Enne
Consistently Inconsistent
OK, well this all started after an online conversation with one of my friends regarding the nature of IQ tests. She said that IQ tests are biased, but instead of giving the usual factors (age, cultural background, etc), she said they were biased in favor of people with spatial intelligence and strong visualization skills. This got me thinking about how a lot of them are set up, and I noticed a trend within them towards complete this pattern, as well as the usual mix up of logic, word scrambles, roots, etc. This got me thinking about the nature of these tests, and of intelligence in general. Also started asking myself (and tentatively answering) a lot of questions.
For one, does being gifted with visual-spatial tendencies automatically make a person smarter? I noticed that higher learning tends to run a full spectrum, from the highly physical and directly practical, to the highly abstract and (mostly) impractical, and that those scholastic pursuits that were high on the plane towards abstractness tended to be viewed as fields for the highly intelligent or gifted, like mathematical theory, quantum physics, music and art, while the more "down to earth areas", business, accounting, English, communications, seem to have an 'anyone can come' feel to them. Some experts have speculated that to be a productive researcher in the areas of mathematics or physics, you need to have an IQ of around 140-160.
I was also wondering about people viewed as extremely intelligent, like child prodegies, leading scientists, composers, etc, and other individuals who have tested or been estimated around the 180+ range. Are these people able to access higher modes of thinking simply because their brains are capable of absorbing things sequentially at an accelerated pace, or because they have an ability to access abstract/spatial/visual information and use their right brained functions or tap into deeper states of spatial processing with relative ease in comparison to the rest of the population? Does this expansiveness that leads them to make great logic jumps at such young ages or present entire new schools of thought come from being able to move from the highly spatial to more concrete forms of communications with relative ease? I noticed that many people of amazing intellectual ability are usually dually skilled; both in sciences and the arts, or in both mathematics and music; always the pairing of the highly abstract with something that lends itself to visual interpretation.
So this thinking about the visual-spatial made me wonder about the way we view right brained people. Is someone who is naturally geared towards the abstract, visual and artistic 'smarter' than someone who is auditorally oriented, with a preference for linear thinking and easily followable logic? Or does higher intelligence only come when you can move between the two with relative ease. I know that Albert Einstein is listed as an INTP, and INTPs in general are on a 'quest' to understand how all knowledge correlates. Does being right brained oriented give people an advantage when they approach information, as right brained people tend to see things as one big flow, as opposed to compartmentalized 'subjects' of information? I've noticed that many people seen as geniuses also have a tendency towards eccentricities, and this reminded me of the term "artists' temperament", and how 'artsy' people are often seen as sensitive, moody and unusual. Assuming that most artists or people with this temperament are right brained, could this be another correlation towards a preference for higher knowledge?
I've always seen the left brained-right brained model as one that was lateral, but now I'm starting to wonder if concrete, factual information is just a precursor, an elementary introduction to advanced, abstract information. When we're young, the first thing we learn as people is cause and effect, and as we get older, we learn skills, or sequenced tasks associated with being human. When we enter school, we start out with elementary, building block stuff, and finally, when/if we go to college, we are in an arena of mostly conceptual, and for some students abstract information. Does that mean that as people we're supposed to "progressed" towards more right brained, spatial thinking? A few months ago I read Right Brained Children in a Left Brained World, and some of the book discussed how children both ADD and gifted if right brained would experience an advantage over the next decades as jobs and skillsets begin to require that people be more computer oriented, and also have a tendency towards creativity and innovation, as opposed to rote tasks and organizational skills (which I'm assuming will be taken over or at least threatened by advancing machinery and AI).
Is this tactical > spatial progression where humanity is going? Does being more oriented one way or another make a person more intelligent, or apt to understand challenging topics, or is that measure of a persons' intellectual capacity better measured by how effectively he can move from left to right brain styled information and thinking patterns? Do you think that the left/right model is (meant to be) lateral or progressing? Finally, are IQ tests biased?
For one, does being gifted with visual-spatial tendencies automatically make a person smarter? I noticed that higher learning tends to run a full spectrum, from the highly physical and directly practical, to the highly abstract and (mostly) impractical, and that those scholastic pursuits that were high on the plane towards abstractness tended to be viewed as fields for the highly intelligent or gifted, like mathematical theory, quantum physics, music and art, while the more "down to earth areas", business, accounting, English, communications, seem to have an 'anyone can come' feel to them. Some experts have speculated that to be a productive researcher in the areas of mathematics or physics, you need to have an IQ of around 140-160.
I was also wondering about people viewed as extremely intelligent, like child prodegies, leading scientists, composers, etc, and other individuals who have tested or been estimated around the 180+ range. Are these people able to access higher modes of thinking simply because their brains are capable of absorbing things sequentially at an accelerated pace, or because they have an ability to access abstract/spatial/visual information and use their right brained functions or tap into deeper states of spatial processing with relative ease in comparison to the rest of the population? Does this expansiveness that leads them to make great logic jumps at such young ages or present entire new schools of thought come from being able to move from the highly spatial to more concrete forms of communications with relative ease? I noticed that many people of amazing intellectual ability are usually dually skilled; both in sciences and the arts, or in both mathematics and music; always the pairing of the highly abstract with something that lends itself to visual interpretation.
So this thinking about the visual-spatial made me wonder about the way we view right brained people. Is someone who is naturally geared towards the abstract, visual and artistic 'smarter' than someone who is auditorally oriented, with a preference for linear thinking and easily followable logic? Or does higher intelligence only come when you can move between the two with relative ease. I know that Albert Einstein is listed as an INTP, and INTPs in general are on a 'quest' to understand how all knowledge correlates. Does being right brained oriented give people an advantage when they approach information, as right brained people tend to see things as one big flow, as opposed to compartmentalized 'subjects' of information? I've noticed that many people seen as geniuses also have a tendency towards eccentricities, and this reminded me of the term "artists' temperament", and how 'artsy' people are often seen as sensitive, moody and unusual. Assuming that most artists or people with this temperament are right brained, could this be another correlation towards a preference for higher knowledge?
I've always seen the left brained-right brained model as one that was lateral, but now I'm starting to wonder if concrete, factual information is just a precursor, an elementary introduction to advanced, abstract information. When we're young, the first thing we learn as people is cause and effect, and as we get older, we learn skills, or sequenced tasks associated with being human. When we enter school, we start out with elementary, building block stuff, and finally, when/if we go to college, we are in an arena of mostly conceptual, and for some students abstract information. Does that mean that as people we're supposed to "progressed" towards more right brained, spatial thinking? A few months ago I read Right Brained Children in a Left Brained World, and some of the book discussed how children both ADD and gifted if right brained would experience an advantage over the next decades as jobs and skillsets begin to require that people be more computer oriented, and also have a tendency towards creativity and innovation, as opposed to rote tasks and organizational skills (which I'm assuming will be taken over or at least threatened by advancing machinery and AI).
Is this tactical > spatial progression where humanity is going? Does being more oriented one way or another make a person more intelligent, or apt to understand challenging topics, or is that measure of a persons' intellectual capacity better measured by how effectively he can move from left to right brain styled information and thinking patterns? Do you think that the left/right model is (meant to be) lateral or progressing? Finally, are IQ tests biased?
