 Généralités
Behaviorism :méthode privilégiant l' étude du comportement effectif sans référence à la conscience
Comportementalisme: (Skinner) veut modifier les comportements humains
Cognitivisme: le cerveau est considéré comme une machine à calcul.
Connexionnisme:le cerveau est considéré comme un réseau de connexions modifiables
Intelligence artificielle:faire réaliser par une machine un certain nombre d' opérations intellectuelles (simulations, solution de problèmes algébriques ou médicaux, traduction automatique, analyse du langage naturel...)
Archéologie: chez Michel Foucauld:analyse des couches successives de la pensée en sciences humaines
Deconstruction: chez Derrida:démontage d' une structure pour dépasser les oppositions rigides et gérer les couples dans la différence
Complexe : croyance d' une personne qui entrave ses capacités d' agir (complexe d' infériorité)
SENS |
Intelligence comes from the Latin verb "intellegere", which means "to understand". By this rationale, intelligence (as understanding) is arguably different from being "smart" (able to adapt to one's environment), or being "clever" (able to creatively adapt).
At least two major "consensus" definitions of intelligence have been proposed. First, from Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, a report of a task force convened by the American Psychological Association in 1995:
- Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are never entirely consistent: a given person’s intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of "intelligence" are attempts to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena. Although considerable clarity has been achieved in some areas, no such conceptualization has yet answered all the important questions and none commands universal assent. Indeed, when two dozen prominent theorists were recently asked to define intelligence, they gave two dozen somewhat different definitions.[1]
A second definition of intelligence comes from "Mainstream Science on Intelligence", which was signed by 52 intelligence researchers in 1994:
- a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—"catching on", "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.[2]
Additionally, many researchers, prominent in the fields of Psychology and Learning, have offered their own definitions of human intelligence:
- Carolus Slovinec: "Intelligence is the ability to recognize connections."
- Alfred Binet: "...judgment, otherwise called good sense, practical sense, initiative, the faculty of adapting one's self to circumstances...auto-critique."
- David Wechsler: "... the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment."
- Cyril Burt: "...innate general cognitive ability."
- Howard Gardner: "To my mind, a human intellectual competence must entail a set of skills of problem solving—enabling the individual to resolve genuine problems or difficulties that he or she encounters and, when appropriate, to create an effective product—and must also entail the potential for finding or creating problems—and thereby laying the groundwork for the acquisition of new knowledge."
- Linda Gottfredson: "... the ability to deal with cognitive complexity."
- Herrnstein and Murray: "...cognitive ability."
- Sternberg and Salter: "...goal-directed adaptive behavior."
- John Kotter on Leadership Intelligence: A "keen mind" i.e., strong analytical ability, good judgement, and the capacity to think strategically and multi-dimensionally.
- D. Samuel Nuessle: "A mind's ability to apply knowledge to a problem-solving situation."
Other researchers prominent in the fields of Mathematics and Engineering, have offered their own definitions of intelligence:
- Alan Turing: "To respond like a human being"[3]
- G.N. Saridis: "The entropy of control responses"[4]
In an educational context, one's intelligence should not be equated with one's academic performance, or with the volume of knowledge one has acquired through formal education. A person's ability to think critically and analytically about his or her knowledge and experience is more important than command of a large number of facts. Intelligence is not confined to thinking either. Purposeful actions demonstrating appropriate responses to the situation and reasoned application of one's knowledge are evidence of intelligence. It is also important to note that analytic skills only constitute one part of intelligence -- mimesis, synthesis, creative and the ability to find innovative solutions to unfamiliar problems are also important.
Dissatisfaction with traditional IQ tests has led to the development of a number of alternative theories, all of which suggest that intelligence is the result of a number of independent abilities that uniquely contribute to human performance. Most of these theories are relatively recent in origin, though it should be noted that Louis Thurstone proposed a theory of multiple "primary abilities" in the early 20th Century.
Howard Gardner's Theory of multiple intelligences is based on studies not only on normal children and adults but also by studies of gifted individuals (including so-called 'savants"), of persons who have suffered brain damage, of experts and virtuosos, and of individuals from diverse cultures. This led Gardner to break intelligence down into at least eight different components: logical, linguistic, spatial, musical, kinesthetic, naturalist, intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences. He argues that psychometric tests address only linguistic and logical plus some aspects of spatial intelligence; other forms have been entirely ignored. Moreover, the paper and-pencil format of most tests rules out many kinds of intelligent performance that matter in everyday life, such as giving an extemporaneous talk (linguistic) or being able to find one's way in a new town (spatial).
Robert Sternberg's Triarchic theory of intelligence proposes three fundamental aspects of intelligence-analytic, creative, and practical--of which only the first is measured to any significant extent by mainstream tests. His investigations suggest the need for a balance between analytic intelligence, on the one hand, and creative and especially practical intelligence on the other.
Daniel Goleman and several other researchers have developed the concept of Emotional intelligence and claim it is at least as important as more traditional sorts of intelligence. These theories grew from observations of human development and of brain injury victims who demonstrate an acute loss of a particular cognitive function -- e.g. the ability to think numerically, or the ability to understand written language -- without showing any loss in other cognitive areas.
IQ proponents have pointed out that IQ's predictive validity has been repeatedly demonstrated, for example in predicting important non-academic outcomes such as job performance (see IQ), whereas the various multiple intelligence theories have little or no such support. Meanwhile, the relevance and even the existence of multiple intelligences have not been borne out when actually tested. Thus far, no one has been able to develop a set of ability tests that do not correlate together, and this refutes the claim that multiple intelligences are independent of each other.[9] |
TABLE BIBLIOGRAPHIES
Les sciences de la cognition
La psychologie aujourd'hui
Où en est la psychiatrie ? |
