Intelligence
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Intelligence is a person’s mental ability. It can mean a broad ability or a more specific one. Because people live in different cultures and environments, there is no full agreement about which mental abilities should be counted as intelligence. In 1927, the English psychologist Charles Spearman said that the word “intelligence” had gained so many meanings that it was becoming unclear.[1] The word intelligence comes from the Latin word intelligo, which means “to choose between different options”. From a brain point of view, intelligence involves efficient coordination between the frontal lobes and parietal lobes of the brain. Studies of Albert Einstein’s brain showed that he had an unusually wide parietal lobe. The parietal lobe is linked to mathematics, abstract reasoning (thinking about ideas that are not physical or directly visible), and visual imagination.
Intelligence helps people solve problems and learn from experience. It is often seen as a quality of the mind that can be developed and trained. For example, when a person finds an answer to a problem and remembers it, they can solve the same problem faster the next time. This process is called learning. Both genetics and environment affect intelligence and learning. One alone is usually not enough to fully support development.
Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests are used as an approximate way to measure intelligence. They measure a person’s mental power and speed. These tests usually ask people to solve many problems within a set amount of time. Many of the questions involve seeing patterns, understanding shapes, or deciding what a rotated object would look like. Some questions involve mathematics, such as finding the next number in a sequence. Other questions test words, reasoning, and understanding language. It is believed that average IQ scores increased across many countries during the 20th century because modern society, education, and scientific culture trained people to think better in the kinds of ways measured by IQ tests. This increase is known as the Flynn effect. However, a high IQ score does not automatically mean a person has better adaptive functioning, practical life skills, or better judgment in real-life situations.[2]
Intelligent machines
[change | change source]Computer engineers try to build machines that act as if they were intelligent. This is related to computer science and is called Artificial intelligence (man-made "intelligence"). Artificial intelligence uses logic, and often combines it with machine learning. This means that similar to living organisms, the machine has to be trained to solve a problem. After training, it will solve the problem faster.
Intelligence in animals and plants
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Intelligence is not limited to humans. Many animals also show signs of intelligence: animals also need to solve problems, and remembering how a problem is solved is useful to them. Many animals use tools to solve problems. These animals include the Great Apes, dogs, dolphins, elephants, rats and mice, and some birds. All these animals are vertebrates, but tool use isn't limited to these: Even cephalopods and arthropods show signs of intelligence. To be able to compare the behaviours of different species, scientists need to adapt the notion of intelligence.
It has been argued that plants should also be classified as intelligent: they are able to sense and model external and internal environments and adjust their morphology, physiology and phenotype accordingly to ensure self-preservation and reproduction.[3][4] A counter argument is that intelligence is commonly understood to involve the creation and use of persistent memories.
Opposed to this are computations that only occur once, and that do not involve learning. If this is accepted as part of the definition, then it includes the artificial intelligence of robots capable of "machine learning", but excludes those purely autonomic sense-reaction responses that can be observed in many plants. Plants are not limited to automated sensory-motor responses, however, they are capable of discriminating positive and negative experiences and of 'learning' (registering memories) from their past experiences. They are also capable of communication, accurately computing their circumstances, using sophisticated cost–benefit analysis and taking tightly controlled actions to mitigate and control the diverse environmental stressors.[5][6][7]
Related pages
[change | change source]References
[change | change source]- ↑ O'Reilly, Gary; Carr, Alan (2014-01-02). "Evaluating intelligence across the life-span: integrating theory, research and measurement". Taylor & Francis.
- ↑ Flynn, James R. (2007-08-27). What Is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-46704-9.
- ↑ Trewavas, Anthony (September 2005). "Green plants as intelligent organisms". Trends in Plant Science. 10 (9): 413–419. doi:10.1016/j.tplants.2005.07.005. PMID 16054860.
- ↑ Trewavas, A. (2002). "Mindless mastery". Nature. 415 (6874): 841. doi:10.1038/415841a. PMID 11859344. S2CID 4350140.
- ↑ Goh, C. H.; Nam, H. G.; Park, Y. S. (2003). "Stress memory in plants: A negative regulation of stomatal response and transient induction of rd22 gene to light in abscisic acid-entrained Arabidopsis plants". The Plant Journal. 36 (2): 240–255. doi:10.1046/j.1365-313X.2003.01872.x. PMID 14535888.
- ↑ Volkov, A. G.; Carrell, H.; Baldwin, A.; Markin, V. S. (2009). "Electrical memory in Venus flytrap". Bioelectrochemistry. 75 (2): 142–147. doi:10.1016/j.bioelechem.2009.03.005. PMID 19356999.
- ↑ Rensing, L.; Koch, M.; Becker, A. (2009). "A comparative approach to the principal mechanisms of different memory systems". Naturwissenschaften. 96 (12): 1373–1384. Bibcode:2009NW.....96.1373R. doi:10.1007/s00114-009-0591-0. PMID 19680619. S2CID 29195832.
