Guilford’s

GUILFORD’S THEORY INVOLVING A MODEL OF INTELLECT

J.P.. Guilford and his associates have developed a model of intellect on the basis of the factor analysis of several tests employed for testing intelligence of human beings.  They have come to the conclusion that any mental process or intellectual activity of the human being can be described in terms of three basic dimensions or parameters known as operation (the act of thinking or way of processing the information); contents (the terms in which we think or the type of information involved); and products (the ideas we come up with, i.e. the fruits of a thinking).  Each of these parameters-operations, contents and products-may be further subdivided into some specific factors or elements.  As a result, operations may be subdivided into 5 specific factors, contents into 5 and products into 6.  The interaction of these three parameters, according to Guilford, thus results into the 5 x 5 x 6 = 150 different elements or factors in one’s intelligence.  In a figural form, these 150 factors or independent abilities of the human beings along with the basic parameters and their divisions can be represented through a model named as Guilford’s Model of Intellect or Intelligence

This model proposes that intelligence consists of 150 independent abilities that result from the interaction of five types of contents, five types of operations and six types of products. Guilford, 1982.

What is implied by these contents, operations and products can be understood through the following brief description.

Contents (The type of Information involved).

• Figural (visual) – The properties of stimuli we can experience through visual senses e.g. colour, size, shape, texture and other visual characters of figure.
• Figural (Auditor) – The properties of stimuli we can experience through the auditory sense, e.g. voice and sound.

• Symbolic – Numbers, letters, symbols, designs.
• Semantic – The meaning of words, ideas.
• Behavioural – The actions and expressions of people.

Operations (The way of Processing information).

• Cognition – Recognizing and discovering.
• Memory – Retaining and recalling the contents of thought.
• Divergent production – Producing a variety of ideas or solutions to a problem.
• Convergent production – Producing a single best solution to a problem.
• Evaluation – Taking decision about the nature of the intellectual contents or gathered information whether it is positive or negative, good or bad etc.,

Products (The results obtained through Operations).

• Units – Individual pieces of information limited in size, e.g. a single number, letter or word.
• Classes – Groups of units information related to each other on the basis of some common characteristics involving a higher order concept (e.g. men + women = people).
• Relations – A connection between concepts.
• Systems – An ordering or classification of relations.
• Transformation – altering or restructuring intellectual contents.
• Implications – Making inferences from separate pieces of information.

In this way, according to Guilford’s model of intellect, there are 150 factors operating in one’s intelligence.  Each one of these factors has a trigram symbol, i.e. at least one factor from each category of three parameters has to be present in any specific intellectual activity or mental task.

Let us illustrate this basic fact with an example.  Suppose a child is asked to find out the day of the week on a particular date with the help of a calendar.  In the execution of this mental task, he will need mental operations like convergent thinking, memory and cognition.  For carrying out these operations, he has to make use of the contents.  In this particular case, he will make use of semantics, i.e. reading and understanding of the printed words and figures indicating days and dates of a particular month in the calendar. By carrying out mental operations with the help of contents he will finally arrive at the products.  The day of the week to which the date in question refers, represents the factor known as “relations”.  He may further transform and apply this knowledge to identify the days for contiguous dates or vice versa.

Conclusion about the Factor’s Theory of Intelligence

Each of the seven theories of Intelligence described above attempts to provide a structure of intelligence in terms of its constituents or factors.  These theories exhibit wide variations in terms of the numbers of factor that they consider important.  The range of all such factors also varies from 1 (Unitary theory) to 150 (Guilford’s Intellect Model).  However, for understanding what goes on inside one’s intelligence we must try to build an eclectic view by incorporating the essence of all the workable theories of intelligence.  Consequently, any intellectual activity or mental task may be said to involve the following three kinds of basic factors (arranged in the order as suggested by Vernon or in the form of the model suggested by Guilford).

1. General factor G (Common to all tasks)
2. Specific factors S1, S2, etc. (Specific to the tasks)
3. Group factor G (Common to the task belonging to a specific group)