The Orders of Intelligence

Philosophers and scholars have argued for centuries over the definition of intelligence.

Indeed, we have come up with many ways to exchange ideas about the nature of intelligence: "book smart vs. street smart"... emotional intelligence... quotients etc. etc.

When learning about my disabled child's development, I became aware of a notion of intelligence that I found both fascinating and extremely useful in my clinic.

It was the idea of the orders of intelligence: that is, that intelligence can be described simply, in an ascending scale of abilities, all reflecting our sensory-cognitive systems and the inner workings of our very minds.

The First Order of Intelligence

That is not to say that people like Helen Keller can't overcome extraordinary obstacles with a very poor sensory system and express their intelligence sometimes beyond normal levels; but simply that when a child comes to me who is struggling academically or in literacy, my first port of call has to be an inquiry about their hearing and eyesight.

It stands to reason that if you can see and hear well, you have a much better chance of taking in the necessary information to help you learn.

The single biggest predictor of illiteracy in our society is phonemic awareness, that is, the ability to perceive the sameness, difference, order and number of sounds within words. So much of that has to do with early development of the auditory cortex, the part of the brain that deals with sound.

The Second Order of Intelligence

The process of storing sensory signals relies upon certain factors: how much attention we are paying at the time, and if similar sensory signals have come before.

Neuroscience has made popular the saying: "Neurons that fire together, wire together."

So going over material will help encourage storage of information.

Many people who come to my clinic are diagnosed with memory dysfunction of one type or another. Simply put, this means that information is being inadequately stored in the short or long-term memory.

The term “in one ear and out the other” is often applied to this cognitive phenomenon.

The Third Order of Intelligence

Storage of information is one thing, but in cases of severe neurological decline, such as Alzheimer’s Disease, it is clear that we need to perform another function if we’re going to do anything with all that stored data.

There’s no denying that people with Alzheimer’s have stored plenty of information. But it’s their ability to retrieve information, the third order of intelligence, that’s diminished.

In most cases though, good retrieval depends on good receiving and storing. If facts are presented logically and sequentially, it is much easier to recall them.

The Fourth Order of Intelligence

Most of us, to a greater or lesser degree, work well with the three orders of intelligence; but those who shine, those who find the cures for diseases, the progenitors of the Worldwide Web, the thinkers who truly work outside the square, are those who can retrieve one fact and put it together with another fact to make a new fact.

This is the fourth order of intelligence.

Again, we all do it, to a greater or lesser degree; indeed, we would not be able to understand and use our native language unless we were able to do this.

The point though, which informs all of my teaching, is that I try to write programs that require students to work at the fourth order of intelligence.

That ability to cross-refer things learned so that new understanding is born, is the fourth order of intelligence.

This ability can be developed through the introduction of discrete, related facts, which are rapidly recalled to work with other facts in order to discover new facts about our language.

Hence the order, scope and sequence of all programs in the Language For Life series. These are my humble attempts to stimulate that fourth order function.