Where Does Your Intelligence Lie?

This quiz will help you identify your areas of strongest intelligence. Read each statement. If it expresses some characteristic of yours and sounds true for the most part, jot down a T. If it doesn’t, mark an F. If the statement is sometimes true and sometimes false, leave it blank.

1. I’d rather draw a map than give someone verbal directions.

2. If I’m happy or angry, I usually know why.

3. I can play (or used to play) a musical instrument.

4. I can associate music with my moods.

5. I can add or multiply quickly in my head.

6. I can help a friend sort out strong feelings because I successfully dealt with similar feelings myself.

7. I like to work with calculators and computers.

8. I pick up new dance steps fast.

9. I can hear animal and bird sounds clearly.

10. It’s easy for me to say what I think in an argument or debate.

11. I enjoy a good lecture, speech or sermon.

12. I always know north from south no matter where I am.

13. I like to gather together groups of people for parties or special events.

14. Life seems empty without music.

15. I am happiest outdoors exploring the world.

16. I always understand the drawings that come with new gadgets or appliances.

17. I like to work puzzles and play games.

18. Learning to ride a bike (or skate) was easy.

19. I am irritated when I hear an argument or statement that sounds illogical.

20. I can convince other people to follow my plans.

21. My sense of balance and coordination are good.

22. I often see patterns and relationships between numbers faster and easier than others do.

23. I enjoy building models or sculpting.

24. I’m good at finding the fine points of word meanings.

25. I enjoy camping, canoeing, hiking.

26. I can look at an object one way and see it turned sideways or backward just as easily.

27. I often connect a piece of music with some event in my life.

28. I recycle paper, glass and plastic items.

29. I like to work with numbers and figures.

30. I like to sit quietly and reflect on my inner feelings.

31. Just looking at shapes of buildings and structures is pleasurable to me.

32. I like to hum, whistle and sing in the shower or when I’m alone.

33. I’m good at athletics.

34. I enjoy writing detailed letters to friends.

35. I’m usually aware of the expression on my face.

36. I’m sensitive to the expressions on other people’s faces.

37. I like tending to plants and animals.

38. I stay ‘in touch’ with my moods and have no trouble identifying them.

39. I am sensitive to the moods of others.

40. I have a good sense of what others think of me.

Scoring Sheet:

Using this chart below, circle all the numbers of the items that you marked ‘T’ on the previous pages. Then add the total of ‘T’ answers in each vertical column below. A total of four in any of the categories indicates a strong ability in that area.

A = ___________________________________ Intelligence

B = ___________________________________ Intelligence

C = ___________________________________ Intelligence

D = ___________________________________ Intelligence

E = ___________________________________ Intelligence

F = ___________________________________ Intelligence

G = ___________________________________ Intelligence

H = ___________________________________ Intelligence

The Intelligences, in Gardner's Words

Linguistic intelligence is the capacity to use language, your native language, and perhaps other languages, to express what's on your mind and to understand other people. Poets really specialize in linguistic intelligence, but any kind of writer, orator, speaker, lawyer, or a person for whom language is an important stock in trade highlights linguistic intelligence.

People with a highly developed logical-mathematical intelligence understand the underlying principles of some kind of a causal system, the way a scientist or a logician does; or can manipulate numbers, quantities, and operations, the way a mathematician does.

Spatial intelligence refers to the ability to represent the spatial world internally in your mind--the way a sailor or airplane pilot navigates the large spatial world, or the way a chess player or sculptor represents a more circumscribed spatial world. Spatial intelligence can be used in the arts or in the sciences. If you are spatially intelligent and oriented toward the arts, you are more likely to become a painter or a sculptor or an architect than, say, a musician or a writer. Similarly, certain sciences like anatomy or topology emphasize spatial intelligence.

Bodily kinesthetic intelligence is the capacity to use your whole body or parts of your body--your hand, your fingers, your arms--to solve a problem, make something, or put on some kind of a production. The most evident examples are people in athletics or the performing arts, particularly dance or acting.

Musical intelligence is the capacity to think in music, to be able to hear patterns, recognize them, remember them, and perhaps manipulate them. People who have a strong musical intelligence don't just remember music easily--they can't get it out of their minds, it's so omnipresent. Now, some people will say, "Yes, music is important, but it's a talent, not an intelligence." And I say, "Fine, let's call it a talent." But, then we have to leave the word intelligent out of all discussions of human abilities. You know Mozart was damned smart!

Interpersonal intelligence is understanding other people. It's an ability we all need, but is at a premium if you are a teacher, clinician, salesperson, or politician. Anybody who deals with other people has to be skilled in the interpersonal sphere.

Intrapersonal intelligence refers to having an understanding of yourself, of knowing who you are, what you can do, what you want to do, how you react to things, which things to avoid, and which things to gravitate toward. We are drawn to people who have a good understanding of themselves because those people tend not to screw up. They tend to know what they can do. They tend to know what they can't do. And they tend to know where to go if they need help.

Naturalist intelligence designates the human ability to discriminate among living things (plants, animals) as well as sensitivity to other features of the natural world (clouds, rock configurations). This ability was clearly of value in our evolutionary past as hunters, gatherers, and farmers; it continues to be central in such roles as botanist or chef. I also speculate that much of our consumer society exploits the naturalist intelligences, which can be mobilized in the discrimination among cars, sneakers, kinds of makeup, and the like. The kind of pattern recognition valued in certain of the sciences may also draw upon naturalist intelligence.

From Educational Leadership. Teaching for Multiple Intelligences, September 1997.

My Traditional Values Worksheet

INSTRUCTIONS:
Place a check (√) in front of those values that correspond to your own, and place an ‘X’ in front of those that you personally reject. Then go back and rank-order the three values you hold most strongly by placing the number ‘1’ beside your most important value, ‘2’ by the second most strongly held, etc. When you have done this, ask yourself where these values originated and, as far as you can remember, at what age...

IT IS VALUABLE TO: .

Having made your personal choices, think about how these values reflect your cultural heritage and how they relate to the assumptions and stereotypes applied to your cultural group(s) by others.

The Four Stages of the ZPD

Stage 1: Where performance is assisted by more capable others

Before children can function as independent agents, they must rely on adults or more capable peers for outside regulation of task performance. The amount and kind of outside regulation a child requires depend on the child’s age and the nature of the task: that is, the breadth and progression through the ZPD for the activity at hand.

Stage 2: Where performance is assisted by the self

If we look carefully at the child’s statements during this transition, we see that the child has taken over the rules and responsibilities of both participants in the language-game. These responsibilities were formerly divided between the adult and child, but they have now been taken over completely by the child. The definitions of situation and the patterns of activity which formerly allowed the child to participate in the problem-solving effort on the interpsychological plane now allow him/her to carry out the task on the intrapsychological plane. (Wertsch, 1979, p. 18)

Thus, in Stage II, the children carries out a task without assistance from others. This does not mean, however, that the performance is fully developed or automatized.

Stage 3: Where performance is developed, automatized, and “fossilized”

Once all evidence of self-regulation has vanished, the child has emerged from the ZPD into the developmental stage for that task. The task execution is smooth and integrated. It has been internalized and “automatized.” Assistance, from the adult or the self, is no longer needed. Indeed, “assistance” would now be disruptive. It is in this condition that instructions from others are disruptive and irritating; it is at this stage that self-consciousness itself is detrimental to the smooth integration of all task components. This is a stage beyond self-control and beyond social control. Performance here is no longer developing; it is already developed. Vygotsky described it as the “fruits” of development, but he also described it as “fossilized,” emphasizing its fixity and distance from the social and mental forces of change.

Stage 4: Where de-automatization of performance leads to recursion back through the ZPD

The lifelong learning by an individual is made up of these same regulated, ZPD sequences ­ from other-assistance to self-assistance ­ recurring over and over again for the development of new capacities. For every individual, at any point in time, there will be a mix of other-regulation, self-regulation, and automatized processes. The child who can now do many of the steps in finding a lost object might still be in the ZPD for the activities of reading, or any of the many skills and processes remaining to be developed in the immature organism.

Rousing Minds to Life, Tharp and Gallimore, Cambridge University Press, 1988.