Describe Guilford’s Structure of Intellect theory.

Joy Paul Guilford, an American psychologist, was born in March 7, 1897 in Marquette, Nebraska. He is best known for his psychometric studies of human intelligence, including the distinction between convergent and divergent production. After completing his graduation from University of Nebraska, he studied under Edward Titchner at Cornell during 1919 to 1921 and conducted intelligence testing on children. He taught in different universities, like University ofKansas, University of Nebraska and University ofSouthern California till his retirement in 1967.

Unlike Spearman, Guilford believed that intelligence is a combination of multiple activities. Traditional models prior to Guilford proposed intelligence as a monolithic and global attribute. By the 1950’s, he tried to develop a system to classify the new mental abilities being discovered and the first version of the Structure of Intellect (SI) model was presented. This model was based on factor analysis. He argued that intelligence consists of numerous intellectual abilities. He first proposed a model with 120, later on revised to 180 independently operating factors in intelligence. In this Structure of Intellect Model, all the mental abilities were organized along three dimensional framework: Content, Operations, and Product. This model is represented as a ‘cube’ with each of the three dimensions occupying one side (5×6×6 = 180 specific abilities). Thus, there are three feature of intellectual task: the content dimension which includes broad areas of information; the operations dimension which includes the operations or general cognitive or mental activities, and the products dimension which contains results of applying particular operations to specific contents. Thus this model is also called 3- dimensional model represented in the form of a cube.

1) The Contents Dimension

The contents dimension includes the broad areas of information to which human intellect operations are applied. Initially, these included only four categories, later on auditory and visual were separated making it five content dimensions.

• i)        Visual – information perceived through seeing or the information arising from the stimulation of retina in the form of an image.
• ii)      Auditory – information perceived through hearing or information arising from the stimulation of cochlea of the inner ear as a sound. (Figural: Information that is non-verbal or pictorial, later divided into Visual and Auditory)
• iii)     Symbolic – information perceived as symbols or signs that stand for something else, has no meaning by themselves (Arabic numerals, letters of an alphabet, musical and scientific notations).
• iv)     Semantic – concerned with verbal meaning and ideas.
• v)      Behavioural – information perceived as acts or behaviour of people.

2) The Operations Dimension

As the name suggests, this consists of six operations or general intellectual processes:

• i)        Cognition – the ability to understand, comprehend, discover, and become aware of information.
• ii)      Memory recording – the ability to encode information.
• iii)     Memory retention – the ability to recall information.
• iv)     Divergent production – the ability to generate multiple solutions to a problem; creativity.
• v)      Convergent production – the ability to deduce a single solution to a problem; rule-following or problem-solving.
• vi)     Evaluation – the ability to judge whether or not information is accurate, consistent or valid.

3) The Products Dimension

The products dimension contains results of applying particular operations to specific contents. There are six kinds of products in increasing complexity, they are:

• i)        Units – represents a single item of information or knowledge.
• ii)      Classes – a set of items that share some common attributes.
• iii)     Relations – represents a connection between items or variables; may be linked as opposites or in associations, sequences, or analogies.
• iv)     Systems – an organization of items or networks with interacting parts.
• v)      Transformations – changes perspectives, conversions, or mutations to knowledge; such as reversing the order of letters in a word.
• vi)     Implications –  predictions,  inferences,  consequences,  or  anticipations  of knowledge

Each task accomplished by a person includes a particular type of content, mental operation and a product. For example a test of recall on ‘the movements undertaken by Gandhiji during the freedom struggle’ includes the ‘semantic’ aspect of content dimension as it involves information using words or sentences, ‘memory’ is the process dimension and ‘relation’ of the sequence of events is the product dimension. As there are 5 types of contents, 6 types of operations and 6 types of products, resulting in 180 (5×6×6) types of distinct mental abilities among which more than 100 have been empirically verified.

Guildford’s structure theory of intelligence has been criticised for being too complex. From the practical point of view, Guildford’s factors are so narrow and specialised that they have little value of prediction in vocational and educational guidance. Despite all these criticism, his theory is a significant contribution to the field of research on intelligence.

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