Discuss Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. Identify and describe at least five of Gardner's intelligences. Suggest both positive and negative aspects of this theory

What will be an ideal response?

Howard Gardner is another theorist who criticizes the psychometricians for trying to describe a person's intelligence with a single score. In his book Frames of Mind, Gardner outlined his theory of multiple intelligences, proposing that humans display at least seven distinctive kinds of intelligence. Since that time, Gardner has added an eighth intelligence to the list and has speculated about a ninth form of intelligence.

Gardner does not claim that these nine abilities represent the universe of intelligences, but he makes the case that each ability is distinct, is linked to a specific area of the brain, and follows a different developmental course. As support for these ideas, Gardner points out that injury to a particular area of the brain usually influences only one ability (linguistic or spatial, for example), leaving others unaffected.

As further evidence for the independence of these abilities, Gardner notes that some individuals are truly exceptional in one ability but poor in others. This is dramatically clear in cases of the savant syndrome—mentally retarded people with an extraordinary talent. Leslie Lemke is one such individual: he is blind, has cerebral palsy, is mentally retarded, and could not talk until he was an adult. Yet he can hear a musical piece once and play it flawlessly on the piano or imitate songs in German or Italian perfectly, even though his own conversational speech is still primitive. And despite their abysmal performance on intelligence tests, other mentally retarded individuals with savant skills can draw well enough to gain admittance to art school or calculate almost instantaneously what day of the week January 16, 1909 was. Finally, Gardner notes that different intelligences develop at different times. Many of the great composers and athletes, for example, begin to display their immense talents in childhood, whereas logical-mathematical intelligence often shows up much later in life.