Adaptive Intelligence: Intelligence Is Not a Personal Trait but Rather a Person × Task × Situation Interaction

Reframing Social and Emotional Development of the Gifted

This essay questions the framing of socioemotional development as a separate concomitant of cognitive development in gifted individuals. Rather, it argues, first, that socioemotional development of the gifted is not separate from giftedness. Second, socioemotional development is not even cleanly and clearly separable from cognitive development. Third, giftedness and even intelligence do not reside inside the person-they are not personal properties but rather interactions of persons with tasks and situations. In sum, giftedness needs to be viewed in a holistic context that encompasses integrated cognitive, socio-emotional, task, and situational contextual elements.

Ethics and Meditation: A New Educational Combination to Boost Verbal Creativity and Sense of Responsibility

Both creativity and responsibility are important higher-order skills to develop to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene, and both are related to attentional states of consciousness and to ethics. Meditation is a set of practices that trains attentional and emotional regulation. A few studies have shown that different kinds of meditation can foster different kinds of creative thinking, and others have begun to investigate the effect of the combination of meditation and ethics on ethical characteristics (but not yet on creativity or precisely on responsibility, so far). Here, we present a nonrandomized trial with an active control group among second-year science university students (n = 84) to test the effect of the secular Meditation-Based Ethics of Responsibility (MBER) program on creative potential, self-reported awareness, and sense of one's own responsibility. The results show a large effect of the program on sense of one's own responsibility and convergent and divergent creative writing tasks, both in conceptual-semantic and engineering-like verbal ideation. They also suggest that convergent conceptual-semantic thinking might moderate the effect of the MBER program on the awareness and sense of one's own responsibility. This work opens up new research and educational perspectives linked to necessary behavioral changes in the Anthropocene.

Analysis of Occupational Therapy Students' Pedagogical Practices for the Forging of Professional Identity and Development of Professional Intelligence: A Scoping Review

Pedagogical practices contribute to enhancing professional intelligence which is an indicator of maturity and development of professional identity. The research guiding question was: What are the pedagogical practices involved in occupational therapy students' professional identity formation? A scoping review using a six-stage methodological framework was used to capture a variety of evidence describing how professional identity has been conceptualised and integrated into the occupational therapy curriculum while noticing a link to professional intelligence. Databases included were: Ovid MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, ProQuest ERIC, Scopus, Web of Science, CSIC, Dialnet, PubMed, Pubmed Central, OTDBASE and Scielo. Qualitative content analysis was used to categorise learning outcomes into five components of professional identity that were associated with the pedagogical practices identified in the studies. n = 58 peer-reviewed journal articles were recorded. The articles were classified as intervention studies (n = 31; 53.4%), reviews (n = 12; 20.7%) and theoretical articles (n = 15; 25.9%). To ensure the feasibility of collecting and reporting results, we narrowed the focus to n = 31 intervention studies that provided information on pedagogical practices and learning outcomes on professional identity forging in students. This scoping review illustrates the variety of contexts in which students learn, the multiple dimensions of identity establishment, and the variety of pedagogical practices. These findings can be used to adapt and design focused formative curricula that support the development of professional identity.

An Historical Causal-Chain Theory of Conceptions of Intelligence

Lurking behind every conception of intelligence—whether an implicit (folk) or explicit (expert-generated) conception—is an underlying theory of meaning that specifies the form the theory of intelligence does and, indeed, can take. These underlying theories of meaning become presuppositions for the conception’s form. The theories of meaning have different origins—for example, psycholinguistic, philosophical, and anthropological. This essay reviews the different underlying theories of meaning and proposes a new historical causal-chain theory of conceptions of intelligence. The underlying theories of meaning affect the flexibility and modifiability of laypersons’ (implicit) and experts’ (explicit) conceptions of intelligence. As a result, these historical causal chains have profound but largely invisible effects on societies.

Association Between the Big Five and Trait Emotional Intelligence Among College Students

Purpose

Personality traits are relatively stable and may influence various aspects of human behavior. Trait emotional intelligence (Trait EI) presents the non-cognitive element of intelligence. Trait EI also enables individuals to deal with different stressors of life. Thus, understanding the relationship between personality traits and Trait EI can be beneficial. The current study explores the role of the big five personality factors in influencing Trait EI.

Methods

The study included three hundred and twenty university students from a multidisciplinary Indian university. They were administered the Trait EI questionnaire-short form (TEIQue-SF) and the big five inventory (BFI-44). A cross-sectional design with non-probability sampling was used for the current study.

Results

Findings of the study show that the big five have a significant relationship with global Trait EI, as the big five traits contributed to a 42.7% variance in predicting global Trait EI. Neuroticism was the foremost predictor of global Trait EI. Concerning Trait EI factors, neuroticism, and conscientiousness contributed to all except emotionality. All big five traits except agreeableness influenced well-being and sociability. Neuroticism and conscientiousness predicted self-control. However, agreeableness and extraversion predicted emotionality.

Conclusion

There is a close association between personality traits and Trait EI. However, the relationship is incremental as the big five traits jointly influence the global Trait EI more than individually on the four factors. The study's findings may enable psychologists, counselors, and other mental health professionals to develop training programs for college students to enhance emotional stability and the ability to deal with stress.

Cultural Intelligence: What Is It and How Can It Effectively Be Measured?

We administered both maximum-performance and typical-performance assessments of cultural intelligence to 114 undergraduates in a selective university in the Northeast of the United States. We found that cultural intelligence could be measured by both maximum-performance and typical-performance tests of cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence as assessed by a maximum-performance measure is largely distinct from the construct as assessed by a typical-performance measure. The maximum-performance test, the Sternberg Test of Cultural Intelligence (SCIT), showed high internal consistency and inter-rater reliability. Sections with problems from two content domains—Business (SCIT-B) and Leisure (SCIT-L) activities—were highly intercorrelated, suggesting they measured largely the same construct. The SCIT showed substantial correlations with another maximum-performance measure of cultural intelligence, Views-on-Culture. It also was correlated, at more modest levels, with fluid intelligence and personal intelligence tests. Factorially, the (a) maximum-performance cultural intelligence tests, (b) typical-performance cultural intelligence test and a test of openness to experience, and (c) fluid intelligence tests formed three separate factors.

Metacognitive and Non-Metacognitive Processes in Arithmetic Performance: Can There Be More than One Meta-Level?

The nature of the development of arithmetic performance has long been intensively studied, and available scientific evidence can be evaluated and synthesized in light of Nelson and Narens’ model of metacognition. According to the Nelson–Narens model, human cognition can be split into two or more interrelated levels. Obviously, in the case of more than two levels, cognitive processes from at least one level can be described as both meta- and object-level processes. The question arises whether it is possible that the very same cognitive processes are both controlled and controlling. The feasibility of owning the same cognitive processes—which are considered the same from an external point of view of assessment—as both meta- and object-level processes within the same individual opens the possibility of investigating the transition from meta-level to object-level. Modeling cognitive development by means of a series of such transitions calls forth an understanding of possible developmental phases in a given domain of learning. The developmental phases of arithmetic performance are described as a series of transitions from arithmetical facts to strategies of arithmetic word problem solving. For school learning and instruction, the role of metacognitive scaffolding as a powerful educational approach is emphasized.

The Search for the Elusive Basic Processes Underlying Human Intelligence: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

This article discusses the issues of the basic processes underlying intelligence, considering both historical and contemporary perspectives. The attempt to elucidate basic processes has had, at best, mixed success. There are some problems with pinpointing the underlying basic processes of intelligence, both in theory and as tested, such as what constitutes a basic process, what constitutes intelligence, and whether the processes, basic or not, are the same across time and space (cultural contexts). Nevertheless, the search for basic processes has elucidated phenomena of intelligence that the field would have been hard-pressed to elucidate in any other way. Intelligence cannot be fully understood through any one conceptual or methodological approach. A comprehensive understanding of intelligence requires the converging operations of a variety of approaches to it.

Incremental theory of personality attenuates the effect of environmental uncertainty on intertemporal choices

To examine the impact of environmental uncertainty on individuals’ intertemporal choices and the moderating effect of implicit personality theory, two studies were conducted. Study 1 investigated the moderating role of implicit personality theory in the influence of environmental uncertainty on intertemporal choice using questionnaires. Study 2 examined whether priming incremental personality theory could change entity theorists’ intertemporal preference in an uncertain environment. The results showed that implicit personality theory plays a moderating role in the influence of environmental uncertainty on intertemporal choice. For entity theorists, the delay discounting rate was positively correlated with environmental uncertainty. In contrast, for incremental theorists, the delay discounting rate was not significantly correlated with environmental uncertainty. After priming incremental personality theory, entity theorists’ delay discounting decreased significantly. Thus, we conclude that incremental personality theory buffers the effect of environmental uncertainty on intertemporal choice.

Adaptive Intelligence: Its Nature and Implications for Education

This article introduces the concept of adaptive intelligence—the intelligence one needs to adapt to current problems and anticipate future problems of real-world environments—and discusses its implications for education. Adaptive intelligence involves not only promoting one’s own ability to survive and thrive, but also that of others in one’s own generation and in future generations. The article opens with a discussion of some of the strengths but also the limitations of the concept of general intelligence. It then discusses the concept of adaptive intelligence. Then, it breaks down adaptive intelligence into its constituent parts—creative, analytical, practical, and wisdom-based skills and attitudes. Finally, it discusses how the concept of adaptive intelligence can be operationalized in schools.