A recent finding that intelligence is located in a particular area of the brain is a limited approach that does little to explain the roots of intelligence, a Yale professor says.
"It's like saying the intelligence of a computer is in the silicon chip," says Robert Sternberg, professor of psychology and education. "It doesn't tell you what makes a computer smart. Or it's like knowing where coffee is grown. That doesn't tell you much about how coffee grows or how high the quality of the coffee is."
Sternberg wrote a commentary in the July issue of Science related to a study that shows the lateral frontal cortex of the brain is more active when solving difficult spatial, verbal and perceptuo-motor tasks. The researchers, who made their observations using a PET scan, say this confirms a theory espoused since the turn of the century that one area of the brain, rather than many, is primarily activated when performing different tasks.
"I call that the 'mental atlas approach,' which dates back to the time of the phrenologist, Franz Gall, and implies that the understanding of intelligence depends upon finding the locus or loci of intelligence in the human brain," Sternberg says.
To understand human intelligence, he says, researchers must first unravel the functional significance of the frontal lobes "and learn how operations in the designated areas are connected with the tasks that people perform."
Sternberg also argues that the study merely shows a correlation between task performance and activation in a certain part of the brain, not a causal relationship.
He says the question of where intelligence is located in the brain is of particular interest this year because of comparisons about the mental acuity of various presidential candidates -- specifically Vice President Al Gore, Texas Governor George Bush, and former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, who is now out of the race.
The three men had less-than-remarkable scores on the verbal portion of their SAT test, which gauges verbal comprehension and reasoning skills, yet most would consider all of the men successful.
"It is possible, of course, that notable success in politics depends little on intelligence, but it is also possible that there is more to intelligence than is measured by conventional tests," Sternberg says.
The Yale psychologist supports a triarchic theory of intelligence, which proposes a separation of analytical intelligence, creative intelligence, and practical intelligence. The study in question only looked at analytical intelligence.
"Moreover, tests of practical intelligence requiring real-world problem solving and decision making, the kind in which Gore, Bush, and Bradley seem to excel, typically have been found to have only trivial correlations with tests of analytical intelligence," Sternberg says.
-- By Jacqueline Weaver
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