The title develops intelligence and thinking. What is the difference between thinking and intelligence. Psychology study guide

Intelligence(lat. intellect us - mind, reason, mind) - a stable structure of the individual's mental abilities, the level of his cognitive abilities, the mechanism of the individual's mental adaptation to life situations. Intelligence means understanding the essential interconnections of reality, the inclusion of the individual in the socio-cultural experience of society.

The intellect is not reduced to a set of cognitive processes, which in fact are the "working tools" of the intellect.

Modern psychology considers as a stable structure of the mental abilities of the individual, his adaptability to various life situations.

Intelligence as the mental potential of an individual can be the object of psychological diagnostics.

At the beginning of the XIX century. the German astronomer F.W. Bessel (1784-1846) claimed that he could determine the level of a person's intelligence by the speed of his reaction to a flash of light. But only at the end of the XIX century. American psychologist J. M. Cattell (1860) acted as the founder of scientific testology, having developed a system of tests aimed at identifying the mental capabilities of an individual, including intellectual (mental). The scientific concept of human intelligence was being formed.

The development of intelligence as a mental age was studied by the French psychologist A. Wien (1857-1911). The developer of the concept of IQ was the German psychologist W. Stern (1871 - 1938), who proposed to determine the IQ of a child by dividing his mental age by chronological age.

In 1937, D. Wexler (1896-1981) created the first intelligence scale for adults.

At the beginning of the XX century. English psychologist C. E. Spearman (1863-1945) developed statistical methods for measuring intelligence and put forward two-factor theory of intelligence. It singled out a general factor (factor G) and special factors that determine success in solving problems of a particular type (factor S). The theory of specific abilities arose. Psychologist J. P. Gilford (1897-1987) identified 120 factors of intelligence and presented the structure in the form of a cubic model (Fig. 80).

At the beginning of the XX century. French psychologists A. Binet and T. Simon proposed to determine the degree of development of intelligence in children (intelligence quotient) using a special test scale (IQ). Intelligence, mental development of an individual are interpreted as his ability to perform intellectual tasks available for his age, to successfully adapt to various types of life situations.

In the individual, both genetic and sociocultural factors play a significant role, or rather, the interaction of these factors. Genetic factors - the hereditary potential received by an individual from his parents. These are the initial possibilities for the interaction of the individual with the outside world.

Rice. 80. The structure of the intellect according to J.P. Gilford.

This cubic model is an attempt to define each of the 120 specific abilities based on three dimensions of thinking: what we think about (content), how we think about it (operation), and what this mental action leads to (result). For example, when learning such symbolic notations as Morse code signals (E12), when memorizing the semantic transformations necessary for conjugating a verb in a given tense (DV3), or when assessing changes in behavior when it is necessary to take a new path to work ( AV4), are involved completely different types intellect

Hundreds of thousands of genes located on 46 chromosomes contain a huge, still little-studied potential of human individuality. However, only the "raw materials" for the construction of complex psycho-regulatory structures are inherited by the individual. The vital needs of an individual can send appropriate requests to individual genetic formations. Various genetic loci, as shown by the studies of Nobel Prize winners R. Robertson and F. Sharp, are capable of functional rearrangements.

The intellectual capabilities of a person are manifested in that strategies, which he develops in various problem situations, in his ability to transform a problem situation into a specific problem, and then into a system of search tasks.

Some people are capable of quick conclusions, intuitive insights, simultaneous coverage of an event in all its relationships, they are consistent in putting forward hypotheses and checking their correctness; others close on the first hypothesis that comes to mind, their thinking is not dynamic. Some try to solve problematic problems without any preliminary assumptions at all, relying on random finds; their thinking is unsystematic, blocked by impulsive emotions. The thinking of many people is stereotyped, unnecessarily standardized.

Qualities of human intelligence

The main qualities of the human intellect are inquisitiveness, depth of mind, its flexibility and mobility, logic and evidence.

inquisitive mind- the desire to diversify to know this or that phenomenon in essential respects. This quality of the mind underlies active cognitive activity.

depth of mind lies in the ability to separate the main from the secondary, the necessary from the accidental.

Flexibility and mobility of the mind- the ability of a person to widely use existing experience and knowledge, quickly explore known objects in new relationships, overcome stereotyped thinking. This quality is especially valuable if we keep in mind that thinking is the application of knowledge, "theoretical standards" to various situations. In a certain sense, thinking tends to be stable, to some stereotype. This hinders the solution of creative problems that require an unusual, unconventional approach. Inertia of thinking is revealed, for example, when solving the following problem. It is necessary to cross out four points arranged in the form of a square with three closed lines. An attempt to act by connecting these points does not lead to a solution of the problem. It can be solved only by going beyond these points (Fig. 81).

At the same time, the negative quality of intelligence is rigidity of thought- inflexible, biased attitude to the essence of the phenomenon, exaggeration of the sensory impression, adherence to stereotyped assessments.

Intelligence- the ability of an individual to comprehend a specific situation in a generalized, schematic way, to optimally organize the mind when solving non-standard tasks. However, the essence of intelligence cannot be understood only through the description of its individual properties. The bearers of intellect are the experience of the mental activity of the individual, the mental space formed in him, the ability to present the structural representation of the phenomenon under study in the mind of the individual.

Logical thinking is characterized by a strict sequence of reasoning, taking into account all the essential aspects in the object under study, all its possible relationships with other objects. Evidence of thinking characterized by the ability to use at the right time such facts, patterns that convince the correctness of judgments and conclusions.

Critical thinking presupposes the ability to strictly evaluate the results of mental activity, to discard wrong decisions, to abandon the actions initiated if they contradict the requirements of the task.

Breadth of thinking lies in the ability to cover the issue as a whole, without losing sight of all the data of the corresponding task, as well as in the ability to see new problems (creativity of thinking).

An indicator of the development of intelligence is its divergence - the subject's unbound by external restrictions (for example, his ability to see the possibilities of new applications of ordinary objects).

An essential quality of the individual's mind is prognostication - foreseeing the possible development of events, the consequences of the actions taken. The ability to anticipate, prevent and avoid unnecessary conflicts is a sign of the development of the mind, the breadth of the intellect.

Intellectually limited people extremely narrowly, locally reflect reality, do not produce the necessary transfer of knowledge to new objects.

The development of individual qualities of the mind of an individual is determined both by the genotype of the given individual, and by the breadth of his life experience, the semantic field of his consciousness - by the individual system of meanings, the structure of the intellect. In totalitarian social regimes, the so-called slotted thinking is formed among conforming individuals, narrowed to extremely limited everyday limits, and intellectual infantilism is widely spread. In group thinking, stereotypes, stereotyped orientations, schematized behavior matrices begin to predominate. There are deformations both in the content and in the structure of the intellect.

Significant non-pathological disorders in the structure of intelligence - mental anomalies. They are expressed in violation of the entire mental system of the individual - its motivational, goal-forming and goal-achieving regulatory mechanisms. Here are the most common signs of intellectual disability:

• inadequacy of motives for the actions taken;
• violations in goal-setting and programming of actions, control over their execution;
• violations of semantic connections, inadequacy of means to the set goals;
• defects in mental operations (generalizations, classifications, etc.).

Here are some intellectual tests that reveal the qualities of intelligence (Fig. 81-84).

In most intelligence tests, the subject is offered tasks for generalization, classification, knowledge transfer, extrapolation and interpolation. Some tasks operate with drawings and geometric shapes. The success of the subject is determined by the number of correctly completed tasks.

Rice. 81. Tests for divergent thinking

Rice. 82. Choose the desired shape from the six numbered

Rice. 83. Eliminate an extra figure

Rice. 84. Fill in the missing number (extrapolation test)

Test for the detection of abstracting activity

From the words in brackets, select two words that are significantly related to the original word.

1. GARDEN (plants, gardener, dog, fence, earth).
2. RIVER (coast, fish, angler, mud, water).
3. CITY (car, building, crowd, street, square).
4. SHED (hayloft, horses, roof, livestock, walls).
5. CUBE (angles, drawing, side, stone, tree).
6. DIVISION (class, dividend, pencil, divider, paper).
7. RING (diameter, diamond, roundness, gold, printing).
8. READING (eyes, book, picture, print, word).
9. NEWSPAPER (true, applications, telegrams, paper, editor).
10. GAME (cards, players, fines, penalties, rules).
11. WAR (guns, planes, battle, guns, soldiers).

1. Plants, earth.
2. Beach, water.
3. Building, street.
4. Roof, stsny.
5. Corners, side.
6. Divisible, divisor.
7. diameter, roundness.
8. Eyes, print.
9. Paper, editor.
10. Players, rules.
11. Battles, soldiers.

Thinking and intelligence are terms that are close in content. Both terms express different aspects of the same phenomenon. A person endowed with intellect is capable of carrying out thought processes. Thinking and intellect have always been the hallmarks of a person, because we call a person Homo sapiens - a reasonable person. However, the concept of intelligence is broader than the concept of thinking. Scientists cannot give a single definition of intelligence. Everyone puts their own nuance into this concept. Some researchers focus on the fact that intelligence is the ability to acquire new knowledge and skills, while others study the social aspects of intelligence. Today in science there are two most common definitions of intelligence:

intelligence - the ability to adapt to the environment; intelligence - the ability to solve mental problems.

Many psychologists note that the intellect has a complex structure. What is included in the structure of intelligence - there are many answers to this question.

At the beginning of the XX century. Spearman came to the conclusion that each person is characterized by a certain level of general intelligence (he called it the G-factor). General intelligence determines how a person adapts to the environment. In addition, all people have developed specific abilities to varying degrees, which manifest themselves in solving specific problems of adaptation to the social environment. Subsequently, G. Eysenck interpreted the concept of general intelligence as the speed of information processing by the central nervous system(mental pace). However, the hypothesis of "speed of information processing by the brain" does not yet have serious neurophysiological arguments.

Today, the most famous is the "cubic" model of intelligence by D. Gilford. He believed that intelligence can be described in three main categories:

• 1) operations;
• 2) content;
• 3) results.

Cattell distinguishes between potential and crystalline intelligence. He believes that each of us already from birth has a potential intelligence, which underlies our ability to think, abstract and reason. Around the age of 20, this intelligence reaches its greatest flowering. On the other hand, crystal intelligence is being formed,

Rice. one.

consisting of various skills and knowledge that we acquire as we accumulate life experience. Crystalline intelligence is formed precisely when solving problems of adaptation to the environment and requires the development of some abilities at the expense of others, as well as the acquisition of specific skills. Thus, the crystalline intellect is determined by the measure of mastering the culture of the society to which the person belongs. Potential intelligence determines the primary accumulation of knowledge. From Cattell's point of view, potential intelligence is independent of upbringing and environment. It depends on the level of development of the tertiary zones of the cerebral cortex.

Hebb considers intelligence from a slightly different perspective. He singles out intellect A - this is the potential that is created at the moment of conception and serves as the basis for the development of the intellectual abilities of the individual. As for intelligence B, it is formed as a result of human interaction with the environment. To date, only intelligence B has learned to evaluate, by observing how a person performs mental operations. So far, scientists have not found a way to assess the intelligence of A.

Disputes about the structure of intelligence are not accidental. They are not only of scientific interest, but also help answer the question that worries everyone - on what factors does the development of intelligence depend.

Today, scientists agree that the development of intelligence depends both on innate factors and on the upbringing and environment of the child. Hereditary factors, chromosomal abnormalities, malnutrition and illness of the mother during pregnancy, abuse of antibiotics, tranquilizers or even aspirin in the first months of pregnancy, alcohol consumption and smoking can lead to significant mental retardation of the child. But no matter what potential a child is born with, it is obvious that the forms of intellectual behavior necessary for him to survive can develop and improve only in contact with the environment with which he will interact all his life. The richer and more varied the communication of the child with the people around him, the more successful will be the development of his intellect. In this regard, the role of the social position of the family becomes clear. Wealthy families have more opportunities to create favorable conditions for the development of the child, the development of his abilities, his education and, ultimately, to improve the intellectual level of the child. The teaching methods used to develop the child's abilities also influence. Unfortunately, traditional teaching methods are more focused on the transfer of knowledge to the child and pay relatively little attention to the development of abilities, intelligence, and creative abilities of a person.

Thinking and intelligence are terms that are close in content. Their relationship becomes even clearer if we switch to everyday speech. In this case, the word "mind" will correspond to the intellect. We say "smart person", denoting by this the individual characteristics of intelligence. We can also say that "the mind of a child develops with age", - this conveys the problem of the development of the intellect. The term "thinking" we can put in correspondence with the word "thinking". The word "mind" expresses a property, ability, and "thinking" - a process. Thus, both terms express different aspects of the same phenomenon. A person endowed with intellect is capable of carrying out thought processes. Intelligence is the ability to think, and thinking is the process of realizing the intellect.

· Intelligence is the ability to think.

Thinking is a mediated and generalized knowledge of objective reality.

Thinking and intelligence have long been considered the most important distinguishing features of a person. No wonder the term is used to define the type of modern man.Homo sapiens- a reasonable person. A person who has lost sight, hearing or the ability to move, of course, bears a heavy loss, but does not cease to be a person. After all, deafened Beethoven or blinded Homer have not ceased to be great for us. The one who has completely lost his mind seems to us to be struck in his very human essence.

First of all, thinking is considered as a kind of knowledge. From a psychological point of view, cognition acts as the creation of ideas outside world, its models, or images. In order to get to work, we need some spatial model of the road between home and work. To understand what we are told in a lecture about the wars of Alexander the Great, we need to create some internal model depicting the victories of the great commander. However, thinking is not all knowledge. Cognition is, for example, perception. A sailor who sees a sailboat on the horizon from the mast of a ship also creates a certain mental model, a representation of what he saw. However, this representation is not the result of thinking, but of perception. That's why thinking is defined as mediated and generalized knowledge of objective reality.

For example, looking out into the street, a person sees that the roof of a neighboring house is wet. This is an act of perception. If a person, by the appearance of a wet roof, concludes that it has rained, then we are dealing with an act of thinking, albeit a very simple one. Thinking is mediated in the sense that it goes beyond the immediate given. Based on one fact, we draw a conclusion about another. In the case of thinking, we are not simply dealing with the creation of a mental model based on the observation of the external world. The process of thinking is much more complicated: first, a model of external conditions is created, and then the next model is derived from it. So, in our example, a person first creates the first model related to the sphere of perception - the image of a wet roof, and then derives from it the second model, according to which it has recently rained.

Thinking as knowledge that goes beyond the immediate given is a powerful means of biological adaptation. An animal that can tell indirectly where its prey is or where there is more food, whether a predator or a stronger relative is going to attack it, has a much better chance of surviving than an animal that does not have this ability. It is thanks to the intellect that man has taken a dominant position on Earth and received additional means for biological survival. However, at the same time, the human intellect also created colossal destructive forces.

From an individual point of view, there is basically a threshold relationship between intelligence and performance success. For most types of human activity, there is a certain minimum of intelligence that ensures the ability to successfully engage in this activity. For some activities (for example, mathematics), this minimum is very high, for others (for example, the work of a courier) it is much lower.

However, “woe from wit” is also possible. Excessive intelligence can negatively affect a person's relationships with other people. Thus, the data of a number of American researchers show that very high intelligence can harm politicians. For them, there is a certain optimum of intelligence, a deviation from which, both upward and downward, leads to a decrease in success. If the intelligence of a politician is below the optimum, then the ability to understand the situation, predict the development of events, etc. decreases. If the optimum is significantly exceeded, the politician becomes incomprehensible to the group he should lead. The higher the intellectual level of the group, the higher the optimum intelligence for the leader of this group.

Very high level of intelligence (exceeding 155 points on tests IQ ) negatively affects the adaptation of children who have it. They are ahead of their peers in mental development by more than 4 years and become strangers in their teams.

The presence of elements of the mind in higher animals is currently beyond doubt by any of the scientists. Intellectual behavior represents the pinnacle of the mental development of animals. At the same time, as L.V. Krushinsky, it is not something out of the ordinary, but only one of the manifestations of complex forms of behavior with their innate and acquired aspects. Intellectual behavior is not only closely related to various forms of instinctive behavior and learning, but is itself made up of individually variable components of behavior. It gives the greatest adaptive effect and contributes to the survival of individuals and the continuation of the genus during abrupt, rapidly occurring changes in the environment. At the same time, the intellect of even the highest animals is undoubtedly at a lower stage of development than the human intellect, so it would be more correct to call it elementary thinking, or the rudiments of thinking. The biological study of this problem has come a long way, and all the leading scientists have invariably returned to it. The history of the study of elementary thinking in animals has already been discussed in the first sections of this manual, so in this chapter we will only try to systematize the results of its experimental study.

Definition of human thinking and intelligence

Before talking about the elementary thinking of animals, it is necessary to clarify how psychologists define human thinking and intelligence. At present, in psychology, there are several definitions of these most complex phenomena, however, since this problem goes beyond our training course, we restrict ourselves to the most general information.

According to A.R. Luria, "the act of thinking arises only when the subject has an appropriate motive that makes the task relevant, and its solution is necessary, and when the subject finds himself in a situation regarding the way out of which he does not have a ready-made solution - familiar (i.e., acquired in learning process) or innate".

Thinking is the most complex form of human mental activity, the pinnacle of its evolutionary development. A very important apparatus of human thinking, which significantly complicates its structure, is speech, which allows you to encode information using abstract symbols.

The term "intelligence" is used in both a broad and a narrow sense. In a broad sense, intelligence is the totality of all cognitive functions of an individual, from sensation and perception to thinking and imagination, in a narrower sense, intelligence is thinking itself.

In the process of human cognition of reality, psychologists note three main functions of the intellect:

Ability to learn;

Operating with symbols;

The ability to actively master patterns environment.

Psychologists distinguish the following forms of human thinking:

● visual-effective, based on the direct perception of objects in the process of actions with them;

● figurative, based on ideas and images;

● inductive, based on the logical conclusion "from the particular to the general" (construction of analogies);

● deductive, based on a logical conclusion "from the general to the particular" or "from the particular to the particular", made in accordance with the rules of logic;

● abstract-logical, or verbal, thinking, which is the most complex form.

Verbal thinking of a person is inextricably linked with speech. It is thanks to speech, i.e. the second signal system, human thinking becomes generalized and mediated.

It is generally accepted that the process of thinking is carried out with the help of the following mental operations - analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization and abstraction. The result of the process of thinking in humans are concepts, judgments and conclusions.

Human thinking and the rational activity of animals

According to leading Russian psychologists, the criteria for the presence of the rudiments of thinking in animals can be the following signs:

"an emergency appearance of an answer in the absence of a ready-made solution" (Luria);

"cognitive selection of objective conditions essential for action" (Rubinshtein);

"generalized, mediated nature of the reflection of reality; the search for and discovery of an essentially new" (Brushlinsky);

"presence and fulfillment of intermediate goals" (Leontiev).

Human thinking has a number of synonyms, such as: "reason", "intellect", "reason", etc. However, when using these terms to describe the thinking of animals, it must be borne in mind that, no matter how complex their behavior may be, we can only talk about the elements and rudiments of the corresponding mental functions of a person.

The most correct is the one proposed by L.V. Krushinsky termed rational activity. It avoids the identification of thought processes in animals and humans. The most characteristic property of the rational activity of animals is their ability to capture the simplest empirical laws that connect objects and phenomena of the environment, and the ability to operate with these laws when building programs of behavior in new situations.

Reasoning activity is different from any form of learning. This form of adaptive behavior can be carried out at the first encounter of an organism with an unusual situation created in its environment. The fact that an animal can immediately, without special training, decide to adequately perform a behavioral act, is the unique feature of rational activity as an adaptive mechanism in diverse, constantly changing environmental conditions. Reasoning activity allows us to consider the adaptive functions of the body not only as self-regulating, but also self-selecting systems. This implies the ability of an organism to make an adequate choice of the most biologically appropriate forms of behavior in new situations. By definition L.V. Krushinsky, rational activity is the performance by an animal of an adaptive behavioral act in an emergency situation. This unique way of adapting the organism in the environment is possible in animals with a well-developed nervous system.

Thinking is a complex mental process in which objects and phenomena of the surrounding world are generally and indirectly reflected.

Pure thinking, as a completely independent, self-sufficient mental process, does not really exist; it is inseparable from perception, attention, imagination, memory, speech, etc. Thinking acts like superior process that encompasses all human activities.

The ability to find something in common with the old one in a new situation, to comprehend what is common in a seemingly different situations- the most important distinguishing property of thinking (development of thinking in children - find an extra object, what class the object belongs to, find the differences in the drawings, etc.)

So, thinking differs from other cognitive processes in that it generalizes and mediates cognition of objective reality.. At the same time, it relies on sensory cognition with the active interaction of a person with a cognizable object.

mental operations;

Forms of thinking;

Types of thinking.

Mental operations (processes):

Analysis - mental division of the whole into parts, properties;

Synthesis - the mental unification of parts into a single whole;

Comparison is the basis of knowledge; finding similarities and differences between objects;

Generalization - finding common things in any objects and phenomena and combining them according to common and essential features;

Concretization - the movement of thought from the general to the particular;

· Abstraction - (on the basis of analysis) departure from a specific object to its symbol.

Forms of thinking:

Concept - the transfer of specific properties of an object or phenomenon;

Judgment - something is affirmed or something is denied (sentence)

Inference - when from 2 3 judgments we get the following judgment as a conclusion;

· Analogy - a conclusion, ĸᴏᴛᴏᴩᴏᴇ is made on the basis of some similar features ʼʼby analogyʼʼ.

Types of thinking:

By level of development:

・Visible and effective

· Visual-figurative

Abstract-logical

By the nature of the tasks to be solved:

Theoretical - aimed at explaining the phenomena of reality;

Practical - aimed at transforming reality

According to the degree of novelty and originality:

Reproductive (reproductive)

Productive (creative) or creative.

Intelligence- ϶ᴛᴏ the totality of all mental abilities that provide a person with the opportunity to solve various problems.

Intellectual activity is a specifically human way to adapt (adapt) to the conditions of one's existence. According to the definition of the American psychologist Wexler, who created the first system for measuring the intelligence of an adult in 1939, intelligence is a global ability to act intelligently, think rationally and cope well with life's circumstances.

What determines the development of intelligence:

1. genetic conditioning - the influence of hereditary information.

2. physical and mental state of the mother during pregnancy (nutrition, health).

3. chromosomal abnormalities (Down's disease).

4. environmental conditions (reception medicines, drug use, etc.)

Intelligence scores.

In order to carry out a more or less holistic and, therefore, accurate measurement of intelligence, two ʼʼsubtestsʼʼ are usually used:

- verbal- where tasks are proposed that require actions using words,

- non-verbal– tasks that are not related to words, speech.

The total score is the sum of them.

The most popular is the so-called ʼʼ intelligence quotientʼʼ, abbreviated as IQ (Eysenck test). This test is associated with the concept of mental age, and at the beginning of the century was used in order to be able to compare the mental development of a child with the capabilities of his peers. Later on, on the basis of calculations of the ratio of mental and chronological (real) age, an indicator called the IQ was derived. Its average value corresponds to 100 points ( from 84 to 116 - the norm) , and the lowest can approach 0, the highest - to 200. The bulk of people are considered people with average intelligence. The highest intelligence turned out to be among people whose professional experience is close to the methods of mental operations - scientists, chemists, mathematicians, teachers and students.

Tests for determining the level of intelligence (general abilities) - (except for the IQ test) Ravenna matrices, D. Wexler's verbal and non-verbal intelligence, the Amthauer method, STU, etc.

Thinking and intelligence - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "Thinking and intelligence" 2017, 2018.