Multiple Languages, Why Not Multiple Intelligences?

When The New York Times elects to devote more than a page to a news story (link here), that’s news in itself—even more so if the story is about psychological research.

On Tuesday, March 22, 2022, in the print edition of the paper, there was a major story on “decoding shapes” with the subtitle “Grasping geometrical concepts may make humans special.”  The story describes the research of neuroscientist, Stanislas Dehaene, an expert on numerical and mathematical cognition.

Dehaene and colleagues have demonstrated that human beings, but not baboons, can pick the “odd one out” when shown several instances of the same geometric shape (e.g., a five-sided irregular form presented in different sizes and orientations) along with a regular five-sided geometrical shape (e.g., a pentagon.) In other words, humans have the concept of regular vs. irregular shapes. When the same task required selecting a cherry as the odd one in the midst of images of watermelon slices, baboons had no trouble in doing so.

Here are the kinds of problems used to test baboons:

Image from The New York Times | Source: Mathias Sablé-Meyer, Stanislas Dehaene et al.

On this seemingly modest basis, Dehaene builds a vast superstructure. He says that human beings are capable of perceiving and creating geometric forms, and this capacity in turn enables them to construct systems for representing ideas—as is needed in creating artistic renderings, or geometric numerical systems. And since he introduced these ideas at a workshop at the Vatican last fall, he adds the following bold conjecture: “The argument I made in the Vatican is that the same ability is at the heart of our capacity to imagine religion.” 

I’m less interested in the possible link between conceptions of geometric forms and conceptions of god (or, if you prefer, God) than in the fact that geometry is now being posited as a uniquely human capacity, just as language has been argued to be uniquely human by linguist Noam Chomsky. Over half a century ago, Chomsky marshaled a huge amount of evidence that linguistic capacity is an exclusively human faculty, and one that allows—via syntax—all kinds of relations to be expressed among objects, actions, and ideas.

Both Chomsky and Dehaene are arguing for a uniquely human capacity, and these two capacities probably overlap little if at all. Language and geometry have very different evolutionary histories and draw on very different neurological systems. Indeed, if any two human capacities merit separation, discursive language and geometric forms would be high on the list. (Music could be a third).

Just this line of thinking induced me, over forty years ago, to conceive of the human intellect as decomposable into separate cognitive systems. When I wrote about spatial intelligence, I had geometry in mind. When I wrote about linguistic intelligence, I had expressive and discursive language in mind. And when I wrote about logical-mathematical intelligence, I had in mind arithmetic, algebra, and logical reasoning.

It’s therefore revealing to me when The New York Times article ends with the following sentences:

“Language is often assumed to be the quality that demarcates human singularity, Dr. Dehaene noted, but perhaps there is something that is more basic, more fundamental. We are proposing that there are languages—multiple languages.”

Perhaps someday, he or his colleagues, will bite the bullet and say “multiple intelligences.”

My Latest Thoughts on Intrapersonal Intelligence

I recently received an interesting question from Peter van Deerse, a musician in the Netherlands. With his permission, this was his note:

I have always been fascinated with your contribution concerning MI theory.
I really am interested in what your thoughts and feelings are when it comes to a big missing link in education in relation to personal and even mondial problems. This missing link in my view is the development of what you call the intra personal intelligence as an integral part of education and beyond.
I truly believe that when young people would (also) learn in school to reflect on what they feel, what they really want and from a spiritual point of view: who they are, the world would be a more organic place in which every human being is working as much as possible from their mission and strength.
It is too elaborate for me and probably for you that I write everything down.
My question is: what do you see as the benefit of implementing the development of the intra personal intelligence in relation to personal struggles, illness, being in your strength in your working life etc...So what is your vision and what made you write this aspect in particular?
I truly believe that what you have written is the key to more balance and consciousness and a better world with more wisdom and harmony.

My Response:

I have thought and written less about intrapersonal than about the other intelligences—so I am using your question as a catalyst for setting down some thoughts.

First, while I believe that there are psychological and neurological bases for all of the intelligences, intrapersonal intelligence is by far the most difficult to describe, understand, and nurture.

Indeed, while it's clearly been a human potential for thousands of years, it has really ballooned in importance only in the last few centuries, and chiefly in the West—defined as Europe, North America, and places influenced by these portions of the globe.

Another way to put this: the Greeks (Socrates) said "know thyself"—but that directive was not much heeded in the rest of the world for many centuries.

Painting with a very broad swathe, one could say that interest in oneself was catalyzed by the Renaissance of the 15th century and heightened by the Enlightenment of the 18th century. Medieval paintings were almost never signed, while the painter's signature became important in the last few centuries. We could even say the same about music, the area that you are familiar with—who wrote Gregorian chant? We don’t know. What composers did we know by name before Josquin de Pres (1450/1455? -1521)—we don't even know his date of birth for sure! By the time of Beethoven (1770-1827), his persona (and his person) had become fundamental to the world of music.

Freud ushered in the 20th century, and, with it, an obsession with the self (and also, to be fair, many useful concepts to think about persons in general, and oneself in particular—the movie maker, Woody Allen, has made much of that!) And even without Freud, in a complex modern industrial and post-industrial society, it's much more important to have knowledge of self, than in a communitarian era, where individuals hunted or farmed throughout their lives, and all decisions and signals were seen as coming from the gods, rather than from one's own society or one's own psyche.

I have sometimes quipped that "Only your psychiatrist knows for sure whether you have good intrapersonal intelligence." And indeed, nowadays, most of us think that we know ourselves but that knowledge can be very faulty. One purpose of a 360 degree evaluation carried out across an office is to reveal to you, aspects of yourself which you may not be aware of. But even if the rest of the world were constituted by Mary Trump—the niece who revealed aspects of her uncle Donald's psyche to the rest of the world—we can be quite sure that it would not have changed Donald Trump's view of himself—he thinks that he knows himself (and others) thoroughly.

Having given this background, let me know return to your question. In our time, it's certainly important that each of us know something about ourselves, and we should make use of useful comments and insights from others—certainly, from individuals who are clinically trained, but also from family and trusted friends. I have certainly learned lots about myself without having to lie on a couch for an hour each week and pay significant amounts of money.

But like every other intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence can be used benevolently or malevolently. A thief or even a murderer could be more effective if he or she understood his or her personality, moods, motivations better.

In our recent study of colleges, The Real World of College (link here), Wendy Fischman and I report an astonishing finding: that American college students use the word "I" or "me” eleven times more frequently than "we" or "us". Clearly there is intrapersonal interest, even preoccupation!—but that is not necessarily benevolent for the society (Fischman and I would say it's not) and it does not mean that our understanding of self is necessarily more accurate, it's just that our preoccupation with ourselves is prevalent.

I am quite confident that this empirical result would be less true in Japan—which is much more of a "we" society, than an "I" society—it's a society that has been far more interested in Western sociology than in Western psychology. China is somewhere in between, though with its Confucian roots, there is probably a large segment of the society that is more similar to Kyoto than to Chicago or California—but these are empirical matters, not ones to be speculated about casually. 

Finally, how about your question of knowledge of providing support at times of troubles, difficulties? As a complete Westerner, I think that such knowledge is useful, and indeed, I recommend Michael Ignatieff's  recent book, On Consolation, as a way for people in the Western tradition to deal with death, dying, and illness. But I believe that support at such times can come as well from religion—and from religious figures and texts and rituals. So I would not necessarily mandate a course on "I"—even if that course were quite sensibly and sensitively designed and executed. (This is one of the problems of the field of positive psychology, but that’s an issue for another day).

I am not sure that my response is helpful, or even that it is directly responsive to the question that you raised—but I am indebted to you for helping me to think about and articulate my current thoughts about intrapersonal intelligence.

Is there a Test for Multiple Intelligences? Should There Be?

For nearly forty years, I’ve been asked whether there is a test for multiple intelligences. For the most part, I’ve been reluctant to create or endorse a test. That’s because most of the intelligences cannot be reliably captured by a standard short-answer instrument. The exceptions are covered by the standard intelligence tests. If one has a brief period of time to administer, these tests provide a rough-and-ready measure of key aspects of linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences. 

Indeed, if those are the only intelligences in which one has interest, there is little need for “MI” theory. Standard IQ tests predict success and ease of learning in a standard Western style school. Moreover, they predict pretty well the professions to which individuals will gravitate: for example, white collar jobs (e.g. book-keeper) and professions (e.g. law, teaching). 

In reflecting on the “testing approach” for multiple intelligences, I’ve made an exception. If one can create an environment in which “the test subject” can be observed over a period of time, one can make a rough-and-ready portrait of that subject’s intelligence profiles. This is what David Feldman and I, alongside Mara Krechevsky, Jie-Qi Chen, Julie Viens, and other colleagues, did in creating Project Spectrum. Spectrum features approach to “MI” in young children, where materials and play spaces exist that can elicit the several intelligences (link to Project Spectrum materials here). And this is what Universe (formerly known as Danfoss Universe) in Denmark did, when it created the Explorama, a theme park in which an individual gets to try out his/her skills in a variety of game contexts. To read more, please refer to the chapter by Charlotte Sahl-Madsen in Multiple Intelligences Around The World (link here). 

What of efforts to assess “MI” using a more standard questionnaire? There are many that claim to do that. The best known one, and the one on which the most data are available, is the MIDAS (link here). Created by psychologist Branton Shearer, it’s been used over the decades in many contexts in many countries. I applaud Shearer’s impressive efforts to use and revise the MIDAS. But it has a limitation: it is basically self-report: and, alas, many (perhaps most) of us are not particularly good at evaluating our strengths and weaknesses. After all, who among us reports that he/she is a poor driver or has less than an average sense of humor? 

I’ve often commented that if the MIDAS, and other easily administered tests, could be filled out by a subject—but also by his/her teachers and his/her closest relatives and friends. The joint product would provide a much better picture of the subject’s relative strengths. 

Recently, I’ve learned about a new test called “The Multiple Intelligences and Learning Style Test” (link here for article). Because it is available online, at Psychology Today (link here), I spent 10 minutes responding to the short answer questions and rank ordering exercises. 

 On the one hand, I thought that the questions were good ones. And if I am an accurate assessor of my own “MI profile”, I think that the test would report what was needed. 

That said, I have three objections to the MIALS-TEST: 

1.  It combines multiple intelligences with learning styles, and I have spent many years and written many columns about how MI does not equal learning styles (link here for one example). 

2.  It is basically a self-report and, as such, is subject to self-delusion. However, if the test were given as well to one’s intimates, and they agreed with the self-report, then the validity of the test would be enhanced. 

3. To find out one’s profile, and how it compared to that of other’s, one has to go to another site and, presumably, pay some money. This I was not about to do. 

 I could also add that, while I am still alive, the apparent author Joshua Klapow, never bothered to contact me about this endeavor. I am not interested in a percentage of his no-doubt enormous profits 😊. But it would have been a courteous thing to do. 

I’ve concluded that while one can resist a narrow definition of intelligence—as Daniel Goleman has famously done with his notion of Emotional Intelligence (EQ)—it’s more difficult to resist the temptation to create a rough-and-ready measure and to profit thereby. 

I guess we could call that the “Capitalist Learning Style”. 

Thanks to Mindy Kornhaber for her useful suggestions.

Photo: Universe park in Als, Denmark, where Explorama is located

MI Theory Featured in TV Show

Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences was recently featured on a hit ABC television show. Abbott Elementary is described as a workplace comedy featuring “a group of dedicated, passionate teachers and a slightly tone-deaf principal.” They work in an underfunded public school in Philadelphia where, “despite the odds stacked against them, they are determined to help their students succeed in life.” More information on the show can be found at this link.

In the episode, teachers experiment with a gifted program for select students. They encounter problems when students excluded from the gifted program feel left out. One teacher argues, “There’s more than one way to be gifted” citing Howard Gardner and the theory of multiple intelligences. It is then decided that all students will participate in the gifted program considering the different intelligences they might have.

The show correctly represents MI theory which states that humans have several distinct intelligences and that there is no single intelligence adequately measured by an IQ, or other test. For educators, there are two main implications:

1. Individuation (also termed personalization) – Since each human being has her own unique configuration of intelligences, we should take that into account when teaching, mentoring or nurturing. As much as possible, we should teach individuals in ways that they can learn. And we should assess them in a way that allows them to show what they have understood and to apply their knowledge and skills in unfamiliar contexts.

2. Pluralization – Ideas, concepts, theories, skills should be taught in several different ways. Whether one is teaching the arts, sciences, history, or math, the seminal ideas should be presented in multiple ways. If you can present the art works of Michelangelo, or the laws of supply and demand, or the Pythagorean Theorem in several ways, you achieve two important goals. First of all, you reach more students, because some students learn best from reading, some from building something, some from acting out a story, etc. Second, you show what it is like to be an expert—to understand something fully, you should be able to think of it in several ways.

Photo credit: ABC.com

Does Spatial Cognition Training Enhance Math Learning?

I was interested to read this recent article on PsyPost by Eric Dolan (link here). At first blush this article might appear to be at odds with a differentiation between logical-mathematical intelligence and spatial intelligence. But in fact, it is quite consistent. Mathematics is a subject, an area, a discipline; logical-mathematical and spatial are intelligences. As I’ve often pointed out, one can use various intelligences in order to achieve mastery in a topic or subject matter. Indeed, the good teacher (and the good student ) are able to mobilize their stronger intelligences in order to master material that is important. So three cheers for researcher Torkel Klingberg’s demonstration—helpful for all educators on all topics.