Intelligence and intelligences: Universal principles and individual differences

Abstract

Comments on the importance of an article by Piaget and B. Inhelder (1947) that presents their landmark theory of intelligence in the context of current research. Piaget and Inhelder introduced a new focus on the investigation of the general structures of intelligence that are present in all human beings, they provided a breakthrough in the study of intelligence involving the education of responses other than linguistic ones and recognized that levels of intellectual development are cumulative and irreversible. While current research is more focused on specific systems and the existence of multiple forms of intelligence, the Inhelder-Piaget view is still relevant, at the very least, it is suggested that Inhelder and Piaget laid out a cogent description of logical-mathematical and perhaps spatial intelligence. The current views of intelligence as being contextualized and distributed are discussed. (PsycLIT)