So many people are talking about Artificial Intelligence, I thought it would be useful to see what psychologists think about natural intelligence. It’s a term that we all think we know the meaning of, but what is it that those people working in that field would be able to identify or recognize as intelligence?
Like all good philosophy essays, let’s start with a definition of intelligence. Intelligence is: “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills”. Or: “the ability to solve complex problems or make decisions with outcomes benefiting the actor”. Or: “the capacity or ability to acquire, apprehend, and apply knowledge in a behavioural context”. So, we’re looking at acquiring information and applying that information.
It’s also been suggested that intelligence gives humans the cognitive abilities to learn, form concepts, understand, and reason, including the capacities to recognize patterns, innovate, plan, solve problems, and employ language to communicate.
In psychology, there have been various theories about what intelligence actually is and attempts to measure it.
Psychometric theories treat intelligence as a composite of abilities measured by mental tests that measure reasoning ability and memory. Tests can be given to people and a numerical result can be produced.
Spearman found that people who do well on one type of test generally do well on other types. Using factor analysis, he suggested there were two kinds of factor underlying all differences in test scores. Firstly, there was a general factor, which he labelled ‘g’, and a second factor specifically related to the type of task.
On the other hand, Thurstone proposed seven ‘primary mental abilities’. They were: verbal comprehension; verbal fluency; number; spatial visualization; inductive reasoning; memory; and perceptual speed.
Vernon and Cattell modelled intellectual abilities as hierarchical, with g (general ability) at the top, and specific abilities below. Cattell also suggested that general ability can be subdivided into ‘fluid’ and ‘crystallized’, where fluid abilities are the reasoning and problem-solving abilities measured by tests, and crystallized abilities include vocabulary, general information, and knowledge about specific fields.
Cognitive psychologists didn’t go along with these ideas, they thought that it was important to understand the processes underlying intelligence. They assumed that intelligence comprises mental representations (such as propositions or images) of information and processes that can operate on such representations.
Hunt, Frost, and Lunneborg suggested that basic cognitive processes are the building blocks of intelligence.
Many of the experiments assumed that humans processed information sequentially or serially. However, they may well process information in chunks and in parallel. And there may be cultural differences.
Cognitive-contextual theories looked at how cognitive processes operate in various settings. Gardner proposed a theory of ‘multiple intelligences’, including linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinaesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligence.
Sternberg proposed a ‘triarchic’ theory. He thought that musical and bodily-kinaesthetic abilities were talents rather than intelligences. Sternberg’s three integrated and interdependent aspects of intelligence were: practical (the ability to get along in different contexts), creative (the ability to come up with new ideas), and analytical (the ability to evaluate information and solve problems).
Biological theories of intelligence suggest that understanding intelligence is only possible by identifying its biological basis. It’s looking at neurons.
There have been studies of different areas of the brain. For example, Levy and others found that the left hemisphere is superior in analytical tasks, such as are involved in the use of language, while the right hemisphere is superior in many forms of visual and spatial tasks. Overall, the right hemisphere tends to be more synthetic and holistic in its functioning than the left. Remember that the corpus callosum links the two halves of the brain, so work was done on patients whose corpus callosum had been severed. Levy and Sperry found that the left hemisphere of the brain functioned better with patterns that are readily described in words but are difficult to discriminate visually. Whereas the right hemisphere was more adept with patterns requiring visual discrimination.
Eysenck and others looked at brain waves and speed of response in people taking intelligence tests. Some researchers found a relationship between brain waves, and scores on a standard psychometric test of intelligence.
Others have looked at blood flow in the brain, which indicates which areas of the brain are being used. Haier found that people who perform better on conventional intelligence tests often show less activation in relevant portions of the brain than do those who perform less well.
There have been a number of studies of children showing how intelligence develops. The outstanding researcher in this area is Piaget. His four stages of cognitive development were: sensorimotor intelligence; preoperational thinking; concrete operational thinking; and formal operational thinking.
You might ask what impact environment has on intelligence? It does seem that intelligence runs in families, and according to Plomin, “recent genome-wide association studies have successfully identified inherited genome sequence differences that account for 20% of the 50% heritability of intelligence”. However, there is no single gene for intelligence. And, we know from epigenetics that through a process called methylation, genes can be turned on or off. DNA methylation is influenced by diet, exercise, stress, relationships, thoughts, nutritional status, toxins, sleep, infections, etc. So, yes, environment can affect a person’s intelligence.
What do intelligence (IQ) tests measure? Because there is no complete definition of intelligence, it would seem that IQ tests simply measure what IQ tests measure!
It’s worth noting that people also talk about Emotional Intelligence (EI), and there are EQ tests to measure how emotionally intelligent a person is. Emotional Intelligence is usually described as a person’s ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions. The name most associated with EI is Daniel Goleman. Some research has found that people with high EI have greater mental health, job performance, and leadership skills. There are debates about whether EI is really a form of intelligence or something else.
What can AI developers learn from natural human intelligence? That’s difficult to answer. Clearly people like Thurstone, Cattell, and Gardner (and many others) came up with lists of things that make up human intelligence and these lists might be helpful for AI developers. However, like in all things, there have been many different approaches to the question of what is intelligence? What might be of interest is an idea from Carol Dweck in her book called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. The book suggests that some people believe their success is based on innate ability; these people are said to have a ‘fixed’ theory of intelligence (ie a fixed mindset). Other people believe their success is based on hard work, learning, training, and doggedness; these are said to have a ‘growth’ or an ‘incremental’ theory of intelligence (growth mindset). And everyone else is meant to be somewhere on a continuum between the two extremes. Perhaps the one thing to takeaway is that a successful AI needs to have a growth mindset.
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