WEBVTT - Multiple Intelligences w/ Dr. Howard Gardner 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:02.800 What I should mention, and this is available on my website. 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:07.520 With my colleagues Shinri for Azawa and Anti Tuture, we 0:00:07.560 --> 0:00:11.119 wrote a ten thousand word essay earlier this year called 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:18.880 Who Owns Intelligence and Who Owns Intelligence? Shinri talks about 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:22.799 animal intelligence because we know vastly more about animal intelligence 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:27.400 now than we did even forty years ago. Plant intelligence. 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:30.640 I never thought about plant intelligence, but any research there 0:00:30.680 --> 0:00:33.519 and there are things that plants can do signaling one 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:36.440 another when something dangerous is coming, some potion or so on, 0:00:36.720 --> 0:00:39.760 which would count in intelligence of humans did it. And 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:43.479 then I, with my very limited knowledge but with my 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:47.720 considerable interest, talked about artificial intelligence and to what extent 0:00:48.040 --> 0:00:52.199 it fits these different criteria, and this is mentioned in 0:00:52.680 --> 0:00:56.600 the two books The Essentials. If I were given another 0:00:56.640 --> 0:00:58.800 ten or twenty years, I would love to be able 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:03.520 to consider not just human intelligences, but animal, plant, and 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:08.000 artificial because I think that's the next frontier for to 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:10.039 say psychology in the large sense. 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:18.839 Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. I'm doctor Scott 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:23.400 Barry Kaufman, a cognitive scientist interested in the science of intelligence, creativity, 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:26.480 and human potential. Today we have a very special guest 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:29.800 on the show Doctor Howard Gardner. Doctor Gardner is a 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:33.759 developmental psychologist and a professor of cognition and Education at 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:36.959 Harvard's Graduate School of Education. He was a founding member 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:40.240 of Harvard Project Zero in nineteen sixty seven and has 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:43.720 written hundreds of research articles in over thirty books, including 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:46.720 his most recent books, The Essential Howard Gardner on Mind 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:50.200 and The Essential Howard Gardner on Education. His most well 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:53.360 known book, however, is his nineteen eighty three book Frames 0:01:53.360 --> 0:01:57.600 of Mind, The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. This book was 0:01:57.680 --> 0:02:01.480 revolutionary at the time because lenge the notion that intelligence 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:04.200 is singular and that intelligence can best be measured by 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:07.240 IQ tests. On a personal note, when I was an undergraduate, 0:02:07.280 --> 0:02:09.600 I remember coming across this book and deciding then and 0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:11.600 there that I wanted to spend the rest of my 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:14.960 life studying this topic. I credit Howard Gardner as being 0:02:15.000 --> 0:02:17.520 one of the most important influences on my decision to 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:19.840 go into the field of psychology. I was actually accepted 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:21.920 to be his graduate student, to be co advised by 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:24.720 him and the late Kurt Fisher, but ultimately I decided 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:27.880 to study with Robert Sternberg for graduate school who also 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:30.760 has done groundbreaking work on human intelligence. This is a 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:33.919 very lively discussion with a person who I deeply respect. 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:36.680 My own thinking on intelligence has evolved quite a bit 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:38.600 since I was an undergrad, and it was an honor 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:40.440 to have a bit of a debate with doctor Gardner 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:42.519 on what I see as some of the limitations of 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:45.080 his theory. Nevertheless, I considered it a privilege to be 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:47.200 able to have this conversation and to share it with 0:02:47.240 --> 0:02:49.720 you all today. So with that further ado, I bring 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:55.079 you the legendary doctor Howard Gardner. Professor Howard Gardner. It's 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:57.200 such a pleasure to have you on the Psychology Podcast. 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:00.680 Thank you, Scott. Looking forward to our conversation. 0:03:01.840 --> 0:03:04.520 I am really looking for this conversation. I don't know 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:09.960 if you remember a twenty three year old Scott Barrett 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:14.679 Kaufman sitting in your office, uh, asking what is intelligence? 0:03:16.440 --> 0:03:19.680 I don't, I don't. I don't presume you remember remember that. 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:20.639 But do you remember? 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:21.840 Do you remember? Well? 0:03:21.880 --> 0:03:24.560 I remember we've had some contacts, but I wouldn't be 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:25.840 able to say. 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:26.400 Of course happened. 0:03:27.520 --> 0:03:29.639 Of course. Well, let me just say that there are 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:32.440 two people in the field of psychology who have influenced 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:35.400 me the most in going into this field, and it 0:03:35.520 --> 0:03:39.720 is you and Robert Sternberg. So I must off the 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:42.600 bat really thank you for the incredible work you've done. 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:47.200 And it was such a fun journey reading these two books, 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:50.240 The Essential Howard Gardner on Mind and The Essential Howard 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:55.040 Gardner on Education. I learned so much that I didn't 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:58.320 even know about your career and your influences. And I 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:01.720 thought today what we would do is focus on education. 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:05.240 But they're both so intertwined. Both books are really have 0:04:05.320 --> 0:04:08.040 a lot of overlaps. So I looked in my preparation 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:10.440 for today, I looked for the overlaps, and I thought. 0:04:10.240 --> 0:04:11.520 We could talk about that today. 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:15.600 That's fine, great, okay, So let me begin a little 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:20.800 bit with young Howard Gardner and Scranton, Pennsylvania. Growing up 0:04:20.839 --> 0:04:23.680 around the same time as Biden in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:26.400 the forties and fifties. What were you like as a kid. 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:28.400 You said you never thought of yourself as a future scholar. 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:28.960 Is that right? 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:31.520 Iden and I are the same age, and we're both 0:04:31.520 --> 0:04:34.240 from Scranton, but we didn't know each other. 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:36.080 He moved away pretty quickly. 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:40.880 No, I came from a family of German Jews who 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:43.760 escaped from the Nazis literally in the nick of time. 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:47.239 They arrived here on the night of the Broken Glass 0:04:47.400 --> 0:04:52.280 in November ninth, nineteen thirty eight, and academics was not 0:04:52.360 --> 0:04:55.000 on their mind. Scholarship was not on their mind. And 0:04:55.120 --> 0:04:59.680 since they lost their youth because of Hitler, and I 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:03.320 was a a studious kid. I liked school. I was 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:09.400 quite gifted pianist, a good boy scout. But I didn't 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:15.239 really even know about the world of scholarship and knowledge. 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:18.400 And I'll mention two things. One is, when I arrived 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:22.400 at college sixty some years ago, I didn't realize there 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:25.320 were people who'd written books who were still alive. I 0:05:25.360 --> 0:05:28.120 was astounded to be in a class at Harvard College 0:05:28.160 --> 0:05:30.440 with people who had written books I thought of at 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:33.719 least scholarly books were all written a long time ago. 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:37.040 The other thing is I had an uncle Fred, who 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:41.440 was almost like an extra father to me. And when 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:45.400 I was sixteen so in high school, he gave me 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:49.160 a textbook in psychology. It's actually one was written by 0:05:49.160 --> 0:05:52.800 Norman Munn, who was a well known psychologist. And I 0:05:52.960 --> 0:05:57.600 leaped through the book and I realized that the book 0:05:57.640 --> 0:06:01.600 could explain something about me which I'd always been mystified by, 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:04.840 and that is that I'm colorblind and I can't see colors, 0:06:04.880 --> 0:06:07.800 and of course almost everybody else can. But I learned 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:10.200 about the Ushahara test, and there were actually ways of 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:13.520 explaining why it is that the small percentage of the 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:18.640 population can't discriminate colors. So the idea of psychology was 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:22.760 imprinted in my teenage years. But when I went to college, 0:06:23.279 --> 0:06:25.840 I studied history because that's the sort of thing that 0:06:25.880 --> 0:06:28.279 you study in high school. You don't study psychology in 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:31.279 high school, at least not in the nineteen fifties and Scranton. 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:36.200 But I ended up not liking history because in our 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:41.960 tutorial we read historiography, which is not history, but rather 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:44.560 how people think about history. And I was too young 0:06:44.600 --> 0:06:47.760 and naive to realize that that's an interesting question. Now, 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:50.839 being in my eighties, I realized it's a fascinating question. 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:54.680 But at Harvard at that time, in the early nineteen sixties, 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:59.120 there was a field called social relations, nicknamed a sockrel, 0:06:59.760 --> 0:07:05.280 and gave you exposure to psychology, sociology, and anthropology, a 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:07.960 little bit of economics and political science, and that was 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:10.160 just right for me because I was a wanderer and 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:13.840 a wonderer, I really wanted to learn about these different fields, 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:16.880 and I was very lucky to get as my tutor 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:21.520 a great psychiatrist named Eric Erickson. Would be known to 0:07:21.560 --> 0:07:27.679 people who studied psychology, particularly because he outlined a number 0:07:27.680 --> 0:07:34.160 of crises that individuals encounter during their lifetime, and the 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:37.680 crisis of adolescents, which my friends and me were so 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:42.560 interested in, is the crisis of identity versus role diffusion. 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:46.080 Identity means you sort of put yourself together, you know 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:49.320 where you're going, you have a future, you feel pretty 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:54.120 confident and competent. And role diffusion is I don't know 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:55.520 whether I want to do this. I don't know whether 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:57.960 I wanted that. Do I married, do I move away? 0:07:58.840 --> 0:08:06.120 Do I switch? You know, my hobbies? And this was 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:08.240 just the issue of my colleagues and I were interested in. 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:14.040 So having Eric Erickson as a tutor made a great difference. Later, 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:16.840 if we come to it, i'll tell you about how 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:21.320 now in my eighties, I have rethought one of Ericson's crises. 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:24.240 But I want to let you proceed with your. 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:28.520 Schedule and your set of issues. 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:31.040 That's well, thank you. I put that on my list. 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:34.160 Who else influenced you around that time at Harvard? Was 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:35.880 there anyone else that had a major influence. 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:39.080 The person who by far had the greatest influency on 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:42.280 me was a person I worked with right after college. 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.920 That was Jerome Bruner, known as Jerry Brunner, and he 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:48.640 was a great cognitive psychologist, one of the people who 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:54.320 founded the field which will post scnarian and behaviorism. But 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:57.600 I got to know Bruner because he was developing a 0:08:57.679 --> 0:09:02.720 curriculum for middle school kids, a curriculum of social studies, 0:09:03.040 --> 0:09:04.840 and he hired me and a bunch of other young 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:07.720 people to help create the curriculum, and that the seaweed 0:09:07.920 --> 0:09:12.040 was working. The curriculum now has very ancient sounding name, 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:15.040 but it was a great curriculum. It was a social 0:09:15.080 --> 0:09:19.200 studies curriculum called man a course of study. Now, of course, 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:22.959 we had called human beings a course of studies. And 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:26.920 that curriculum raised three questions which I think about every day. 0:09:27.880 --> 0:09:31.920 What makes human beings human? How do we get that way? 0:09:33.360 --> 0:09:35.360 And how can we be made more so? How can 0:09:35.400 --> 0:09:39.240 we be made more human? And I'm happy to talk 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:41.440 about that for the next hour because I think it's 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:45.200 the most important question we as a species face today. 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:47.719 But I want to stick with your question, and I 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:52.760 would say that Jerry Bruner and Eric Erickson were certainly 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:57.720 the biggest influences in my work in psychology, but there 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:01.360 were two people who had enormous influence on me outside 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:04.720 of psychology, and that helps to explain in a sense, 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:08.440 the rest of my scholarly life. One was Nelson Goodwin 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:13.599 and the other was Norman Geshmand. Both have the initials NG. 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:18.839 Nelson Goodman was a very well known philosopher and analytic philosopher, 0:10:19.440 --> 0:10:22.160 but at Harvard almost sixty years ago, he started a 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:26.559 research group called Project zero, which was studying artistic education 0:10:27.000 --> 0:10:30.079 and artistic knowledge. And as I mentioned, I was very 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:33.679 involved with music, also with other arts, and I realized 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:36.640 that in psychology almost nobody paid attention to what it 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:38.840 meant to become an artist. It was how he become 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:42.520 a scientist or an intellectual. And so Nelson started an 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:46.120 organization called Project zero zero meaning we don't know anything 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:49.640 about it, but it that's the stimulus to learn more. 0:10:49.760 --> 0:10:53.560 And now literally fifty eight years later, Project zero not 0:10:53.640 --> 0:10:58.760 only has survived, it's thriving. I co directed for many 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:02.319 years and I'm still very actively involved. My wife Ellen Winner, 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:06.200 you know, Scott the psychologist, is writing a study of 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:09.040 the impact of Project zero. The study is over five 0:11:09.120 --> 0:11:12.840 hundred single space pages already and she's not finished yet. 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:17.400 The other energy, very different was Norman Geshwind. Norman Geshwind 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:20.920 was a neurologist who was one of the first people 0:11:21.280 --> 0:11:25.600 who studied what happens to people when they have different 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:30.959 kinds of brain injuries through a stroke, or through a tumor, 0:11:31.360 --> 0:11:37.000 or through shrapnel or a bullet round and Geshwind helped 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:42.240 understand the nature of language, the nature of mathematics, the 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:45.760 nature of recognizing faces, the nature of being able to 0:11:45.800 --> 0:11:49.000 find your way around a path. And when I was 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:53.440 going to do a regular post doc in psychology like 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:57.600 my colleagues did my peers, I said, I need to 0:11:57.640 --> 0:12:00.880 learn something about neuroscience because there are a lot of 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:03.880 answers to questions that I'm asking in particularly about the arts, 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:07.880 which you can't really approach unless you study the brain. Example, 0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:12.320 or Reese Ravella was a great composer. He suffered a stroke. 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:15.560 What happened to his music, what happened to his language, 0:12:15.600 --> 0:12:18.160 what happens to his ability to read? Music, you can 0:12:18.200 --> 0:12:22.240 only ask those questions of somebody where nature causes a 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:30.120 stroke or some other kind of compromising of an area 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:34.040 of the brain. And so then Scott I changed my 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:37.400 postdoc plans and spent twenty years working in the Phasia 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:41.920 center in the Boston Veterans Administration Hospital, learning about what 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:45.560 different parts of the brain do and different kinds of 0:12:45.640 --> 0:12:50.520 cognitive faculties that we have as human beings, and how 0:12:50.559 --> 0:12:54.520 they can be impaired through brain damage. And then what 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:56.319 do we do if we have a stroke in the 0:12:56.320 --> 0:12:59.160 middle of the left hemisphere and right handed and we 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:02.280 can't use language in the ordinary way? Can we communicate 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:05.720 through music? Can we communicate through drawings? Through other kinds 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:10.720 of signs? And what I've just done is to indicate 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:14.040 how I ever came up with my theory of multiple intelligences, 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:17.600 which is, for better or worse, what people know me about, 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:21.440 if they know me at all. And I realized that 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:27.040 the notion of intellect as being singular, and in fact, 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:29.800 if you were smart, you'd be smart and everything. If 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:32.800 you were average, you'd be average in everything, and if 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:35.240 you didn't do well as tests, you'd do poorly at 0:13:35.280 --> 0:13:39.480 everything was simple minded. Simplistic, or I would even say wrong. 0:13:40.320 --> 0:13:43.600 So I was very fortunate colleagues and I got a 0:13:43.640 --> 0:13:46.640 five year grant to study quote unquote the nature of 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:49.360 human potential. I used to joke that's more of a 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:52.440 West Coast question than an East Coast question. When I 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:55.960 had a research team and we traveled around the world, 0:13:56.440 --> 0:14:02.600 visiting different cultures, interviewing different experts, we combed the neurological literature, 0:14:02.720 --> 0:14:07.560 the genetic literature, the anthropog anthropological literature. And in nineteen 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:11.160 seventy six I had started a book called Kinds of Minds, 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:16.000 but I realized that I wasn't really talking about kinds 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:19.880 of minds. I was talking about different mental faculties, which 0:14:19.920 --> 0:14:22.840 I came to call different intelligences, and that led to 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:26.280 frames of mind, the theory of multiple intelligences. And even 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:30.320 though as you know, Scott has never been warmly accepted 0:14:30.640 --> 0:14:36.200 within the trade of psychometricians, it's really the idea, along 0:14:36.200 --> 0:14:39.080 with Dan Goldman's emotional intelligence, which everybody else in the 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:40.600 world believes in, because it's right. 0:14:44.560 --> 0:14:46.840 Oh, are you saying maybe some of your theories not 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:49.120 right or you're not contrasting that all right? 0:14:49.720 --> 0:14:52.320 No, I say, I opened the door I never think 0:14:52.360 --> 0:14:56.440 any theory is right, theories, race questions. I'm still thinking 0:14:56.480 --> 0:14:59.880 about intelligences now. I'm saying everybody now talks about it, 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:05.120 emotional intelligence, personal intelligence, music. But if you go to 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:08.560 a psychology department, they say, well, there's really only IQ, 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:11.840 and that's because they create tests which just prove them 0:15:11.920 --> 0:15:14.360 right rather than looking in the real world. It's kind 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:18.200 of sad, really, and if we get to it, it 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:21.240 makes me kind of sad about psychology in general because 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:23.880 I think it's much too narrow and if we spend 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:30.720 more attention to attention to anthropology, to computer science, to neuroscience, 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:34.160 to genetics, it would be a much stronger field. 0:15:35.440 --> 0:15:38.400 Oh, I definitely agree. I love the interdisciplinary nature. When 0:15:38.440 --> 0:15:41.080 I read Frames of Mind, and I didn't read it 0:15:41.080 --> 0:15:42.920 in nineteen eighty three, but when I read Frames of Mind, 0:15:42.960 --> 0:15:44.920 which was originally published in nineteen eighty three, I read 0:15:44.920 --> 0:15:49.360 it in the maybe nineteen ninety nine or so. It 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:52.560 really blew my mind because I really wanted to believe 0:15:52.680 --> 0:15:55.560 desperately there was so much more than IQ, because I 0:15:55.600 --> 0:15:57.840 didn't do particularly well in IQ tests as a kid, 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:00.600 so I was like, okay, this is And then I 0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:04.280 read Robert Sterberg's work, which is complementary to yours. I 0:16:04.320 --> 0:16:07.840 would say, you would agree with that, right, it's complementary. Yeah, 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:12.120 And and I've gone down this rabbit hole of intelligenting 0:16:12.160 --> 0:16:15.680 human intelligence for the last twenty twenty five years. Let's 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:18.280 really let's really get into some of the criticism, let's 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:20.360 really get into some of the nerdiness aspect of this, 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:24.080 because we really can discuss this at that level of analysis. 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:30.000 So so so intelligence researchers don't say there's only IQ, 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:32.320 but they have the whole. They have a hierarchy, so 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:35.400 everything still fits within their hierarchy of cognitive abilities. So 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:40.120 they would absolutely say there are multiple abilities underneath the 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:44.120 top level G factor, the which stands for general intelligence. 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:46.760 But what was really so radical about what you were 0:16:46.800 --> 0:16:49.320 saying is, well, if we look at so many different 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:52.520 levels of analysis, so many different areas, and we integrate them, 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:55.880 really G is not doesn't even even exist. I think 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:58.000 you you would go, you would go so far as 0:16:58.000 --> 0:17:01.480 to say that G does not exist? Is right or not? 0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:04.680 I wouldn't say that. What I would say is that 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:08.199 it's I want to say an artifact, because that's a 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:16.040 little bit meaning it's a general competence which emerges when 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:18.720 you use a certain kind of instrument. Let me try 0:17:18.720 --> 0:17:22.480 to make this concrete. Let's take the nineteenth century, the 0:17:22.520 --> 0:17:26.159 twentieth century, and the twenty first century, and let's take 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:29.199 getting into college, because that's something we know about. If 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:32.200 the nineteenth century, you wanted to predict who would be 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:36.679 able to succeed in college, you would see can they 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:40.159 learn English, Latin, and Greek. That's what it took to 0:17:40.200 --> 0:17:43.040 get in Harvard and Yale in the nineteenth century, So 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:45.200 we wanted to predict her, we would have a test 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:48.000 that's very heavily loaded on how you can learn languages. 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:51.360 In the twentieth century, the era of liberal arts, which 0:17:51.359 --> 0:17:52.760 I was in the middle of and you were kind 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:55.160 of at the tail end of. It's can you cut 0:17:55.200 --> 0:18:01.800 across a number of different fields, you know, history, mathematics, literature, 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:04.240 what we call liberal arts, and so you'd have a 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:07.560 test which kind of samples rather broadly in terms of 0:18:07.640 --> 0:18:11.200 language and logic. We're in the twenty first century now. 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:14.080 If we want to predict who could benefit from a 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:16.679 college education, the first thing we have to say is 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:19.479 what is it that we want to achieve and what 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:23.399 is it that large language instruments can't do and probably 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:25.880 I mean I was thinking about geography the other day. 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:29.000 When I was in Scranton in seventh grade, we had 0:18:29.000 --> 0:18:32.600 to draw a map of the of all the counties 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:36.399 in scrant in Pennsylvania by memory. And at that time 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:39.520 for geography you actually had to know where things were 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:41.760 and how to draw them. I now have a machine 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:44.679 which you can see which has everything is, and so 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:46.840 we wanted to predict who is going to be successful 0:18:47.040 --> 0:18:49.720 in the twenty first century. We wouldn't use a paper 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:52.240 in pensil test for a half an hour an hour. 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:57.480 So to summarize this, the soliloquy what we're valuing in 0:18:57.600 --> 0:19:01.760 human beings at a certain time in history will determine 0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:06.119 what we valorize. And many people now, and even if 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:07.800 they've never heard of me, say, what's important now at 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:10.160 the workplace is can you get along with other people? 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:12.960 Can you understand what they want? Can you join a team? 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:15.400 The IQ test, even if you get a two hundred 0:19:15.440 --> 0:19:17.480 and IQ test, you might get a zero in that 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:19.879 sort of stuff. You might be autistic. Some people now 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:23.040 who are very popular in our country are artistic and 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:25.639 autistic and can't read those things at all, but they 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:28.479 do very well on a certain kind of tests. So 0:19:28.800 --> 0:19:31.800 the takeaway is not the g doesn't exist. Any kind 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:35.159 of test will produce more of a general factor. But 0:19:35.800 --> 0:19:39.080 the question is why was the test developed? And what 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:41.200 is it that you're trying to find out? 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:53.040 There are general cognitive mechanisms that certainly pervade multiple domains. 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:57.320 The idea is it possibly be generally smart. Well, let's say, 0:19:57.359 --> 0:19:59.880 for instance, you have a very good executive functioning, good 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:02.320 working memory. I mean certainly that is going to make 0:20:02.359 --> 0:20:07.880 you generally something advantaged on cognitive tasks in daily life, 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:09.560 not just on paper and pencil tests. 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:13.280 Right, yeah, No, I mean I think we'd have to 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:17.439 do it faculty by faculty. And if you say, all right, 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:21.520 I want to posit an executive function, you have to 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:24.280 give me a bunch of different things to do, and see, 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:26.840 you know what I could do well, what I could 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:29.160 do badly? And I happen to have been a very 0:20:29.200 --> 0:20:32.560 good marcher as a boy scout. I could drill very well, 0:20:33.000 --> 0:20:35.120 but if I had it wouldn't have made any difference. 0:20:36.160 --> 0:20:39.040 And I would say the same thing about memory. I 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:42.240 have a good memory for language, I have a disastrous memory. 0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:43.000 For visual things. 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:46.920 So maybe if you and I had a conversation decades ago, 0:20:46.920 --> 0:20:49.560 I might remember the conversation. There's no chance I remember 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:52.159 what you look like, So you have to apply the 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:57.000 multiple intelligence lens to any so called faculty. I argue 0:20:57.000 --> 0:20:59.360 with my son all the time about attention. I think 0:20:59.400 --> 0:21:03.320 I had greater, he says, he said, you have attention deficit, 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:05.560 and then we argue about where I have it and 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:08.919 where I live. So a good way to think about this, 0:21:09.080 --> 0:21:12.840 for Scott and for your listeners is my effort is 0:21:12.880 --> 0:21:20.440 always to pluralize, to think of different uses, different demands, 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:28.200 different faculties, and to see to what extent a label 0:21:28.240 --> 0:21:33.320 we use, whether it's attention or memory or recognition or recall, 0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:36.480 where is it strong and where is it bad? And clearly, 0:21:36.560 --> 0:21:39.800 the more you just talk about academics the way they 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:43.760 were done in nineteen sixty, then you know you say, yeah, 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:46.120 there's a general intelligence, because you're good at the way 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:49.600 academics were done in a liberal arts era. One of 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:52.560 the interesting things about Bob Sternbrig and me is that 0:21:53.840 --> 0:21:57.239 we both fell out of love with tests when we 0:21:57.240 --> 0:22:00.960 were young. He fell out of love with ten because 0:22:01.080 --> 0:22:03.320 at one time they told me he was stupid and 0:22:03.359 --> 0:22:07.520 he didn't like that. And when I was thirteen, my 0:22:07.680 --> 0:22:10.760 parents and who did not have much money, took me 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:14.840 to Hope Oken, New Jersey, to the Stephen Institute of Technology. 0:22:14.840 --> 0:22:19.199 I talk about this in my Essentials books. And for 0:22:19.240 --> 0:22:23.399 a week I was tested, and I took all batters 0:22:23.440 --> 0:22:25.000 of tests. I can't remember any of them, and I've 0:22:25.000 --> 0:22:27.280 tried to find out from Stephen's what they were, but 0:22:27.359 --> 0:22:29.760 this is a nineteen fifties so they don't exist anymore. 0:22:30.359 --> 0:22:33.280 So at the end of it, we get called into 0:22:33.359 --> 0:22:36.680 a room and the tester is probably a man, but 0:22:36.720 --> 0:22:40.360 I don't remember. Said, well, mister and missus Gardner, your 0:22:40.440 --> 0:22:42.879 son Howard is a bright kid. He can probably do 0:22:42.960 --> 0:22:45.920 most anything, but his real skill is in the clerical 0:22:46.200 --> 0:22:50.119 era area, which doesn't mean becoming a minister. But I'm 0:22:50.200 --> 0:22:51.879 very good at crossing out all the t's and the 0:22:51.920 --> 0:22:54.200 list and all the ease. And I said, for Christ's sake, 0:22:54.560 --> 0:22:57.160 if we spent a week in a hotel and three 0:22:57.240 --> 0:23:00.040 hundred dollars, which was like three thousand dollars now. 0:23:01.600 --> 0:23:02.600 To be told that I should be. 0:23:02.600 --> 0:23:05.840 A clerk, this shows me to be to be skeptical 0:23:05.920 --> 0:23:06.760 about tests. 0:23:07.640 --> 0:23:11.120 That's funny, I would also you and and and serve, 0:23:11.200 --> 0:23:13.240 but I'll say me too, uh. Part part of this 0:23:13.280 --> 0:23:15.159 I wrote about this in my book I'm Gifted About 0:23:15.720 --> 0:23:18.240 I wasn't special ed as a kid, and I didn't 0:23:18.240 --> 0:23:20.520 I didn't love IQ tests either. 0:23:20.640 --> 0:23:22.199 The one thing you can do for sure if you 0:23:22.200 --> 0:23:25.040 have a high IQ is you can join MENSA MENSA 0:23:25.160 --> 0:23:28.560