Many of us feel a kind of pride for being smart, because it is known that a person who possesses a high intellectual level is highly admired. Strength was everything in ancient times, but today, intelligence is viewed as "the exceptional" trait in our modern society. Some think that intelligence is something only humans have. However, others say that animals also have intelligence. Some people even try to speculate about its presence in plants and other groups of organisms, but so far these speculations are not far from fantasy. Recently, developments in the field of artificial intelligence have achieved high results, and we are now way closer than ever in understanding this amazing characteristic we have.
Intelligence is the mental ability of the brain, expressed in the ability to solve various problems, deal with challenges, carry out cognitive activities, and adapt to changing environmental conditions.
Intelligence manifests itself in education, research, work activities, communication, and social life in general. This concept unites individual cognitive abilities: sensations, perception, memory, ideas, thinking, imagination, will, reflection, attention.
The concept of intelligence emerged recently - only at the end of the 19th century. At that time, psychology was developing at a high pace, researchers studied the mental abilities of humans and animals. But sometimes, they made serious mistakes in their research. So, at that time, the prevailing belief was that a person only uses his brain in a low percentage, while the rest of it remains unused.
In everyday life, this idea is still preserved, but it is fundamentally wrong and long refuted by science. But how could've such an assumption even arise?
The thing is that at the end of the 19th century, the functions of significant parts of the brain were not yet studied, and researchers could not understand what they were. Also, some processes in the brain proceed as if they were in an automatic mode, without the participation of human consciousness. In consequence, it seemed to us that some parts of the brain were inactive. But in fact, they carried out extremely important tasks unnoticeably. Without these parts, probably, intelligence itself wouldn't exist.
However, the question about the relationship between intelligence and the brain is quite complex. Does a person have intelligence? Of course, he does. But does the cat have it? Probably, too. What about the lizard? One might think that it does as well. And what about an ant, a microbe, a plant? At first glance, it seems that the more developed an organism is, the more it can be said that it has intelligence. But here, as well, everything is not so simple.
Ants, like all other insects, have no brain at all. Their "brain", is scattered throughout the body, it is mainly a basic accumulation of nerves. And the whole structure of the ant organism is very primitive. Meanwhile, some even compare the intellectual abilities of ants with those of humans. Ants can accumulate and transmit information, communicate, learn, display a complex hierarchy, and above all, they can navigate the terrain with extreme accuracy. Recent research suggests they seem to even be able to count. In the ant society, there are many "professions", the variety of which is different for each species. As a matter of fact, the life of an anthill is very similar to human society.
A lizard is an organism of a completely different kind. Its general structure is ten times more complex and organized than that of an ant. And there it has a full-fledged brain, moreover, quite developed. But the intellectual abilities of a lizard are very modest and cannot be compared with the intelligence of an ant (and even more so a man).
It turns out that intelligence is more of a function than some kind of material structure. The intellectual activity can be realized in various ways.
How is this function implemented in our brains? The implementation of the concept of intelligence occurs through the work of its components. They are mainly the skills to find connections between disparate data, to synthesize and analyze, to compare, to classify, to build associations, etc. Each of these attributes does not form intelligence individually, it can only be manifested from the aggregation of all of those components...
The features of the human intellectual system consist of several parameters :
- Memory, ability to predict, use tools, logic.
- Multilevel hierarchy of selection of valuable information - this involves six layers of neurons.
- Consciousness.
Intelligence does not arise suddenly by itself, but it develops over time. The intellectual level of a person can be increased through special techniques and training. On the other hand, it can also decrease due to various circumstances (old age, head trauma, mental illness, etc.).
A major researcher in the field of intellectual development, Raymond Cattell believed that intelligence should be divided into two types - mobile and crystallized. The first is based on logical operations, the ability to solve problems that go beyond the existing experience. The second is based on accumulated experience and the ability to use existing knowledge and skills.
There is also a division between emotional and social intelligence. The first is the ability to recognize and understand your own emotions and the emotions of those around you. The second type is the ability to understand human behavior. Social intelligence is the most important part of a person's social life, it allows you to interact with other people, and build various relationships. The researchers emphasize that the purpose of such intelligence is not the depth of understanding, but social adaptation.
The variety of types and forms of intelligence can be judged, for instance, by the cultural characteristics of different peoples. For example, the Negroid race has the most developed concrete visual and plastic thinking. Africans are good artists and great dancers; they can draw by hand what Europeans are used to depicting only with the help of computer graphics. Drawing and dancing in Africa play the role of a kind of "alphabets" from which special languages are composed. European thinking is abstract. Painting and dancing in European culture are considered art, which is a skill available to few. At the same time, the sound-letter alphabet, reasoning in abstract categories, understanding of such phenomena as law, law, order, etc. are developed. The Asian peoples of the Mongoloid race are carriers of "symbolic" thinking. Their symbolic (hieroglyphic) alphabet, a system of allegories has reached a high development; culture is replete with symbols devoid of practical meaning and expressing complex ideas, and rituals and ceremonies play a significant role in behavior.
There are other ways of dividing intelligence. So, logical intelligence and spatial intelligence are distinguished, and the latter is subdivided into physical, social, spiritual, creative, emotional.
There is also such a concept in psychology as levels of intellectual activity.
Researchers distinguish three such levels :
- Stimulus-productive - when mental activity is conditioned only by the influence of external factors.
- Heuristic is a spontaneous cognitive activity that leads to the discovery of several patterns.
- Creative - the highest level of mental activity, at which there is a full penetration into the essence of the things being studied, solving existing problems, and setting new tasks.
At the first level, intellectual activity is limited to a given or originally found path. A person can investigate various phenomena and solve various problems, but only as private ones, having no connection with each other. At this level, however, the intellectual can put forward quite bold hypotheses.
At the second level, a researcher can compare disparate phenomena and problems and find something in common in them, reveal new patterns. Cognition in this case occurs empirically.
At the third level, comparing different phenomena and finding something in common with them becomes not just a separate technique, but in itself is a problem that requires deep penetration into the essence of things. In this case, the researcher uses the theoretical path of knowledge.
The intellectual actions of a person are subdivided into levels in another way.
In this case, two levels are distinguished :
- The actions of the individual at the level of the social individual, while the activity of a person is determined by the task and the desired results.
- Actions of a creative person; in this case, the result turns out to be wider than the set goal and generates new tasks.
The activity of the individual gradually ceases to be a response to the initially set task and takes on a constructive character.
The division of the work of the intellect into levels reflects the history of the development of mental activity in humans. That is, the first people passively solved the tasks facing them, formed by nature itself, and strove for biological survival, cognition was more of an adaptive nature. Subsequently, a primitive "scientific" activity appeared, when, through searches, trial, and error (empirically), people found new patterns in the structure of the world around them and tried to use them in their practice. Finally, at the very latest, a theoretical science was formed, which has a developed methodological apparatus and deep criteria for cognizing truth.
For clarity, you can also use the famous Maslow pyramid, which reflects the hierarchy of human needs. It shows that the need for creativity and spiritual development is the highest, and to achieve it, you need to go through the lower levels. Following this, the intellect works: at first, it is aimed at achieving urgent goals and solving specific problems (finding food, housing, achieving material well-being), then there are opportunities for learning something new, and at the highest level, there is an opportunity for creative activities.
IQ - the famous IQ test - determines the degree of development of the human mental activity. Sometimes it is also used to assess the mental abilities of animals in comparison with humans. Researchers have even determined the intelligence quotient of creatures such as the earthworm.
The coefficient is determined using special tests that allow you to find out various factors, for example :
- The level of intellectual development in comparison with the average person (the same or middle age);
- "Intellectual age" of a person in comparison with his biological age;
- The presence or absence of mental pathology.
Writing IQ tests is a rather difficult task. Their results should be described by the so-called "normal distribution" of indicators, or Gaussian distribution. This means that 50 percent of people should have an IQ of 85 to 115, and 25 percent of people would have it below 90 and above 110. An IQ value of less than 70 is defined as mental retardation.
The level of intelligence can vary significantly from person to person. Among us, there are intellectuals, slow-witted people, people with average abilities, and those who are usually called mentally retarded. But why are people so different mentally?
Various studies have shown that the formation of a person's mental abilities is influenced primarily by a genetic factor. Upbringing, environmental exposure, and accidental external influences play a much smaller role.
However, the external environment has a certain value for the formation of intelligence. These are factors such as the standard of living of the family, the level of education of the parents, the nature of upbringing, and the availability of school education for children (in American studies, pupils of good urban schools turned out to be more intellectual than pupils of modest rural schools). Studies have even established the influence of such individual factors like the annual family income, the size of the house and its value, the relationship between parents, etc.
The role of nutrition cannot be ruled out. The brain is a rather voracious structure, and a lack of nutrients can lead to a decrease in its ability to process information.
Since ancient times, society has been dominated by the view that women are inferior and less developed than men. Traditions and laws that do not allow women to engage in certain types of activities have led to the myth that female intelligence is significantly less developed than male. Because of this, it was believed that a woman should "know her place" and not interfere in "men's affairs", otherwise nothing good will come of it.
The easing of the position of women and their equalization in rights with men showed that the female intellect is in no way inferior to the male. Moreover, women cope with some types of mental activity much more successfully than men.
But until now, in many countries, the old attitudes prevail: in the popular consciousness, women appear more stupid and undeveloped, and they are assigned a secondary and subordinate role. A woman cannot be the head of the family, she cannot inherit parental property, in some places women are even prohibited from driving a car. Ideas about the inferiority of intelligence in women are also present in the lower strata of the population of developed countries. As a rule, such people tend to take wishful thinking. They are guided by highly outdated scientific information, as well as myths and legends, religious dogmas. They prefer not to recognize more relevant information, since it does not correspond to their personal ideas.
Research into the relationship between sex and brain development has been going on for a long time. The available results show that there are differences in the structure of the brain in men and women, but they are not decisive in terms of intelligence: men and women can equally successfully perform the same tasks.
So, it was shown that the volume and mass of the brain in men are somewhat larger than in women. However, this did not have a significant effect on mental abilities. Research on the effects of hormones on intelligence has been controversial; it has been shown that high levels of certain hormones can both increase and decrease mental performance.
Other studies have shown that although the male brain is somewhat larger, it is significantly more vulnerable to intrauterine growth disorders. So, poor nutrition of the mother during pregnancy in many cases reduces the mental abilities of the born boys, but this does not affect girls in any way.
Separate studies were conducted on the perception of stereotypes. And they showed that in societies where women are psychologically adversely affected, their IQs were indeed lower than in societies where women are perceived as equals with men and are treated with respect. The thing is that in conditions of constant humiliation, women to a greater extent use those parts of the brain that are responsible for emotional reactions, and those areas that are responsible for solving certain problems remain unclaimed and do not receive development.
Stereotypes also affect us in other ways, such as through parenting. Since childhood, in traditional societies, girls are taught to do some activities, and boys are taught to do others. Often, girls are not allowed to study physics, mathematics and other sciences, because it is considered that they will not be useful in life. Because of this, the brains of boys and girls are trained to different degrees and in different ways, as a result of which their abilities at a certain age are really very different.
As already mentioned, intellectual development is a fickle quantity. Mental abilities can be developed and at any age. There are many known cases when even very old people retained their "sanity" because they constantly trained their brains.
Mental training is very similar to physical education. In the gym, we are engaged in giving our body an artificial load that is not related to practical tasks, and from this, we become stronger and healthier. And when it comes time to do some kind of practical work that requires physical effort, our body is already ready for this.
So is the brain. For the development of intellectual abilities, it is necessary to constantly solve problems that require mental stress, to learn something new - even if this knowledge is not useful in practice.
In this regard, the benefits of school education become clear. Most of the knowledge that a student receives at school will not be useful to him in later life; but this does not mean that it is necessary to abolish such disciplines as algebra, geometry, physics, chemistry. Indeed, in the process of studying them, neural connections are formed in the brain, which affects overall mental development. The ability to think, obtained, say, in physics lessons, will certainly come in handy, even if in the future a person will only be the owner of a grocery store.
Other factors also affect the level of intellectual ability. For example - playing sports. Indeed, physical activity stimulates and improves blood circulation, and the brain is much better supplied with blood. Proper nutrition is also a necessary means to improve your mental capacity.
Many thanks for reading.
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