musical intelligence, exemplified by the composer;spatial intelligence, exemplified
by the painter;bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, exemplified by the athlete or the
dancer; andsocial-emotional intelligence, exemplified by the political leader or
gifted parent. Gardner claimed that intellectual skill in one category is unre-
lated to intellectual skill in any other category. Similar claims have been made
by Guilford (1964, 1967) and Thurstone (1938).
There are several remarkable features of Gardner’s theory. First, he acknowl-
edges the wide range of intellectual competencies that may be regarded as
aspects of intelligence. Very few IQ tests examine the social-emotional realm,
probably because, as I noted before, it is difficult to develop objective tests to
see how well a person can motivate another person or understand his or her
own feelings. Yet these sorts of skills are among the most prized in virtually all
cultures. Very few IQ tests examine the musical or bodily-kinesthetic realm,
because in our culture the intellect has historically been equated with verbal
and logical intelligence. We have a hard time regarding a talented musician or
dancer or athlete as unusually intelligent. Yet in many other cultures, these
sorts of competencies are so regarded.
Evidence for Gardner’s Frames Gardner’s theory is also remarkable for the kinds
of evidence used to support it. Gardner has broken with the IQ tradition of
examining patterns of correlations among subtests of the IQ inventory. Instead,
he uses brain damage evidence, isolated talents, anthropological evidence, and
the nature of mental operations to support his theory.
The brain damage evidence suggests that damage can interfere with one in-
tellectual competency but leave the others intact. Damage to the left frontal and
temporalregionsofthebraincaninterferewiththeuseoflanguage,butleave
other skills, like logical or musical skill, intact. Damage to posterior portions of
the right cerebral hemisphere can produce amusia—a difficulty in expressing
and appreciating music. Yet spoken language, which also uses the auditory
system, is unaffected. Similarly, damage to the anterior portions of the frontal
lobes can interfere with certain aspects of emotional expression, yet language
and all the other intellectual skills may remain intact.
The phenomenon of isolated talents also provides evidence for Gardner’s
theory. There are cases of people who are unusually talented in one realm, such
as music or art, but are unremarkable and sometimes even retarded in other
realms, such as logical reasoning. Similar support for Gardner’s theory comes
from the previously discussed findings that among people who score average
or above on IQ tests, musical and social skill are unrelated to IQ performance,
which tends to reflect language and reasoning skills (Shuter-Dyson, 1982;
Frederiksen et al., 1984). Some research also suggests that logical reasoning
skills are minimally correlated with language proficiency skills, especially when
the logical reasoning task uses simple vocabulary (Boyle, 1987). Research also
suggests that when memory span is measured using digits, it does not correlate
with language proficiency, but when memory span is measured by words in
a sentence, it does correlate with language proficiency (Daneman & Carpenter,
1980; King & Just, 1991; Perfetti & Lesgold, 1977). In my own research
(Guenther, 1991), I found that the rate at which people could scan their mem-
ory of sentences that varied in word length (e.g., ‘‘Lions run quickly,’’ ‘‘Lions
792 R. Kim Guenther