The Formative Years of Life

All children develop at different speeds. Popcorn is prepared in the same pot, in the same heat, in the same oil, and yet the kernals do not pop at the same time. Don’t compare your child to other children. Their turn to pop is coming!

The Mozart Effect

Named after the Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791), this finding, first reported in the journal Nature in 1993 (pdf here) , said that listening to compositions by Mozart increases scores on tests of spatial ability for a short while.



In the original experiment, college students were given various tests after experiencing each of the following for ten minutes; listening to Mozart's sonata for two pianos in D major K488, listening to a relaxation tape, or silence. Performance on the paper-folding subtest of the Stanford-Binet intelligence scale was significantly better after listening to Mozart than after the other two treatments, but the effect dissipated after about 15 minutes, and other non-spatial tasks were unaffected.

 

The finding has been contested by other researchers and has been widely misinterpreted to imply that listening to Mozart, or just classical music in general, increases one's intelligence.

 

Several independent research studies have shown that children who receive extensive training in musical performance achieve significantly higher average scores on tests of spatial ability, but that long-term consequence is not the Mozart effect.

Is intelligence best understood in terms of 'g' (or as a multidimensional construct)?

Even after more than a century of research and theory development, there is still sharp disagreements about what intelligence is. Psychologists have not reached a consensus about how to define intelligence. Some common themes often include; adaption to the environment, the potential for individuals to understand the world around them, basic mental processes, higher-order thinking (e.g. reasoning), problem solving, and decision making.

 

Much of the debate around intelligence is whether it is a general ability or several distinct abilities.

The following is the APA task force definition: ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought, - a fairly comprehensive definition to say the least!

 

The argument for intelligence as a general ability was first advanced by a British psychologist named Charles Spearman (1863 - 1945), the first major theory of intelligence. General intelligence, also known as g factor, refers to the existence of a general intelligence that influences performance on mental ability measures - a single, unitary quality within the human mind. He interpreted it as the core of human intelligence.

 

According to Spearman, this g factor was responsible for overall performance on mental ability tests. Thus Spearman would argue that your performance in a maths test would depend mainly on your general intelligence but also on your specific ability to learn mathematics. Those who hold this view believe that intelligence can be measured and expressed by a single number, such as an IQ score. The idea is that this underlying general intelligence influences performance on all cognitive tasks.

 

Further, it captures the kinds of general mental flexibility needed to cope with novelty, read the environment, draw conclusions and choose how and when to act (Lubinski, 2004).

 

However, an important question to be asked about intelligence is how much of our intelligence is shaped by genetic factors and how much by the environment we live in? It has long been recognised that genes and the environment are not additive, in the sense that x percent of intelligence is caused by genes and y percent by the environment. Rather, they interact with each other in causing the development of all human characteristics, including intelligence.

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''Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven''

                             ~ Edward De Bono