J.P.

Guilford Model
Guilford's career
Guilford graduated from the University of Nebraska before studying under Edward Titchener at
Cornell. In 1938 Guilford became the 3rd President of the Psychometric Society, following in the
footsteps of its founder Louis Leon Thurstone and of EL Thorndike who held the position in
1937. Guilford held a number of posts at Nebraska and briefly at the University of Southern
California. In 1941 he entered the U.S. Army as a Lieutenant Colonel and served as Director of
Psychological Research Unit No. 3 at Santa Ana Army Air Base. There he worked on the
selection and ranking of aircrew trainees as the Army Air Force investigated why a sizable
proportion of trainees was not graduating.

Promoted to Chief of the Psychological Research Unit at the U.S. Army Air Forces Training
Command Headquarters in Fort Worth, Guilford oversaw the "Stanines Project," which
identified eight specific intellectual abilities crucial to flying a plane. (Stanines, now a common
term in educational psychology, was coined during Guilford's project). Over the course of World
War II, Guilford's use of these eight factors in the development of the two-day Classification
Test Battery was significant in increasing graduation rates for aircrew trainees.

Discharged as a full Colonel after the War, Guilford joined the Education faculty at the
University of Southern California and continued to research the factors of intelligence. He
published widely on what he ultimately named the Structure of Intellect theory, and his post-War
research identified a total of 90 discrete intellectual abilities and 30 behavioral abilities.

Guilford's 20 years of research at Southern California were funded by the National Science
Foundation, the Office of Education of the former Health, Education and Welfare Department,
and the Office of Naval Research. Although Guilford's subjects were recruits at the Air Force
Training Command at Randolph Air Force Base, San Antonio, the Office of Naval Research
managed this research.

Guilford's post-War research led to the development of classification testing that, modified in
different ways, entered into the various personnel assessments administered by all branches of
the U.S. Armed Services. Thus, in a generic manner, all U.S. Military qualifying exams of the
1950s, 1960s, and 1970s may be said to have descended from Guilford's research.

Guilford's Structure of Intellect

According to Guilford's Structure of Intellect (SI) theory, an individual's performance on
intelligence tests can be traced back to the underlying mental abilities or factors of intelligence.
SI theory comprises up to 150 different intellectual abilities organized along three dimensions—
Operations, Content, and Products.

Operations dimension
SI includes six operations or general intellectual processes:
Cognition—The ability to understand, comprehend, discover, and become aware of information.
Memory recording—The ability to encode information.
Memory retention—The ability to recall information.
Divergent production—The ability to generate multiple solutions to a problem; creativity.
Convergent production—The ability to deduce a single solution to a problem; rule-following or
problem-solving.
Evaluation—The ability to judge whether or not information is accurate, consistent, or valid.
Content dimension
SI includes five broad areas of information to which the human intellect applies the six
operations:
Visual—Information perceived through seeing.
Auditory—Information perceived through hearing.
Kinesthetic—Information perceived through one's own physical actions.
Symbolic—Information perceived as symbols or signs that have no meaning by themselves; e.g.,
Arabic numerals or the letters of an alphabet.
Semantic-Which is concerned with verbal meaning and ideas.
Behavioral—Information perceived as acts of people.
Product dimension
As the name suggests, this dimension contains results of applying particular operations to
specific contents. The SI model includes six products, in increasing complexity:
Units—Single items of knowledge.
Classes—Sets of units sharing common attributes.
Relations—Units linked as opposites or in associations, sequences, or analogies.
Systems—Multiple relations interrelated to comprise structures or networks.
Transformations—Changes, perspectives, conversions, or mutations to knowledge.
Implications—Predictions, inferences, consequences, or anticipations of knowledge.

Therefore, according to Guilford there are 5 x 5 x 6 = 150 intellectual abilities or factors. Each
ability stands for a particular operation in a particular content area and results in a specific
product, such as Comprehension of Figural Units or Evaluation of Semantic Implications.

Guilford's original model was composed of 120 components because he had not separated
Figural Content into separate Auditory and Visual contents, nor had he separated Memory into
Memory Recording and Memory Retention. When he separated Figural into Auditory and Visual
contents, his model increased to 5 x 5 x 6 = 150 categories. When Guilford separated the
Memory functions, his model finally increased to the final 180 factors [Guilford, J.P. (1988).
Some changes in the structure of intellect model. Educational and Psychological Measurement,
48, 1-4.]

Criticism
Various researchers have criticized the statistical techniques used by Guilford. According to
Jensen (1998), Guilford's contention that a g-factor was untenable was influenced by his
observation that cognitive tests of U.S. Air Force personnel did not show correlations
significantly different from zero. According to one reanalysis, this resulted from artifacts and
methodological errors. Applying more robust methodologies, the correlations in Guilford's data
sets are positive.[1] In another reanalysis, randomly generated models were found to be as well
supported as Guilford's own theory.[2]

Guilford's Structure-of-Intellect model of human abilities has few supporters today. Carroll
(1993) summarized the view of later researchers:[3]

"Guilford's SOI model must, therefore, be marked down as a somewhat eccentric

aberration in the history of intelligence models; that so much attention has been paid to it
is disturbing, to the extent that textbooks and other treatments of it have given the
impression that the model is valid and widely accepted, when clearly it is not."

Guilford's Model of the Structure of Intellect

Guilford's theory of the three faces of intellect suggests that people use six mental operations,
which can be applied to five kinds of content to achieve six types of products.
Structure of Intellect (J.P. Guilford)

Overview:

In Guilford< 's Structure of Intellect (SI) theory, intelligence is viewed as comprising operations,
contents, and products. There are 5 kinds of operations (cognition, memory, divergent
production, convergent production, evaluation), 6 kinds of products (units, classes, relations,
systems, transformations, and implications), and 5 kinds of contents (visual, auditory, symbolic,
semantic, behavioral). Since each of these dimensions is independent, there are theoretically
150 different components of intelligence.

Guilford< researched and developed a wide variety of psychometric tests to measure the
specific abilities predicted by SI theory. These tests provide an operational definition of the
many abilities proposed by the theory. Furthermore, factor analysis was used to determine
which tests appeared to measure the same or different abilities.

Parenthetically, it is interesting to note that a major impetus for Guilford< 's theory was his
interest in creativity ( Guilford< , 1950). The divergent production operation identifies a number
of different types of creative abilities.

Scope/Application:

SI theory is intended to be a general theory of human intelligence. Its major application (besides
educational research) has been in personnel selection and placement. Meeker (1969) examines
its application to education.
Example

The following example illustrates three closely related abilities that differ in terms of operation,
content, and product. Evaluation of semantic units (EMU) is measured by the ideational fluency
test in which individuals are asked to make judgements about concepts. For example: "Which of
the following objects best satisfies the criteria, hard and round: an iron, a button, a tennis ball or
a lightbulb? On the other hand, divergent production of semantic units (DMU) would require the
person to list all items they can think of that are round and hard in a given time period. Divergent
production of symbolic units (DSU) involves a different content category than DMU, namely
words (e.g., "List all words that end in 'tion'). Divergent production of semantic relations (DMR)
would involve the generation of ideas based upon relationships. An example test item for this
ability would be providing the missing word for the sentence: "The fog is as ____ as sponge"
(e.g., heavy, damp, full).

Principles:

1. Reasoning and problem-solving skills (convergent and divergent operations) can be

subdivided into 30 distinct abilities (6 products x 5 contents).
2. Memory operations can be subdivided into 30 different skills (6 products x 5 contents).
3. Decision-making skills (evaluation operations) can be subdivided into 30 distinct abilities (6
products x 5 contents).
4. Language-related skills (cognitive operations) can be subdivided into 30 distinct abilities (6
products x 5 contents).
Guilford's 'structure of intellect' model

Content
 Figural - the properties of stimuli we can experience through the senses e.g. colour,
loudness, shape, texture.
 Symbolic - numbers, letters, symbols, designs.
 Semantic - the meaning of words, ideas.
 Behavioural - the actions and expressions of people.
Operations
 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.
 Evalution - deciding whether the intellectual contents are positive or negative, good or
bad etc.
Products
 Units - a single number, letter or word.
 Classes - 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.
 Implication - making inferences from separate pieces of information.

Piaget's Stages of Intellectual Development

Teaching Model Based on Vygotsky's Theory

Tharp and Gallimore (1988) emphasize scaffolding in an approach they call "assisted discovery,"
which calls for explicitly teaching students to use private speech to talk themselves through
problem solving.

Comparing Erikson's and Piaget's Stages

 Assimilation and Accommodation in Cognitive Development

Assimilation refers to the tendency to fit new information into existing frameworks. For
example, when a child first sees porpoises swimming in a large tank of water, s/he interprets this
information within existing mental frameworks and labels them "fish." Later, the child learns that
porpoises breathe air and like to be petted, and forms a new concept for air-breathing but water-
loving animals. This latter point illustrates the process of accommodation, which is the tendency
to alter existing concepts or mental frameworks in response to new information.