The concept of «intelligence». Various approaches to identifying the intellectual capabilities of the individual

The problem of creating pedagogical conditions for the development of a culture of intellectual labor of a future specialist also required to identify the features of the intellectual sphere of a person during his student years.

The concept of «intelligence» is widely used in pedagogical and psychological literature, but there is still no more or less complete unambiguous definition of its content, structure, factors included in it, the relationship between them. The theory of the structure of the intellect is very contradictory.

The present work is based on cognitive models of intelligence (X. Gardner, R. Sternberg, M.A. Kholodnaya), which are indirectly related to the psychology of abilities. Their authors mean under the term «intelligence» a certain system of cognitive processes that provide problem solving.

Thus, R. Sternberg's hierarchical model of intellect explains the relationship between: intellect and mental processes that regulate behavior; intelligence and personal experience of behavior; intelligence and adaptive behavior. Intelligence provides information processing. The scientist explains the differences in intellectual productivity by differences in the cognitive structures of individuals. The main thing in the course of cognition is to separate relevant information from irrelevant one, to form a consistent whole from the selected information [17].

As a result of experiments R. Sternberg established the following: the subjects who solve problems more successfully spend relatively more time on planning, choosing a strategy and coding the conditions of the task, and very little - on its execution. The author constantly emphasizes the importance of the distribution of attention resources regarding the important and unimportant stages of the task, as well as the importance of control over the solution process.

According to M.A. Kholodnaya’s concept of mental experience , developed within the framework of the cognitive approach, the intellectual capabilities of a person are manifested in the ways how he/she perceives, understands and explains what is happening, as well as in how and what decisions he/she makes in difficult situations. The author of the concept identifies a minimum of basic properties of intelligence:

- firstly, the level properties that characterize the achieved level of development of individual cognitive functions (both verbal and non-verbal) and the presentation of reality that underlie the processes (sensory difference, short-term(operative) and long-term (prolonged) memory, volume and distribution of attention, awareness in a certain content area). etc.;

- secondly – combinatorial properties, characterized by the ability to identify and form various kinds of connections and relationships. Broadly speaking, the ability to combine in various combinations (spatio-temporal, causal, categorical-meaningful) components of experience;

- thirdly, procedural properties that characterize the operational composition, methods and reflection of intellectual activity up to the level of elementary information processes;

- fourthly, regulatory properties that characterize the effects of coordination, management and control of mental activity provided by the intellect.

Here are a few more definitions of the concept of «intelligence». K.M. Gurevich believes that intelligence is «a psychophysiological mechanism inherent in every person, which is constantly in operation and serves as a condition, a prerequisite for the acquisition, processing and application of incoming information» [18, p. 17].

M.I. Makhmutov believes that «intelligence is a system of properties and qualities of human cognitive activity that is steadily inherent and developing throughout life. It is the ability to solve non-standard life tasks. Of course, it is also the mental abilities of a person, his emotional, spiritual state, this is the general culture and the culture of mental labor» [19, p.93]. «Any development of the intellect is a natural process of familiarization with the standards of culture, with the patterns of perception, thinking, behavior, i.e. well-established knowledge and methods of activity verified by experience» [19, p.93].

Since the essence of the cognitive approach chosen by us as a basis lies in the reduction of intelligence to the properties of individual cognitive processes, we suppose that the following definition will be most acceptable for our study.

«Intelligence – 1) the general ability to learn and solve problems, which determines the success of any activity and underlies other abilities; 2) the system of all cognitive abilities of an individual: feeling, perception, memory, representation, thinking, imagination; 3) the ability to solve problems without guesswork «in mind» [20, p.349].