The concept of "intelligence": Useful or useless?

Abstract

This editorial discusses recent developments in the conception of intelligence in the light of experimental evidence, particularly in work on reaction time and averaged evoked potentials. It is argued, in the first place, that the conception of a general factor of intelligence should not be abandoned, as many recent investigators have suggested, but is not only useful but necessary in order to explain empirical data furnished by confirmatory factor analysis, multidimensional scaling, and so forth. It is further argued that attempts to explain differences in cognitive functioning in terms of learning, cultural, and environmental variables and educational factors cannot account for recent evidence showing high correlations between elementary physiological (evoked potentials) and perceptual-motor processes (reaction times, movement times, inspection times) and IQ. It is suggested that controversy about the meaning of intellegence has been due largely to a failure to observe the threefold nature of intelligence, and that any adequate theory must take into account the experimental data and theoretical considerations here summarized. Together these have given rise to a "new look" in the conceptualization of intelligence (Eysenck, 1986). © 1988.