positive correlations) and called the common part g; the leftover skill for each test is s. Thurstone's own factor analysis of many tests gave seven fairly separate factors instead of one g, and he built the PMA test on them. Thomson said a test score samples many small independent abilities, so correlations arise from overlap, not from one g. The hierarchical models reconcile the two: Vernon put g at the top, then two major group factors, v:ed (verbal–educational) and k:m (practical–mechanical–spatial), then minor group factors and specific factors.

3. Jensen's two levels (the 2023 match item called him "Jansen")

• Level I, associative learning: the output is much like the input; rote memory, digit span.
• Level II, cognitive competence: the input is transformed; reasoning, abstraction, problem solving.

Jensen argued all groups are alike in Level I, and that Level II tracks g; his claims about group differences were strongly disputed.

4. Guilford's cube. Three faces: operations (what the mind does: cognition, memory, divergent production, convergent production, evaluation), contents (what it works on: figural, symbolic, semantic, behavioural) and products (the form of the result: units, classes, relations, systems, transformations, implications). 5 × 4 × 6 = 120 abilities (1967). Splitting figural content into visual and auditory gives 5 × 5 × 6 = 150, the figure NCERT gives; a later split of memory gives 180. Full table: EDU-ID-01. Divergent production is the root of creativity (see EDU-ID-03).

5. Cattell's fluid and crystallised intelligence

• Fluid (Gf): solving new problems, seeing relations, culture-light; tied to the nervous system; rises to the 20s, then slowly falls.
• Crystallised (Gc): vocabulary, facts and skills from schooling and culture; keeps growing into late adulthood.

Culture-fair tests (Raven's, Cattell's own Culture Fair Test) try to tap Gf. The later Cattell–Horn–Carroll (CHC) model joins this with Carroll's three-stratum model (1993).

6. Sternberg's triarchic theory, in detail

Components are of three kinds: metacomponents (plan, monitor, evaluate), performance components (carry out the plan) and knowledge-acquisition components (learn new things). Sternberg later called the balance of all three successful intelligence.

7. PASS model

Too much or too little arousal hurts performance. Planning is the central, "executive" process. Das, born in Odisha, did most of this work at the University of Alberta, Canada; the CAS is used to diagnose learning difficulties.

8. Heredity and environment. Twin and adoption studies (as reported by NCERT): IQ correlation is about 0.90 for identical twins reared together, 0.72 for identical twins reared apart, about 0.60 for fraternal twins reared together, 0.50 for siblings reared together and 0.25 for siblings reared apart. Adopted children grow closer to their biological parents' IQ with age. Yet deprivation lowers IQ and enrichment (nutrition, schooling, stimulating homes) raises it: heredity sets a range, environment decides where in it a person falls.

9. Culture and intelligence. Western tests stress speed, analysis and abstract reasoning ("technological intelligence"). NCERT describes an Indian integral view (buddhi) that joins knowledge with self-reflection and social ties, under four competencies: cognitive capacity, social competence, emotional competence, entrepreneurial competence. Sternberg calls intelligence contextual: what counts as intelligent depends on the culture.

10. Emotional intelligence (short; full note MAB-EI-01). EI = the ability to perceive, understand, use and manage one's own and others' emotions. The emotionally intelligent person reads feelings from body language and voice, links emotions to thoughts, and controls strong emotions. Applications: counselling and probation work (managing anger, empathy with offenders and victims), leadership and teamwork at work, emotional-literacy and life-skills programmes in schools. Unlike IQ, EI can be trained.

11. Artificial intelligence: two traditions

• PDP: many simple units work at the same time; a memory or concept is a pattern spread across many units, not stored in one place; the network learns by adjusting weights from experience (e.g. back-propagation, 1986). Such networks recognise patterns, generalise, and degrade gracefully when damaged, like the brain.
• Milestones: McCulloch and Pitts' model neuron (1943); Turing test (1950); Dartmouth, McCarthy (1956); Newell and Simon's Logic Theorist (1956) and General Problem Solver (1957); Rosenblatt's perceptron (1958); ELIZA (Weizenbaum, 1966), a program that imitated a non-directive therapist; expert systems such as MYCIN (1970s, medical diagnosis); PDP volumes (1986); today's deep learning and large language models.
• Applications for psychology: computer simulation to test theories of thinking and memory; expert systems and computer-based (adaptive) testing; tutoring systems; screening and support chatbots in mental-health care; robots and aids for the disabled.