Interchange, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Fall, 1989) 35-38

Aerobics for the Mind?

J o h n M c P e c k , J a c k M a r t i n , J ames Sanders , and A l a n S l e m o n The University of Western Ontario

There was a time, not very long ago, when the standard psychometric notion of intelligence or IQ was considered to be a measure of a person's potential for learning from instruction or experience. In this view, intelligence was the raw material upon which teachers and experience left their impressions. Thus, intelligence limited the teacher in the same way that the quality of wood limited the woodcarver -- it was the given, the stuff to be worked upon. Increasingly, however, teachers and educators are being offered various thinking skills programs which promise to upgrade the raw material, that is, to improve intelligence per se (see, in particular, recent work by Feuerstein, 1980; Sternberg, 1984; and Baron, 1985). It is as though the teacher, as wood carver, can now expect to improve the quality of the wood itself! If correct, this conception is likely to have a profound effect upon the ways in which we have traditionally conceived of, measured, and talked about individual dif- ferences in human intelligence.

A recent article entitled "Teaching Thinking Skills" in the American Psychologist by Herrnstein, Nickerson, de S~inchez, and Swets (1986) provides particularly striking evidence of this fundamental shift toward a more malleable conception of intelligence. Our purpose here is to disclose and comment upon some of the confusions, both conceptual and em- pirical, that confront the revised concept of intelligence which Herrnstein and his colleagues have embraced. Not only does this study presuppose a new, more corrigible conception of intelligence, but the authors plainly acknowledge that

the focus was on cognitive skills that apply to learning and intellectual performance independently of subject matter, rather than conventional content. Skills that can reasonably be considered to be components of intelligence and that are sufficiently well defined to lend themselves to explicit instruction were the targets of the course. ~. 1279)

This is a thinking skills program that does not teach subject matter, as such, but rather the "components of intelligence" that are presumed to be useful for thinking about subject matter of any kind.

Before considering the question of whether or not the program designed by Herrnstein et al. actually succeeds in teaching such "thinking skills," it is important to recognize that the ontological status of intelligence has changed from the traditional notion of a relatively fixed general ability to that of a general skill(s) which can be directly taught. From a social- political perspective, such a conceptual shift should perhaps be welcomed, but first it ought to be scientifically justified. Until very recently, to claim that one was "teaching intelligence directly" would have been regarded as nonsense or, at least, as evidence that one simply did not understand the concept of intelligence.

It may be useful to consider briefly how and why this change in the meaning of the in- telligence concept has taken place. Originally, the Binet Intelligence Scales were intended as a diagnostic instrument for predicting school success or failure. The various age-graded test items which eventually made up the scales were chosen not because they tested any sort of generalizable skills, but rather because the item content adequately sampled the

Interchange 20/3 © The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education 1989 35

36 MCPECK, MARTIN, SANDERS, AND SLEMON

common experience of the children for whom the test was intended. That is to say, the items were designed to be "culture-fair" as opposed to being "culturally biased" or "culture- specific?' It is important tounderscore here the crucial difference between that which is common, as in the children's previous experience, versus that which is general, as in skills which apply or transfer across a variety of problem domains. These are not the same thing. For example, it may be common for eight year olds to have played tag sometime, somewhere, and thus culturally fair to ask them questions about tag on a test. This does not imply, however, that tag is a generalizable skill. It is easy to confuse commonness with generalizability in this context, but clearly neither follows from the other. The quadratic equation is quite generalizable, but not common; whereas the game of tag is quite com- mon, but not generalizable. It is our contention that the recent shift in the meaning of in- telligence rests in large part upon a confusion of what is common with what is generalizable. To provide all students with some knowledge or skill is to make it common to them. But whether that common knowledge is generalizable is an entirely Separate question.

In addition, this revised conception of intelligence trades upon an important but subtle ambiguity in the meaning of such phrases as "intellectual competence" or "cognitive skill." Usually these phrases refer to how welt or poorly an individual can think through a problem - - usually a problem encountered in school or life outside school. This is the ordinary meaning of such phrases. And it is understood that the tests, which attempt to assess such competences or skills, do not pose real problems but rather proxies or simulated problems. However, the revised meaning of such phrases¢ as used by Herrnstein and his colleagues, does equate a person's test performance on an IQ-type test with evidence of intellectual competence or cognitive skill, and not the person's performance in mathematics, science, and the various other subject domains. In this way, the new meaning given to cognitive competence or skill has been removed a further step in generality from the traditional mean- ing of these phrases. It is this shift toward a more abstracted meaning of intellectual com- petence or cognitive skill (co-extensive with test performance) which makes it seem like intelligence per se is now being directly taught.

To boost someone's performance on an intelligence test is not the same thing as making him or her more intelligent - - especially when there has been training or coaching on items identical or similar to those items on the test. Altering the meaning of phrases like intellec- tual competence or cognitive skill does not change that to which they properly refer. What were once aptitude tests are now, in effect, being used as measures of achievement. This kind of confusion or change in meaning helps to account for the understandable bewilder- ment confronting educators these days: unbeknownst to them, the goal posts have been moved in the middle of the game.

We hasten to add that not all of the thinking skills programs and research are beset with the confusions described above. For example, the approach taken by Glaser (1984) and others which emphasize domain-specific knowlege are clearly on a promising track. These make good sense. But far too many of the current thinking skills programs do not properly restrict their meaning of intellectual competence or cognitive skill to any particular do- main of knowledge. And there is ample evidence that the Odyssey program of Herrnstein et al. is representative of this latter type.

Setting aside the conceptual confusions, what about the bold empirical claim of Herrns- tein et al. to have boosted intellectual skills directly? First, let us consider the authors' own reservations about the program and its effectiveness:

How do we determine what the students, and the teachers, learned? If the students' perfor- mance on the test instruments improved, how do we know to what to attribute the improve- ment? In particular, how do we know that any improvement is not simply a Hawthorne effect,

AEROBICS FOR THE MIND? 37

a strengthening of performance that is due to generalized motivational factors, rather than specific improvements in intellectual skills? How do we judge whether specific effects are likely to persist? How do we evaluate the merits of particular parts or aspects of a course so as to deter- mine what modifications would improve it as a whole? How do we assess the role of uncon- trolled variables as determinants of results'? At this point, few if any of these questions can be answered decisively [italics added]. (p. 2383)

Yet, in the face of these admitted weaknesses, the authors unaccountably conclude that

virtually everyone who has been associated with the course has come away with a strengthen- ed belief in the possibility of teaching intellectual competence more directly than conventional school subjects do . . . . Our results show that cognitive skills can be enhanced by direct in- struction; it remains to be found how best to achieve pervasive and sustained benefits, and just how far such educational interventions can go. (p. 1289)

Against their own confessed scepticism about the adequacy of this curriculum for teaching thinking skills, the authors' sanguine view of the results is puzzling.

But the more disturbing outcome of this and similar thinking skills programs is a re- newed faith in "the possibility of teaching intellectual competences more directly than con- ventional school subjects do" What, upon reflection, would such a possibility actually mean? Or to put the question differently, what would a student actually learn from such programs? It is clear, by contrast, that when students learn conventional school subjects, they come away with knowledge and understanding of the world around them or, at least, that is the point. But it is not at all clear what students would know once they had been taught in- tellectual competences in general. Can we expect, for example, that these intellectual com- petences will enable students to solve mathematics or physics problems without having learned mathematics or physics, as such? Surely the answer must be "No!" It is inconceivable that some set of general intellectual competences could replace the need for specific subject- matter knowledge and understanding of the world.

Yet clearly such programs as those championed by Herrnstein and his colleagues con- tinue to entertain the possibility that intellectual competences might one day be taught in lieu of school subjects. Thus, they speculate: "Whether thinking skills are better taught with contents other than those of the usual subjects - - or a combined approach - - remains an open question" (p. 1289). But we submit that it is not an open question, but rather a pseudo-question that borders on the absurd. It is analogous to asking whether a foreign language might be better taught by teaching the syntax and omitting the semantics. Such unlikely possibilities and alternatives derive from confusion over the meaning of intellec- tual competences. There is (and always will be) no getting around the fact that thinking requires a good deal of specific knowledge, information, and understanding. Conventional school subjects at least try to provide these; abstract thinking skills cannot. Thus, it is not clear what in the end can be usefully gained by teaching such contentless skills. Binet and his successors were at least clear about the point that high scores on an IQ test are no substitute for knowledge.

This persistent confusion suggests that Herrnstein and others are bewitched by an analogy; namely, that intellectual skills have a generality across the cognitive domain like aerobic conditioning has in the athletic domain. For example, in the same way that general aerobic conditioning is thought to improve performance in a variety of sports, training in general thinking skills is expected to enhance performance in a variety of school subjects. Thus, for example, it is expected that students who have trained on Herrnstein's thinking skills curriculum will subsequently learn traditional school subjects more effectively.

But let us examine this analogy between aerobic conditioning and general thinking skills more closely. It is certainly true that running, as a form of general aerobic conditioning,

38 MCPECK, MARTIN, SANDERS, AND SLEMON

will likely benefit performance in soccer. But the reason that running is apt to benefit soccer is because running is a major component of playing soccer. Running, however, is not likely to improve dramatically one's performance in golf, sailing, or bowling. Running happens to be common to both aerobic conditioning and soccer, but running is not a general skill which can be expected to facilitate all or even most athletic performances. Furthermore, unlike the obvious commonality between running in general and running in soccer, com- pleting an abstract pictorial series on a test has little or nothing in common with analyzing the dramatic plot of Henry IV. And clearly practice at one is not training for the other.

Nonetheless, the thinking skills program of Herrnstein and his colleagues aspires to teach, we repeat,

• . . cognitive skills that apply to learning and intellectual performance independently of sub- ject matter, rather than conventional academic content. Skills that can reasonably be considered to be components of intelligence . ~ . (p. 1279)

They refer to these content-independent cognitive skills as "target abilities" And the tests that are used to assess these abilities are labelled the Target Abilities Tests (TATs). The authors explain that the

Target Abilities Tests (TATs) we tested were designed specifically along the lines of the course itself [italics added], drawing on the skills and processes, but not the content, employed in the lessons. (p. 1282)

Given that these putative skills are contentless, one wonders what such skills could be like? The most plausible, but least charitable, interpretation of the notion of academically con- tentless skills is that they are useless for any academic subject - - as against the expectation that they are useful for all. But more to the immediate point, one needs to know how the items of the TATs can be importantly different from, yet be "along the lines of, the course itselF'? To the extent that the TATs reflect the content (if that's the right word) of the pro- gram, gains on the test following the course are hardly surprising. But such test gains are little more that an instance of teaching for the test - - unless these contentless skills can be shown to constitute real skills of demonstrable intellectual value and importance - - and that remains to be shown. We contend that the only meaningful and persuasive test for a program that purports to foster contentless thinking skills is evidence of students' in- creased ability to think about mathematics, history, science, and so forth. Such increased competence is, after all, the final cash value of any educational program.

References

Baron, J. (1985). Rationality and intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Feuerstein, R. (1980). Instrumental enrichment: An intervention program for cognitive modifiability. Baltimore: University Park Press.

Glaser, R. (1984). Education and thinking: The role of knowledge. American Psychologist, 39, 93-104.

Herrnstein, R. J., Nickerson, R. S., de S~inchez, M., & Swets, J. A. (1986). Teaching thinking skills. American Psychologist, 41(11), 1279-1289.

Sternberg, R. (1984). How can we teach intelligence? Educational Leadership, 42(1), 38-48.