The Nature of Intelligence and Its Development in Childhood

In this Element I first introduce intelligence in terms of historical definitions. I show that intelligence as conceived even by the originators of the first intelligence tests Alfred Binet and David Wechsler is a much broader construct than just scores on narrow tests of intelligence and their proxies. I then review the major approaches to understanding intelligence and its development: the psychometric (test-based) cognitive and neurocognitive (intelligence as a set of brain-based cognitive representations and processes) systems cultural and developmental. These approaches taken together present a much more complex portrait of intelligence and its development than the one that would be ascertained just from scores on intelligence tests. Finally I draw some take-away conclusions.