Our Own Intelligence Theory

At the end of this week's class we discussed how we would set up our own theory of what intelligence is. This is certainly a challenge because intelligence is such as wide and complicated concept. There are so many things that can play a role in intelligence.

First and foremost, I think my own theory would not choose between intelligence being innate and intelligence being developed. I think that both are possible and in many cases they work together. I think that everyone is born with a certain level of intelligence which is then influence by many factors as the child grows and develops. Therefore, it would be impossible, I feel, to truly measure innate intelligence because babies cannot be tested and too many variables occur during childhood. For example, level of education for the child, level of education of the parents, living situation, economic standings, and nutrition. All of these factors make it impossible to separate how much intelligence a person is born with and how much a person develops. On top of that I think there are multiple types of intelligence and being intelligent in one thing and not another is completely possible. We see it all the time with experts in certain fields. They are highly capable in their own specific field, but most likely less so in other fields because that is not where they have spent their time and attention. I do not think intelligence can be assigned to a person as a blanket quality. A person can be highly intelligent in one subject and fail at another. If I were to develop this into a more concise theory I do not think it would be easy to test if even possible. Since I believe that innate intelligence and learned intelligence are so closely intertwined it would only be possible to measure a persons IQ, but not how they came to have that IQ.

This leads me to compare this debate to the nature/nurture debate that is so often discussed in psychology.Through many arguments over which side takes more dominance in development it is my understanding that psychologists have reached a conclusion that it is a combination of both. I feel the same way about intelligence. There will never be only one side that is completely influencing a persons level of intelligence.