THE THEORY OF MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES
by Dr. Howard Gardner
from Frames of Mind and Intelligence Reframed
An intelligence is a biopsychological potential to process information that can be activated in a cultural setting to solve problems or create products that are of value in a culture. Intelligences are not things that can be seen or counted, they are potentials – presumably neural ones – that will or will not be activated, depending on the values of a particular culture, the opportunities available in the culture, and the personal decisions made by individuals and/or their families, teachers, and others. In other words, intelligences arise from the combination of a person’s genetic heritage and life conditions in a given culture and era.
This theory is an account of human cognition in its fullness. All human beings possess all of these intellectual potentials, but each human has a unique profile: no two people have exactly the same intelligences in the same combinations.
Gardner has identified Nine Intelligences:
1. Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence
Sensitivity to spoken and written language, the ability to learn languages, sensitivity to the meaning of words, word order, sounds, rhythms, and inflections of words, and a sensitivity to the different functions of language: to excite, convince, stimulate, or convey information. (Writers, poets, journalist, lawyers, storyteller, salespeople, and motivational speakers, speech pathologist)
2. Logical Mathematical Intelligence
Capacity to analyze problems logically, carry out mathematical operations, and investigate issues scientifically. (Mathematicians, logicians, chemists, computer analysts, accountants, economists, statisticians, astronomers, and scientists)
3. Musical Intelligence
Skill in the performance, composition, and appreciation of musical patterns. Ability to recognize tonal patterns, including various environmental sounds, and sensitivity to rhythm and beats.
(Musicians, singers, composers)
4. Visual-Spatial Intelligence
Ability to perceive the visual world accurately, to recognize and manipulate the patterns of wide space (as in cartography or navigation) as well as the patterns of more confined areas (as in sculpting, painting, or playing chess). Ability to recreate one’s visual experience even in the absence of relevant physical stimuli. (Painters, sculptors, architects, navigators, pilots, chess players, surgeons, choreographers, set/costume/lighting designers, cartographers).
5. Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence
Entails the potential of using one’s whole body or parts of the body to solve problems or fashion products. Able to manipulate objects with finesse. (Dancers, athletes, farmers, musicians, weavers, sculptors, actors, mechanics, carpenter, and other craftspersons)
6. Interpersonal Intelligence
Capacity to notice and understand others’ moods, temperaments, desires, motivations, and intentions and, consequently, to work effectively with others. (Salespeople, politicians, managers, teachers, therapists, counselors, religious leaders, actors, diplomats, negotiators, mediators)
7. Intrapersonal Intelligence
Capacity to understand oneself, to have an effective working model of oneself – including one’s own fears, desires, and capacities – and to use such information effectively in regulating one’s own life. (Philosopher, diarist, psychologist)
8. Naturalist Intelligence
Ability to recognize and classify species and patterns in nature, both flora and fauna, is comfortable with the world of organisms and possesses the talent of caring for, taming, or interacting subtly with various living creatures. (Farmers, biologists, botanists, gardeners, cooks, hunters, fishermen, veterinarian, environmentalists, archeologists, paleontologists).
9. Existential Intelligence
Capacity to understand “ultimate” issues, to engage in transcendental concerns, to locate oneself with respect to the furthest reaches of the cosmos – the infinite and the infinitesimal – and the related capacity to locate oneself with respect to such existential features of the human condition as the significance of life, the meaning of death, the ultimate fate of the physical and the psychological worlds, and such profound experiences as love of another person or total immersion in a work of art. (Religious/spiritual leaders, mystics, prophets, philosophers)
Gardner uses Eight Criteria when defining what constitutes an intelligence:
1. An intelligence must originate in a particular area or particular areas in the brain. This can be proven through isolation by study of individuals who have brain damage which cause an area of the brain not to function.
2. An intelligence has an evolutionary history or evolutionary plausibility (used throughout the existence of humankind from pre-history to today).
3. An intelligence has an identifiable core operation or set of operations.
4. An intelligence can be encoded in a symbol system.
5. An intelligence has a distinct developmental history, along with a definable set of expert “end-state” performances.
6. There exist idiot savants, prodigies, experts, geniuses and other exceptional people who exhibit this intelligence.
7. There is support on its existence from experimental psychological tasks.
8. There is support on its existence from psychometric findings (it can be tested – but it doesn’t have to be tested through paper and pencil means).
Individuals develop an intelligence because of a crystalizing or positive experience, usually in early childhood with a particular domain or discipline which uses that intelligence. Conversely, individuals neglect an intelligence because of neurological damage, lack of encouragement, or a paralyzing experience which stops him/her from developing that intellectual potential.