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Cognitive Abilities Theory

It seems odd with a theory which is so mathematical in its base, but because of the way factor analysis works, it’s possible to develop alternative versions of Cognitive Abilities Theory, all of which can fit the available research equally well. I’m going to use a version which will work especially well for where we’re going in this book. This version identifies 10 middle-level broad abilities.

The table below will give you a feel for the 10 abilities. When we start to pull all the different theories together in the chapter called “My View of the Elephant,” I’ll incorporate some of these abilities into my personal vision of the ways you can help your child grow up more intelligent.

The Building Blocks of Human Intelligence Suggested by Cognitive Abilities Theory

• Fluid Intelligence / Reasoning (Thinking)
  “Figuring it out.” Calling it “fluid” suggests a flexible skill, one that can adapt. This is what we do when we solve a problem which is somehow new to us: We can’t just give an answer we learned before; we have to figure it out. Fluid Intelligence includes the classical thinking tools of induction and deduction
• Crystallized Intelligence / Knowledge
  Your internal encyclopedia — the base of knowledge that helps a person act intelligently. Calling it “crystallized” suggests knowledge which is already formed, not fluid. It includes such major skills as general knowledge, language and vocabulary development, listening and speaking ability, achievement in specific knowledge areas like science and geography, understanding of different cultures, and foreign language proficiency.
• Quantitative Reasoning / Knowledge
  Math knowledge and the ability to use it
• Reading / Writing
  All the abilities and knowledge that enable someone to read and write well
• Short-Term Memory
  The ability to remember something briefly, as when we look up a phone number and remember it just long enough to dial it, or repeat a series of words we just heard. Some memory tasks shade from this kind of memory to the next one, as we remember something longer and longer.
• Long-Term Associative Storage and Retrieval
  The ability to remember for a very long time, more or less “forever,” and recall what we know when we need it — partly how large an internal encyclopedia we have, but mostly how efficiently we use it
• Visual Intelligence / Processing
  The ability to use the part of our brain that sees or constructs images as an effective tool. It includes abilities like being able to see visual patterns and mentally manipulate visual images. It is one of the skills needed by architects, car mechanics, and people watching for rocks on a river trip.
• Auditory Intelligence / Processing
  The ability to use effectively the part of our brain that deals with sound. It includes abilities like efficiently processing and remembering events that come to us through our ears, discriminating musical patterns, and locating the source of sounds, as well as the critical prereading skills of accurately processing and manipulating the flow of sounds in language.
• Cognitive Processing Speed
  A measure of the raw speed with which people can process very simple tasks — ones they would almost always do correctly if the task weren’t speeded.
• Decision / Reaction Time or Speed
  A measure of speed of response when a decision has to be made. For example, how quickly can someone decide he's seeing a red square, not a green square or a red circle, and press a button?

Grab Your Camera!

Before we go around the next bend in the river, take a glance back where we’ve just been — there’s something I especially want you to notice. Check out the second cognitive ability in the table on the previous page — Crystallized Intelligence. As you see, under the fancy name, we’re just talking about all kinds of knowledge. This knowledge is what the schools call achievement — our personal, internal encyclopedia of information. Now, here’s what’s especially interesting: Psychologists and educators have always felt that intelligence and achievement are fundamentally different things. We’ve always felt that Intelligence is about how smart you are, and achievement is about how much you know. The idea has always been that high intelligence should lead to high achievement, but that intelligence was fundamentally different from achievement — somehow more abstract and “elevated.”

But that separation simply won’t hold up to the light of recent research. Cognitive Abilities Theory makes a strong case that achievement is simply one aspect of intelligence, not something different from it. This is a profound change from traditional thinking about intelligence. Achievement and intelligence are part of the same whole. And it isn’t just Crystallized Intelligence that’s involved: Two other broad abilities in the table are partly about achievement: Quantitative Reasoning / Knowledge and Reading / Writing.

This change in our understanding has enormously optimistic implications for influencing our children’s intelligence. If achievement is part of our functional intelligence, then to some extent, just knowing more can help us be more intelligent. That’s big news — that’s one important way we can help our kids become more intelligent. Of course, the kind of stuff you know is most certainly critical — just stuffing in more facts is surely not what building intelligence is all about! But a brain that has meaningful knowledge to analyze, to assemble and reassemble, to work over, is going to be better off than one that has less to “chew on.”