Everyone has different theories of what intelligence is. These theories can vary from one culture to another. There has been numerous researches on the effect of culture on human intelligence. These researchers believed that culture plays a sufficient role in learning to understand intelligence. What does culture mean to you? Culture can mean a varied of things, but in this context it is the way of life of a group of people, in which can include food, social interaction (organization) language, education, religion, ways of raising children etc.
According to John Ogbu, “Culture consists of four main concepts. These concepts are customary behaviors, code, artifacts and institution. Customary behaviors focus just on the group of people such how they do different things such the way they raise their children, celebrating a new life or how they mourn of loss of someone. Code, is the process of their assumptions, emotions and expectation are being displayed as a result of customary behaviors. Artifacts, is what people value as a culture. Institution can include politics, social organization and religion.
Culture can help determine the contents of intelligence as a representative of an individual life. Everyone has their own differences of what is important and the values in their cultures. In Sternberg Triarchic Theory, Sternberg proposed an Information processing components underlying intelligence. In this theory, he believed that intelligence is defined as the ability to achieve success in life based on one’s personal standards and within one’s sociocultural context. The focus was that intelligence was entirely cognitive in nature, with emphasizes on information processing.
Sternberg believed that in the Information processing there are underlying common set of universal mental processes in intelligence. There are mental processes needed to reach these solutions are the same. The Triarchic theory is divided into three aspects of intelligence. The first aspect is analytical intelligence, in this aspect it involves the ability to analyze, critique, evaluate, judge, assess or compare and contrast. () in this aspect deals with familiar kinds of judgments to be made. Using analogies is a good example (Lawyer:Client. Doctor: Patient). When using analogies you are encoding the information.
You have to use each word to make inferences of what the information is trying to tell us. This aspect is broken into subtheories known as componential theory, metacomponents, performance components, and knowledgeacquisition. “Metacomponents, or executive processes, enable a person to plan what to do, monitor things as they are being done, and evaluate things after they are done. Performance components execute the instructions of the metacomponents. Knowledge-acquisition components are used to learn how to solve problems or simply to acquire knowledge in the first place.
For example, a student may plan to write a paper (metacomponents), write the paper (performance components), and learn new things while writing (knowledge-acquisition components). () The second aspect is creative intelligence. The subtheory is experiential. in this aspect they created many different kinds of problems from writing, art, science and advertising. Creativity involves the ability to create, invent, discover, imagine if.. , suppose that.. , and to predict. In this study, they only tested participants in two domains; they found out that participants are not creative in all the domains, but only a couple.
In this aspect Sternberg proposed that intelligent behavior is interpreted along a novel of highly familiar task or situation (). The last aspect of intelligence is practical. Practical intelligence involves applying your abilities to solve problems in your daily life such as in school, home and work. The subtheory for practical is contextual. Contextual focuses on sociocultural context in which intelligent behavior occurs. In this theory it focuses on the connection between intelligence and the individual world. Sternberg and his colleagues emphasize on knowledge.
They believed in this aspect it is what people should know. This function measurement on apply, to use, put into practice, implement, employ and render practical. () In their study, the results were that tracit knowledge, increases with experiences. So, Sternberg purpose that the level of adaption to one’s environment governs intelligent behaviors. This is the way someone can learn from his or her experiences rather than by themselves. Sternberg theory, relays on the speed of processing information to be connected with intelligence to be conceptualized in this way.
He also suggested that intelligent can occur as a result of interaction between all three sub theories and that intelligence can determine how efficient information processing components are utilized. () Another theory that helps support culture perspective on intelligence is Spearman’s g Theory and The Horn -Cattell Theory of Intelligence. in Spearman theory he proposed that general intelligence (g) is based on Spearman factors analysis of the correlation among a large variety of mental ability measurements ().
General intelligence can be explained as a mental capacity that has influences on performances that can measure our cognitive abilities. The g factor was responsible for overall performance on mental ability tests. Spearman conducted a experiment where participates, participated in a varied of tests. He established a positive correlated between a person score. In results, a person who achieved high scores on a test such as verbal ability test also performed good on a problem solving test. This correlation on each participants test is known as general intelligence.
Spearman wanted better understanding of intelligence and he believed that researcher should explore the brain at all levels. Later, after Spearman research Raymond Cattell, who was a student of Spearman, first proposed the concepts of fluid and crystallized intelligence based on Spearman’s g theory. He later collaborated with John Horn. The Cattell-Horn theory of fluid (Gf) and crystallized intelligence(Gc) indicates intelligence is made of number of different abilities that interact and work together to produce overall individual intelligence.
According to () Fluid intelligence is the ability to perceive relationships independent of previous specific practice or instruction concerning those relationships. () Fluid intelligence involves the ability to think, reason and solve problems. For example, coming up with problem-solving strategies and solving puzzle. They also believed that fluid intelligence could decrease during late adulthood. Crystallized intelligence is prior knowledge from past experiences. Everyday we face crystallized intelligence situation such as reading comprehension.
Crystallized intelligence can be influenced by education and our culture. As we age, we will accumulate new understanding and knowledge, our crystallized intelligence becomes stronger. So what makes intelligence successful in culture? According to Intelligence and culture: How culture shapes what intelligence means, and the implications for a science of wellbeing, Robert Sternberg believed that our own personal experiences motivated our interest in the interface between culture an intelligence through our own experience. Sternberg and Elena Grigorenko conducted three experiences around the world.
What these countries had in common was that the individuals in all the cultures need to recognize and define the problems formulate these strategies. () When solving these problems the order of operation varied differently from culture to another. In results from their experiences, they complied that intelligence, is a mental processes that underlies intelligence and mental representation upon which they act (). Sternberg proposed a theory of successful intelligence. In his theory, he stated, “Intelligence is defined as one’s ability to achieve success in life in terms of ones personal standards, within one’s socio-cultural context”.
He believed that societal criteria of success, such as school grades and personal incomes could obscure the fact that the way we measures performances often do not capture people personal notion of success. For example, some students choose to focus on extracurricular such as music, being an athlete or dealing with performance arts but hardly pay attention to their grades in school. Sometimes people choose occupations that they loved but not receive their desire income that they can receive when going to another occupations.
They found that conceptualization of intelligence is individually determined but can occur within a sociocultural context in the theory that one’s ability to achieve success depends on the capitalization of one’s strength and correction or compensation for one’s weaknesses. () In 1986, Sternberg and Detterman proposed that there has to be a balance in being able to adapt, to shape, and select environment. For example, researchers and professors achieve success through different skills rather than through a single process that works for all of them.
It is important that we learn to adapt to our environment, and also to modify that environment to fit you, known as shaping. If you can find a new environment that is better for your desires, values and skills can become a better match for you. There is not a lot of people who can have equal opportunities in being able to adapt to, shape an select environment. For example, education. By having an education, the more education you have the more opportunities you will receive compare to someone who doesn’t have an education.
Another example is that people who are higher in socioeconomic class tend to have more opportunities and people of lower socio-economic standing have fewer opportunities the way we as individuals learn how to adapt, shape, and select environments must viewed as what opportunities for them will arise in that environment. In the research of what successful intelligence is, they conducted seven studies among different cultures. They wanted to see how intelligence may be applied in a diverse contexts. Children may have substantial practical skills that go unrecognized in academic test, One of the experiments that was conducted happen in Alaska.
The conducted their test on higher schoolers, that lived in six different communities. Six of the seven communities were rural and the one was an urban community. They measured intelligence on the measurement of fluid and crystallized intelligence. In results of the experiment the rural students performed better than the urban students on Yup’ik tacit knowledge which the students informally learned the information through their communities. The urban students outperformed the rural students on the of crystallized intelligence measurements.
Another idea that was conducted cal health may moderate performance on assessment. This experiment was conducted in Jamaican in 1997. The results were that children who lacked good health were poor achievers. When being ill, it becomes hard to concentrate in class. There are many ill children in developing countries that cannot achieve a satisfying education. The last experiment that I wanted to share was Intelligence may be different things in different cultures. In this experiment, they wanted to illustrate how intelligence may be viewed differently amongst cultures.
In the Chinese culture, the Confucian perspective emphasizes the characteristics of benevolence and of doing what is right. The Taoist tradition, in contrast from the western beliefs is that ,freedom from standards of judgements, full knowledge of oneself as well as of external condition and humility in the western, they compiled that that intelligence people spend a great amount of learning, even enjoy learning, persist in life-long learning with a great deal of enthusiasm. Sternberg and ShihYing Yang studied Taiwanese Chinese conceptions of intelligence. The found five factors that underlying these conceptions.
The first, is general cognitive factors, much like gfactor in conventional western tests, 2) interpersonal intelligence, 3) intrapersonal intelligence, 4) intellectual selfassertion, knowing when to show that you are smart and 5) intellectual self-effacement: knowing when not to show that you are smart. () The factor hat uncovered in Taiwan differed from those who identified as US citizen by 1) practical problem solving 2) verbal ability and 3) social competence. The overall results in these different studies were that there is no overall United States conception of intelligence.
They found it difficult to separate linguistic differences from conceptual difference in cross-cultural notions of intelligence. In conclusion, when dealing with cultural contexts intelligence differ amongst cultures. I agree with Spearman that the brain should be analyze to get a better understanding of intelligence. I believed in order to understand more about intelligence, we have to get study more than one cultures at a time, to be able to compare and contrast. By getting to know these individual countries we can better relate to their culture such as school, religion and work.