Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence: – This theory of Intelligence is developed by Robert Jeffrey Sternberg. He is an American Psychologist and Psychometrician. As per him, Intelligence is not only to understand the other things, in fact the human is so intelligent he can either adapt to the environment or change the environment as per his needs. As per Sternberg, “intelligence is the ability to adapt, shape and select environment to accomplish one’s goals and those of one’s society and culture”.
- Componential Intelligence:- Componential Intelligence is also termed as Analytical Intelligence. Those who have componential intelligence their analytical skills, reasoning skills, and critical skills are very strong. These types of people are mostly strong in their academics. They can easily solve the reasoning related problems. In these types of problems, there is only a single correct answer. This comes under the traditional intelligence, which is similar to the standard psychometric definition of intelligence. According to Sternberg Componential Intelligence is the combination of Knowledge Acquisition, Operations of Meta Components, and Performance Components.
- Knowledge Acquisition:-Knowledge Acquisition is acquiring or gathering knowledge to understand things in a better way. The new information is acquired by the person and then he stored it in a brain so that he can recall the information in future.
- Meta component: – Meta component refers to a higher level of thinking. After acquiring knowledge the level of thinking increases day by day which helps in planning for future goals. Meta components help organize the knowledge acquisition and performance components. In this meta components decide what to do as per their knowledge and then perform accordingly by the performance components.
- Performance Component:- After planning, actions come into existence by performance component. In this, strategies assembled by the meta components are performed in the actual scenario.
For Example: – When a child learns a new subject or topic he tries to memorize everything and during exam he recalls that information and answers the questions accordingly.
- Experiential Component:- Experiential Component also termed as Creative Intelligence. It comes through experiences in life. It is the ability to successfully deal with new and unusual situations with your existing knowledge and skill. Sternberg split the role of experiences into two parts: Novelty and Automation.
- Novelty: –A novel situation is new for an individual he had never experienced it before. In this situation, people try to deal with the new situation with different ideas with the help of their knowledge.
- Automation:- Automation comes after repeating that tasks multiple times and tasks can be done with little or no efforts.
- Contextual Intelligence:- Contextual Intelligence is known for its Practical Intelligence. The person changes according to the environment. This intelligence is based on everyday circumstances. It is the ability to adapt to daily life with your existing knowledge and skills. Practical Intelligence enables the person to understand what’s going on and how to react in a specific situation, after understanding the situation they do it accordingly. This type of intelligence is termed as “Street Smarts.” In this, a person focuses on adaption, shaping, and selection.
- Adaption:- Adaption means to adjust according to the environment. Like in winter people used to wear warm clothes and in summer they used to wear cotton clothes.
- Shaping:- Shaping means to change the environment. Like to engage the kids in a class teacher used to relate chapters with real-life stories.
- Selection:- Selection means selecting new things over the previous. Like people used to live in urban areas from rural areas to live in a better lifestyle
This theory is criticized by Gottfredson, as per him traditional intelligence tests are not measuring practical intelligence
