Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
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Quick answers
Does this atlas rank groups by IQ, race or nation?
No. Pathways and evidence stay individual. Scores are browsing aids — never group biological or racial ranks.
Did Gardner refute g?
He argued g was too narrow for a human-worth story. He did not make the intercorrelations among tests disappear. Spearman’s positive manifold remains a psychometric fact.
What did Waterhouse 2006 argue?
That MI lacks the cognitive-neuroscience and psychometric support a new theory of intelligence would need, and that schools adopted it ahead of the evidence.
What did Visser, Ashton and Vernon 2006 find?
Tasks written to tap Gardner’s intelligences still loaded on general and broad factors rather than eight independent IQs.
Is MI the same as learning styles?
Gardner has rejected the popular “teach to visual/auditory styles” version. MI is about domains of competence, not preferred input channels — though schools often mash the two.
Why do teachers still like it?
It licenses music, movement and social work as serious. That institutional use can be good even if the psychometrics are thin.
Research on multiple intelligences runs from Howard Gardner (1983) through later critiques. Mechanisms are interacting systems.
Evidence percentages below are relative judgements for this atlas, not fabricated precise statistics. Named studies keep their published bands.
Findings
- 1983 · Howard Gardner — Several relatively autonomous intelligences A criteria-based list (evolution, savants, symbol systems), not a factor analysis.
- 1938 · L. L. Thurstone — Primary Mental Abilities Earlier multi-factor psychometrics — a reminder that “many abilities” did not start in 1983.
- 1971 · Raymond Cattell — Gf and Gc A hierarchical pluralism that still acknowledges general variance.
- 2006 · Lynn Waterhouse — MI lacks required evidence Neuroscience and psychometric claims were, she argued, not met.
- 2006 · Visser, Ashton, Vernon — MI tasks still show g Designed tasks intercorrelated and loaded on general/broad factors.
- 1997 · Robert Sternberg — Triarchic / successful intelligence A different multi-part alternative to thin IQ, with its own contested tests.
Mechanisms
- Symbol-system specialisation — Music, language, space and number can develop on partly separate tracks — a developmental observation older than MI.
- Savant and prodigy arguments — Gardner used uneven profiles as existence proofs of autonomy. Critics say anecdotes are not eight IQ scales.
- Positive manifold remains — When you measure with tests, abilities still covary. That covariance is the g fact MI never deleted.
- Curriculum broadening — The mechanism that actually changed schools: permission to value more kinds of work.
Evidence
Teachers can plan richer tasks. That is a use, not a validation.
Musicians, athletes and diplomats are not the same person. Obvious, not eight IQs.
Interesting philosophy of biology and symbol systems; not a measurement model.
Waterhouse and Visser: the independent-IQ claim is the weak point.
Test batteries still show a positive manifold.
Debates
- Taxonomy versus theory — Calling eight valued domains “intelligences” is a rhetorical move. Critics ask for reliability, validity and independence.
- Savants as proof — Treffert’s clinical cases show jagged profiles. They do not, by themselves, validate eight school checklists.
- Equity story — MI can fight a single-test caste, or become a new set of labels. Design decides.
Multiple intelligences: size the claim to the study. Interaction, not a 50/50 slogan, is the default model.
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