The renowned intelligence scholar Earl
Hunt wrote a short review of Demetriou, Spanoudis
& Mouyi's model of intelligence that was presented in the
previous post.
Here is Hunt's paper:
Hunt, E. (2012). Educating the Developing Mind: The View from
Cognitive Psychology. EducationalPsychology Review, 24(1), 1- 7
Here
are some of his comments which I found especially interesting, beyond the
context of this specific model:
About the representational capacity system – Hunt refers to it as the working memory/attentional
control system. People can store and retrieve information
without the involvement of the working memory system (it's possible to perform
storage and retrieval processes outside of conscious awareness, for example
during statistical learning about which I wrote here) – but information that we want to be able to
retrieve later,in a controlled and conscious way, in order to integrate it with
information currently perceived, must pass through the working memory/
attentional control system. Whatever
makes this system more efficient, greatly influences cognition. That's why the functioning of working
memory/attentional control has a great influence on g.
Demetriou, Spanoudis
& Mouyi consider working memory/ attentional
control to be a separate system, an autonomic entity, like a theater stage,
upon which the actors perform their parts in the unfolding drama (for instance
the "drama" of solving a crossword puzzle). However, Hunt says,
the efficiency of the
working memory/attentional control system is determined by the way information
is coded in long term memory. According
to Miller, short term memory usually doesn’t contain meaningful symbols, but pointers
to information that is well organized in long term memory. For instance, when
we hear the phrase "an integration is needed", the word
"integration" is a pointer to an organized structure of ideas in long
term memory. Such structures are
involved in the performance of every task, according to its content.
About
the inference system – Hunt writes
that as children grow up, they acquire ways of thinking that are more and more
powerful, like the use of inference processes based on categorical
thinking. It's possible to implement
these thought processes in many areas of cognition. Demetriou, Spanoudis
& Mouyi suggest that a lot of our knowledge about the world
is based on inference, not on direct observation. Thus anything that improves our general
ability to draw conclusions, including math and logic skills, will improve our
ability to acquire knowledge. This is the reason the inference system is an
important part of intelligence
About the Specialized structural systems (SSS) and their development -Demetriou, Spanoudis
& Mouyi argue that intelligence develops as a result of
interactions between the different SSSs – interactions between different kinds
of thinking, that include knowledge in specific content areas and knowledge
about thought processes specific to each SSS.
The knowledge and thought processes develop in each SSS and are
available to other SSSs. That is to say,
Demetriou,
Spanoudis & Mouyi
assume the existence of a lot of transfer between different learning
situations.
Hunt thinks this is an overoptimistic
supposition. He argues that there is a
large body of knowledge indicating that human thought is organized in cognitive
"silos" – isolated from the (cognitive) environment. Ways of thought are influenced very much by
the specific context in which the thinking takes place. In one study, for example, graduate physics
students had difficulties applying basic
laws of physics to problems presented outside of physics lessons. When we learn "rules of thought", for
example statistical rules of thought, we link those rules to a specific
context. We don’t acquire only a rule or a
thought process. We acquire, in
conjunction with it, a rule defining the context in which the rule or thought
process is to be applied. The rules or
processes we acquire contain an action constituent that tells us what to
do, and a constituent that tells us when to do it. The reliance of Demetriou,
Spanoudis & Mouyi on
interactions between the SSSs in order to form and shape general intelligence
is not supported enough by research, according to Hunt, because transfer of
procedures from one SSS to another occurs less than we would have wanted
Every model that
looks at intelligence as developing out of interactions between expert systems
has to emphasize, according to Hunt, the importance of the development of
thought in preschool. Learning is built
upon prior learning. The thinking ability
the child acquires in second grade depends on the thinking ability he acquired
in first grade.
Learning and
thought procedures acquired very early in life, in preschool, influence the
child's learning rate in the early school years. What the child acquires in the early
school years determines what he'll acquire in later school years, and so
on. Investing in developing cognitive
skills in preschool is more efficient than investing in older ages and classes.
Important points to
consider.