Intelligence and Environment

Theories of intelligence are still grappling with the issues of defining its nature
and composition. Generally, newer theories do not represent radical
departures from the past. They do, however, emphasize examining intelligence
in relation to the variety of environments in which people actually live
rather than to only academic or laboratory environments. Moreover, many
investigators, especially those in cognitive psychology, are more interested
in breaking down and replicating the steps involved in information processing
and problem solving than they are in enumerating factors or settling on a single definition of intelligence. These trends hold the promise of moving
the work in the field in the direction of devising new ways to teach people to
understand, evaluate, and deal with their environments more intelligently
instead of simply measuring how well they do on intelligence tests. In their
1998 article “Teaching Triarchically Improves School Achievement,” Sternberg
and his colleagues note that teaching or training interventions can be
linked directly to components of intelligence. Motivation also plays a role.
In their 2000 article “Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation,” Richard Ryan and
Edward Deci provide a review of modern thinking about intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation. The authors suggest that the use of motivational strategies
should promote student self-determination.
The most heated of all the debates about intelligence is the one regarding
its determinants, often described as the “nature-nurture” controversy.
The “nature” side of the debate was spearheaded by Francis Galton, a nineteenth
century English scientist who had become convinced that intelligence
was a hereditary trait. Galton’s followers tried to show, through studies
comparing identical and nonidentical twins raised together and raised
apart and by comparisons of people related to each other in varying degrees,
that genetic endowment plays a far larger role than the environment
in determining intelligence. Attempts to quantify an index of heritability for
intelligence through such studies abound, and the estimates derived from
them vary widely. On the “nurture” side of the debate, massive quantities of
data have been gathered in an effort to show that the environment, including
factors such as prenatal care, social-class membership, exposure to certain
facilitative experiences, and educational opportunities of all sorts, has
the more crucial role in determining a person’s level of intellectual functioning.
Many critics, such as Anastasi (in a widely cited 1958 article entitled “Heredity,
Environment, and the Question ‘How?’”) have pointed out the futility
of debating how much each factor contributes to intelligence. Anastasi
and others argue that behavior is a function of the interaction between heredity
and the total experiential history of individuals and that, from the
moment of conception, the two are inextricably tied. Moreover, they point
out that, even if intelligence were shown to be primarily determined by heredity,
environmental influences could still modify its expression at any
point. Most psychologists now accept this “interactionist” position and have
moved on to explore how intelligence develops and how specific genetic
and environmental factors affect it.
Sources for Further Study
Fancher, Raymond E. The Intelligence Men: Makers of the IQ Controversy. New
York: W. W. Norton, 1985. Presents the history of the various debates on
intelligence in a highly readable fashion. The lives and ideas of the pioneers
in the field, such as Alfred Binet and Francis Galton, are described
in some detail. Gardner, Howard. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. 2d ed.
New York: Basic Books, 1993. Gardner’s description of the talents he designates
as “intelligences” and explanation of the reasons for his selections
provide a fascinating introduction to many of the most intriguing aspects
of the field, including the extremes of prodigies and prodigious savants.
__________. Multiple Intelligences: Theory into Practice. New York: Basic Books,
1993. Gardner’s update of his original theory of multiple intelligences
adds an eighth intelligence to the set.
Guilford, Joy Paul. The Nature of Human Intelligence. New York: McGraw-Hill,
1967. Guilford describes the foundation of his theory of the structure of
the intellect and in the process reviews the history of research into and
theorizing about intelligence. This volume is an important contribution
to the field.
Ryan, R. M., and E. L. Deci. “Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation.” Contemporary
Educational Psychology 25 (2000): 54-67. Reviews contemporary thinking
on the subject.
Sternberg, Robert J. Successful Intelligence. New York: Plume, 1997. A book
aimed at the layperson, describing Sternberg’s theory of triarchic intelligence
and its practical applications.
__________. The Triarchic Mind: A New Theory of Human Intelligence. New York:
Penguin Books, 1989. Sternberg reviews and criticizes the limitations of
traditional views of intelligence and presents his own variations on that
theme. The book is addressed to a general audience and contains intellectual
exercises aimed at enhancing the reader’s performance on cognitive
tests.
Sternberg, Robert J., Torff, B., and E. L. Grigorenko. “Teaching Triarchically
Improves School Achievement.” Journal of Educational Psychology 90
(1998): 374-384. A review of practical application of Sternberg’s theory of
triarchic intelligence.
Vernon, Philip Ewart. Intelligence: Heredity and Environment. San Francisco:
W. H. Freeman, 1979. Presents a thorough and thoughtful review of research
on both sides of the “nature-nurture” debate on the development
of intelligence. The issue of racial differences in intelligence is also discussed
at length.
Susana P. Urbina; updated by Ronna F. Dillon
See also: Cognitive Psychology; Creativity and Intelligence; Giftedness; Intelligence
Tests; Logic and Reasoning; Mental Retardation; Race and Intelligence.