Different Kinds of Intelligence (and Nerdy Character Analysis)

This morning I scribbled a note on a Post-It for a client at work and he commented that I "must be an intelligent person for writing so fast and neatly." I'd never heard of that as an indicator of IQ nor can I speak to its truth as I've never taken an IQ test. I remember taking some basic skills tests in junior high and placing in the top ten percent against kids across the country, but only for certain school subjects. A girl in my 8th grade "accelerated" math class once announced that she was "scared of smart people" and then singled out me and my friend as examples. The irony wasn't the fact that this supposedly accelerated student didn't include herself with smart people. The irony was that she probably got better grades in that class than me or my friend ever got. Since then I've recognized that there are different kinds of smart. My dad once told me that there are three or four different types and I recently discovered that his theory nearly matches the four indexes on the tried and true Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. The Mysterious Benedict Society, a book series that my wife is currently into (like Mensa for kids), also follows the Wechsler indexes with its four main characters.

1. Working Memory (Sticky's character) - This was the first type my dad mentioned. He said he went into Biology because it was mostly rote memorization which he considered himself adept at that. My mom says she used to marvel at how good my memory was. I remember being able to memorize all the lines of dialogue in an entire play but I don't know if I could do that anymore. My head is more full of useless trivia than it used to be, but it's been ten or more years since I tried to memorize a poem or scriptures. See also: alphabetical filing and arithmetic.

2. Processing Speed (Reynie's character) - This was the second type my dad mentioned and it led to him relating the disadvantage he felt next to a former coworker who had total recall. He told me that the experience made him realize that a photographic memory is only as good as one's ability to retrieve it instantaneously. I was reminded of smart classmates who complained about "not testing well." Whether thinking on one's feet and working well under pressure is more "emotional intelligence" or purely mental, I'm not sure. See also: the Rain Man (1988) movie and Where's Waldo? style puzzle books.

3. Perceptual Reasoning (Kate's character) - I think my dad was referring to this when he spoke of my brother building a robot from scratch. I think he also included common sense as a type of intelligence, but I don't know where that would best apply. What I do know is that when it comes to math, people seem to fall into one of two camps. There are number-crunchers who prefer algebra and more visually-oriented people who prefer geometry. I'm the latter but I've never met anyone who enjoyed both equally. See also: imagination and ingenuity.

4. Verbal Comprehension (Constance's character) - This is the only type my dad skipped over. When you think about a person having to be able to read or talk to a psychologist to take an IQ test, it's obviously the most important. I can see how the Wild Boy of Aveyron might have had the other three types, but I've also heard that our memories only go back as far as we had language. I rewatched the movie Benny and Joon (1993) recently and the Johnny Depp character touches on nonverbal intelligence where certain people only see stupidity. See also: vocabulary and wit.

Obviously lawyers and MDs need to have a lot from all four indexes. Mr. Wechsler of the aforementioned IQ test defined intelligence way back in 1939 as "the global capacity of a person to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his/her environment" (or simply put, "problem-solving," which is how my dad defined it). The term "intelligence-quotient" was coined by German psychologist, William Stern, in 1912 and around that time, IQ tests were initially invented for use by the military with placing enlisted men. In 1983, Harvard professor Howard Gardner published a book called Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences and it included seven different types of intelligence. In 1997, he added another so the current number stands at eight: Bodily-kinesthetic; Interpersonal; Intrapersonal; Logical-mathematical; Musical, Naturalistic; Verbal-linguistic; Visual-spatial. It's still hard to say where book smarts, street smarts, and plain ol' common sense fit on these lists.