Differences of Degree and Kind
Posted on Monday, March 17, 2008
by
Catana
in Cognition, Intellectual giftedness, IQ, High cognitives
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Catana
in Cognition, Intellectual giftedness, IQ, High cognitives
|
Post a Comment
“…the theory of critical differences, …a distinction which arises not because we are dealing with a new species of ability, but from the fact that when human capacities surpass certain levels of performance, the achievements to which they give rise may take on altered characteristics. ( David Wechsler, The Range of Human Capacities)
Jerome Kagan, David Henry Feldman, and John Gardner have all commented on the near-universal preference for viewing intelligence as part of a continuum. It’s much easier to believe that individuals merely have less or more of what everybody else has than to consider the possibility of “critical differences.” The emphasis on IQ scores is a symptom of this desire for continuity, and is also a way to sweep other views under the rug.
Wechsler is partly correct and partly incorrect. It depends what capacities you’re looking at. A virtuoso pianist is using the same skills as a moderately talented amateur, but is so far superior that it amounts to a critical difference. This is just as true in many fields of endeavor. But when we turn to cognition, it may be more realistic to say that there is, indeed, a new species of ability.
Consider the following:
"Fewer than 10% of ordinary adults ever reason beyond the conventional level. But some high-IQ elementary school-age children have been shown to reason at the post-conventional level." Ellen Winner, Gifted Children: myths and realities
"It has been known for some time that most American college freshmen haven't reached the stage of formal operations." Alan Kromer, Uncommon Sense
Those quotes refer to Piaget’s developmental stages. Formal operations is the supposedly final stage, which all normal adults supposedly reach, and which involves the ability to think abstractly. It is now believed that a very few individuals may reach a post-formal operations stage, which involves increasingly abstract levels of metacognition.
"...our grasp of causal patterns is limited. A small minority of human beings - perhaps they are the most highly evolved - can grasp concepts and recognize patterns that the rest of us find too hard or elusive." Morton Hunt, The Universe Within
"Humans do not easily perceive patterns when relationships are obscured by noise (or random exceptions). Even fairly substantial correlations between two variables can look chaotic to all but the most discerning eye." Dean Keith Simonton, Origins of Genius
"…the human mind has difficulty uniting ideas from two different lexicons and so conceptualizes them as separate forces." Jerome Kagan, Unstable Ideas
Joshua Lederberg: “I think that that ability to move from one level of analogical reasoning to another, and not get stuck in the analogy at inappropriate times, is terribly important. You had better be able to do it. You have to be able to fantasize in rather crude ways...but then be able to shift from one frame of reference to another. That, I think is more rare than you might suppose.” Horace Freeland Judson, The Search for Solutions
"Children and adults are vulnerable to two habits that obstruct the generation of effective propositional solutions… first is a resistance to retiring hypotheses that have been effective in the past. A second obstacle to the generation of good solutions is failure to detect the less salient qualities of familiar events." Jerome Kagan, The Nature of the Child
It’s generally acknowledged that highly gifted children are qualitatively different from the norm. For that to have any meaning, we must examine cognitive abilities, not just the more easily observable superficial characteristics that usually serve as descriptions of the highly gifted. The above quotes cover a wide range of cognitive abilities which the average person does not possess. When we talk about qualitative differences, or critical differences, these are what is meant—the abilities of high cognitives, the intellectually creative minority. This is a difference of kind, not of degree, a difference that IQ tests are not designed to identify and that IQ scores do not measure.
Jerome Kagan, David Henry Feldman, and John Gardner have all commented on the near-universal preference for viewing intelligence as part of a continuum. It’s much easier to believe that individuals merely have less or more of what everybody else has than to consider the possibility of “critical differences.” The emphasis on IQ scores is a symptom of this desire for continuity, and is also a way to sweep other views under the rug.
Wechsler is partly correct and partly incorrect. It depends what capacities you’re looking at. A virtuoso pianist is using the same skills as a moderately talented amateur, but is so far superior that it amounts to a critical difference. This is just as true in many fields of endeavor. But when we turn to cognition, it may be more realistic to say that there is, indeed, a new species of ability.
Consider the following:
"Fewer than 10% of ordinary adults ever reason beyond the conventional level. But some high-IQ elementary school-age children have been shown to reason at the post-conventional level." Ellen Winner, Gifted Children: myths and realities
"It has been known for some time that most American college freshmen haven't reached the stage of formal operations." Alan Kromer, Uncommon Sense
Those quotes refer to Piaget’s developmental stages. Formal operations is the supposedly final stage, which all normal adults supposedly reach, and which involves the ability to think abstractly. It is now believed that a very few individuals may reach a post-formal operations stage, which involves increasingly abstract levels of metacognition.
"...our grasp of causal patterns is limited. A small minority of human beings - perhaps they are the most highly evolved - can grasp concepts and recognize patterns that the rest of us find too hard or elusive." Morton Hunt, The Universe Within
"Humans do not easily perceive patterns when relationships are obscured by noise (or random exceptions). Even fairly substantial correlations between two variables can look chaotic to all but the most discerning eye." Dean Keith Simonton, Origins of Genius
"…the human mind has difficulty uniting ideas from two different lexicons and so conceptualizes them as separate forces." Jerome Kagan, Unstable Ideas
Joshua Lederberg: “I think that that ability to move from one level of analogical reasoning to another, and not get stuck in the analogy at inappropriate times, is terribly important. You had better be able to do it. You have to be able to fantasize in rather crude ways...but then be able to shift from one frame of reference to another. That, I think is more rare than you might suppose.” Horace Freeland Judson, The Search for Solutions
"Children and adults are vulnerable to two habits that obstruct the generation of effective propositional solutions… first is a resistance to retiring hypotheses that have been effective in the past. A second obstacle to the generation of good solutions is failure to detect the less salient qualities of familiar events." Jerome Kagan, The Nature of the Child
It’s generally acknowledged that highly gifted children are qualitatively different from the norm. For that to have any meaning, we must examine cognitive abilities, not just the more easily observable superficial characteristics that usually serve as descriptions of the highly gifted. The above quotes cover a wide range of cognitive abilities which the average person does not possess. When we talk about qualitative differences, or critical differences, these are what is meant—the abilities of high cognitives, the intellectually creative minority. This is a difference of kind, not of degree, a difference that IQ tests are not designed to identify and that IQ scores do not measure.
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