ABSTRACT
Intelligence is the ability to make sense of and function adaptively in the environments in which one finds oneself, and a cognitive style is a preferred way of using that ability. Cognitive styles are links between cognition and personality. Explicit theories of intelligence are those proposed by psychologists and tested by comparing the theories’ predictions to data collected from human subjects. The earliest factorial theory of the nature of human intelligence was formulated by Spearman, who also invented factor analysis. Psychometric approaches to intelligence have been realized in practice through the use of intelligence (IQ) tests. Information-processing theories seek to understand intelligence in terms of the processing of information that people do when they solve challenging mental problems. The psychologists hypothesized that a critical ability underlying intelligence is that of rapidly retrieving lexical information, such as letter names, from memory.
