INTELLIGENCE : What is it?

Christian Heinecken, an 18^th century child prodigy and historian, died in 1725 at the age of four and a half years.His knowledge of sacred and secular history, geography, anatomy and law, and his perfect command of Latin and French, astonished all who met him.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart learned to play the harpsichord at the age of four, composed his first sonata at the age of six and wrote his first opera at the age of 12.

The age-old question regarding intelligence still remains.. Why are some people more intelligent than others?

Some children are exceptionally gifted from an early age, they learn more quickly and efficiently than most adults and soon outstand them in the areas of science, literature, music , painting and sports.

Psychologists use the term ‘precocious’.While they are in every way normal there are specific features of the brain that are more developed.Hence it is not the anatomy but their ability to possess information that makes them gifted.

But since not enough is known about the complex network of the brain, scientists do not know yet these individual abilities in the micro structures of the brain.

Another difficulty is the lack of general definition of intelligence.We know it as a general term to combine a number of brain functions.We know that everybody has intelligence, even animals.

There are also many aspects related to it such as ability to understand , and ability to convert information into action, the capacity for abstraction, recalling information and the most important- common sense.It is therefore found difficult to evolve a definition that the would completely define the term INTELLIGENCE.

WHAT IS A GENIUS ?

Moderately gifted people are much more common than geniuses, of course.The modern world has seen great strides in many fields with people attracting public attention and acclaim.

One of the most popular is physicist Albert Einstein.His contemporaries were also remarkably knowledgeable, and perhaps just as creative and inventive, But he stood out from the crowd because of his genius.

THE IQ TEST: how we measure intelligence.

Our intelligence quotient [IQ] is measured with specially designed tests that assess different aspects of intelligence, such as logical thinking, numerical ability, spatial ability and memory.Each exercise varies in difficulty, and each one has a time limit.

REASON FOR CAUTION

Did you know that Louis Pasteur was a weak student and yet bacame France’s greatest scientist.

Albert Einstein also showed no special distinction in at school.Yet in later life his research and theories caused a revolution in science and philosophy.

Similarly Thomas Edison gave no reason to suspect intellectual brilliance.

Then how do we spot such children? Do the definition of intelligence explain such a change in mental abilities ? Are IQ tests sufficient?

I think NOT. Since IQ test do not take a person’s creativity and imagination into account, they cannot provide a full measure of intelligence.A precocious child tends to be an IQ whiz; while the average value is about 100, the gifted people typically exceed 125 points at an early age.

I am not making vague comments.I support my views with the following example-

The American twins Charles and George could name the day of the week for any randomly selected calender date- in addition to coping with several other complex mathematical challenges.And yet in a test taken in 1964, when they were 24 years old, both were classified as ‘MENTALLY RETARDED’, as the IQ test score was between 60 and 70 !!!