$1
The instrument created by Binet tested children's ability in verbal and logical areas, since the academic curricula of high schools emphasized, above all, the development of language and mathematics. This instrument gave rise to the first intelligence test, developed by Terman at Stanford University, California: the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale.
Subsequent intelligence tests and the psychometric community had an enormous influence during this century on the idea of what intelligence is, although Binet himself (Binet & Simon, 1905, cited in Kornhaber & Gardner, 1989) stated that a single number, derived from a child's performance on a test, could not portray an issue as complex as human intelligence. In this article, I intend to present a view of intelligence that appreciates mental processes and human potential based on people's performance in different fields of knowledge.
The most recent research in cognitive development and neuropsychology suggests that cognitive abilities are much more differentiated and specific than previously believed (Gardner, 1985). Neurologists have documented that the human nervous system is not a single-purpose organ, nor is it infinitely plastic. It is believed today that the nervous system is highly differentiated and that different neural centers process different types of information (Gardner, 1987).
Howard Gardner, a psychologist at Harvard University, based himself on this research to question the traditional view of intelligence, a view that emphasizes linguistic and logical-mathematical abilities. According to Gardner, all normal individuals are capable of performance in at least seven different and, to a certain extent, independent intellectual areas. He suggests that there are no general abilities, doubts the possibility of measuring intelligence through
paper-and-pencil tests, and places great importance on different performances valued in diverse cultures. Finally, he defines intelligence as the ability to solve problems or create products that are significant in one or more cultural settings.
The theory
Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1985) is an alternative to the concept of intelligence as an innate, general, and unique capacity that allows individuals a performance, greater or lesser, in any area of activity. His dissatisfaction with the idea of IQ and with unitary views of intelligence, which focus primarily on skills important for school success, led Gardner to redefine intelligence in light of the biological origins of the ability to solve problems. Through the evaluation of the performances of different professionals in various cultures, and the repertoire of human skills in the search for culturally appropriate solutions to their problems, Gardner worked in the opposite direction of development, regressing to eventually arrive at the intelligences that gave rise to such achievements. In his research, Gardner also studied:
(a) the development of different skills in normal children and gifted children; (b) adults with brain injuries and how they do not lose the intensity of their intellectual production, but rather one or a few skills, without other skills being affected at all; (c) so-called exceptional populations, such as idiot-savants and autistics, and how the former may possess only one competence, being quite incapable in other brain functions, while autistic children present absences in their intellectual skills; (d) how cognitive development occurred over the millennia.
