Intelligence - Nature vs Nurture

This essay is going to discuss the role of intelligence in human beings examining both internal and external factors. Intelligence and whether it is innate or develops as one evolves, is one of humanity’s greatest debates. In everyday life one has to make decisions, solve problems and make sense of the world and what is happening in it. From an external point of view the intelligence of a human being develops through a constructive, cognitive process. Since the 1950s, cognitive developmental researches agree on the now nearly universal consensus that intellectual skills are the by-products of self-governed activity in relation to the world (Bruner, 1990; Gardner, 1985). Considering this, it is difficult to understand that scientists rarely consider the role of the human being in his or her own intellectual development. The ongoing nature vs. nurture debate moves back and forth regularly from claims of inherited linguistic and mental processing abilities (internal factors), to confirmation of environmentally affected behaviours and ideas (external factors). This essay will argue that intelligence is determined by both internal and external factors interacting in various ways.
Today there seem to be as many definitions of intelligence as there are investigators of it (Sternberg, 1982). Bourne and Russo cite that intelligence is the capacity to think in abstract terms and to cope resourcefully with the challenges of life (1998). There are two main theories when discussing the evaluation of intelligence. These are the psychometric and cognitive approaches. The psychometric approach identifies differences between individuals through psychological testing. There were many different tests developed however in 1974 David Weschler developed adult and children’s intelligence scaling – the verbal scale and the performance scale. The cognitive approach focuses on a human being’s development in terms of information processing. Reasoning, comprehension, word