Fluid Intelligence and Crystallized Intelligence: what are they?

According to the dictionary of the Real academy of the Spanish language, “intelligence”Comes from the Latin term intelligentia. Some of the meanings that we are interested in rescuing are the following:

• Ability to understand or comprehend

• Ability to solve problems

• Knowledge, understanding

• Ability, dexterity and experience

What is intelligence?

Each of these meanings refers to a differentiated field in which intelligence routinely plays a fundamental role. From a rational point of view, the understanding and understanding are essential factors for problem solving. The way in which human beings analyze the options we have to find the best procedure towards an outcome that we do not know assumes a high level of cognitive development. Skill and dexterity are also the product of one's intelligence.

The experienceFinally, it has a two-way relationship with intelligence: they develop in parallel, and feed back. However, the truth is that there must be a categorization that better understands the different kinds of intelligence that exist, in order to better understand the concept and the way it helps us solve tasks of such a nature disparate.

Intelligence-related capabilities

Traditionally, intelligence has been closely linked to these capabilities:

• Think and establish associations between concepts

• Solve everyday problems

• Generate new problems (of greater complexity)

• Create innovations and solve problems in the cultural sphere

Primary abilities of intelligence according to Thurstone

During the second third of the 20th century, the psychologist at the University of Chicago Louis Leon Thurstone (1887 - 1955) developed his studies on the primary intelligence skills, which resulted in the following:

• Understanding of language

• Perceptual agility

• Logic reasoning

• Numerical and mathematical ability

• Verbal fluency

• Spatial perception

Raymond Cattell

More than three decades later, the British psychologist Raymond Cattell (1905 - 1998) established a novel distinction between two types of intelligences: fluid and crystallized intelligence.

Fluid intelligence, according to Cattell, refers to a inherited ability to think and reason abstractly, while the crystallized intelligence born from experience and embodies the level of acculturation, education and learning.

Intelligence skills according to Robert Sternberg

It was not until 1985 that the Yale University psychologist Robert J. Sternberg (born 1949) categorized the different abilities that emanate from intelligence into three groups:

• Component intelligence: represents the ability to acquire and store information.

• Experience intelligencel: it is the skill based on experience and that we use to choose, encode, combine and compare information in order to configure new concepts and impressions.

• Contextual intelligence: refers to the adaptive behavior of the person in the natural and social environment that surrounds him.

Fluid Intelligence and Crystallized Intelligence

The difference between these two types of intelligence is usually linked to the variable age. However, it is more accurate to conceive the difference between fluid and crystallized intelligence based on the influence of heredity and / or environment.

→ Fluid Intelligence

The Fluid intelligence refers to the person's ability to adapt and face new situations in an agile way, without prior learning, experience or knowledge being a determining aid for its manifestation.

Fluid intelligence is closely linked to variables neurophysiological (for example, with the development of neural connections), and its influence is more pronounced since its development depends largely on the genetic basis. The same is not the case with crystallized intelligence.

In this same sense, we can establish a link between the potential development of fluid intelligence and the growth of the child in an enriching environment. Live in a positive and nurturing environment correlates with the development of neural connections in brain regions associated with memory, learning, and orientation in space.

Components of fluid intelligence

Fluid intelligence is composed of:

• The ability to reason with abstract content

• Logical reasoning

• The ability to establish relationships or extract differences

Fluid intelligence reaches its peak of development early, around adolescence. This is a big difference from the peak of crystallized intelligence. In this way, during adult life, this capacity tends to be progressively reduced as the body ages, as well as the neuronal structures deteriorate.

The decline in fluid intelligence can be due to several factors: normative aging, accidents, pathologies, drug use, and so on. These last three factors can cause injuries or alterations in the different structures of the brain and in the central nervous system.

→ Crystallized Intelligence

Crystallized Intelligence is the set of capabilities, strategies and knowledge that constitute the degree of cognitive development achieved through a person's learning history.

Components of Crystallized Intelligence

Crystallized intelligence encompasses skills related to:

• Understanding language

• The degree of understanding and use of semantic relationships

• The valuation of the experience

• The ability to make judgments and conclusions

• Mechanical knowledge

• Orientation in space
  

The crystallized intelligence highly dependent on learning from the person's experience in the cultural context in which she lives and relates. The development of the crystallized intelligence of each person depends to a large extent on their doing a good investment of your historical fluid intelligence in habits that allow you to learn things new. In other words, the potential for intellectual development with which we are born (also called intelligence historical fluid) will achieve a higher or lower level depending on the educational experiences that occur during the lifetime.

In fact, the development of intellectual capacities can progress during life to the extent that the experiential context and the motivation of the person to continue learning allow it.

The way in which the life experience intervenes in the intelligence of a person can be known through the observation of the effects of the stress in the ddeterioration of brain structures. According to a recent study by the University of Toronto, the hormones that the human body secretes when we are worried or nervous directly affect an area of ​​the brain linked to cognitive functions, such as the memory or orientation in space.

Thus, as we pointed out in the article “5 tricks to increase your intelligence"It is essential both the constant search for new knowledge and lead a balanced life if we aim to maintain our cognitive abilities at their best.

Bibliographic references:

• Rice, Philips F. et al. (1997). "Human development". Pearson.

• Shaffer, D. (2005). "Developmental psychology: childhood and adolescence". Edition, 5th ed. Publication, Mexico, D.F

• Triglia, Adrián; Regader, Bertrand; and García-Allen, Jonathan (2018). "What is intelligence?" EMSE Publishing.