ABSTRACT
There is a long history of debate on the success of cognitive enrichment programs (for recent updates, see Locurto, 1991, and Brand, 1996). The leading question debated is simple: Can interventions permanently change intelligence? The answer has turned out to be far from straightforward. A particularly heated debate was triggered by Jensen’s (1969) review of the findings of the early Head Start programs. According to him, these “produced only modest gains of 10 IQ pointslittle more than is expected from the practice effect conferred by a first occasion of being tested; and even these gains were lost within two years” (Jensen quoted in Brand, 1996, p. 129). I do not intend to discuss the validity of Jensen’s claim and thereby join in the debate with its strong political overtones. Rather, I will argue that the debate has been hampered by the way in which intelligence has been conceptualized. I contend that instead of conceptualizing intelligence as a general intellectual ability that is measured by omnibus tests and expressed in IQ, evaluations of intervention studies would benefit more from a componential view of intelligence (e.g., Embretson, 1984, 1985; Sternberg, 1977, 1985; Van de Vijver, 1991), which would allow the components of the cognitive system that are affected by intervention to be more precisely identified. To this end, various issues related to the modifiability of the cognitive system of the child will be discussed in the present chapter from a componential perspective. In the next section, current views on intelligence are described,
followed by the presentation of a componential model of intelligence in the third section. The fourth section will address the modifiability of each component. The introduction of a componential model enables us to discuss a pivotal question of intervention programs. To what extent will the cognitive training effects generalize to other contexts? Many intervention programs involve preschool children. Implications for intervention studies will be discussed in the final section.
