laboratory intelligence and intelligence in the wild | Learning Maps and Memory Skills (Creating Success)

laboratory intelligence

The Swiss researcher Jean Piaget once suggested that we should regard intelligence as something we use when we don t know what to do. For a long time intelligence has been regarded as something we have inherited, a personal skill or ability that is measurable and practically fixed through life “ we get what we get and cannot do anything about it. Tests were constructed to measure people s intelligence (IQ, Intelligence Quotient). Any ordinary IQ test mainly contains questions and problems that test a person s ability to solve mathematical-logical problems (often series of numbers , omitted figures etc), spatial problems ( judging similarities of form, position etc) and linguistic problems (synonyms, the meaning of words etc).

A logical problem might look like this:

Which of the following words would you use instead of the question mark above?

a) house
b) bacteria
c) people
d) streets

What would be your answer? Give reasons for your choice.

I choose.......................................................

Because:...................................................................................................

..................................................................................................................

David Perkins, the co-director of Project Zero at Harvard University calls this type of intelligence ˜laboratory intelligence . It is being used for reproduction of facts, to get the ˜correct answer, to show that the person who is being tested has

understood the context of the test. In that way it is a rather predictable, not to say programmed type of intelligence that is being tested here. It actually says very little about the person s ability to solve problems in the real world.

˜intelligence in the wild

A type of intelligence that is more practical in everyday life, which consists of a great number of unpredictable situations, could be called ˜intelligence in the wild . When something unforeseen occurs, what do you do?

Let us say you are in a marketplace in a foreign country. Suddenly you become aware of a lot of noise around you, people start screaming, some of them run away and others become very upset and shout in a language you don t understand at all. You become very worried and you don t understand what is going on around you. You don t know how to interpret what is happening. Should you leave? Is something dangerous about to take place? Has anything happened and in that case what? Alot of questions pop up inside you but you have no discernable pattern to help you make sense of the events.

It is in situations like this that you will be able to use your ˜ intelligence in the wild but there are certain criteria:

It is most important that you become aware of the fact that something is about to happen, that you are alert to changes , that you are able to trace events that could lead to danger, etc.
You need a certain attitude to promote this sense of alertness , so that you notice patterns and events in the surroundings.
You also need an ability to make sense of what you have been observing , you need knowledge and skills to handle it.

Let s take another example from everyday life. You are supposed to cook a certain dish and you start mixing the ingredients . Suddenly you become aware of the fact that one important

ingredient is missing. What do you do then? Are you the type of person who would prefer to follow the recipe strictly ? Would you then run off to a grocery store to buy the missing ingredient? Or would you rather start thinking about a possible way to substitute it with something else? Are you a person who normally solves problems ˜on the run ? The intelligence in the wild will take over and you will very often find more than one possible solution to the problem.