Gardner's Multiple Intelligences

Howard Gardner started his academic career in a neuropsychological unit investigating brain functions of patients suffering from strokes, tumours, physical wounds and some other forms of injuries, which affect individuals ' cognitive and psycho-social performance. The researchers aimed to understand the abilities of human brain and its functions, with emphasis on their development, processes involved and effects of brain damages on human behaviour (Gardner, 1983). These early career experiences lead Gardner to the conclusion, that current approach to human intelligence lack understanding of its complexity. Research results clearly indicated that different executive functions are located in different brain locations, thus it is impossible to

language processing Broca 's area connected with Wernicke 's speech area); (2) an evolutionary history and evolutionary plausibility – human being is not detached from its ancestors, as well as other species it learned to survive (i.e. all the species have certain sets of capabilities enabling them survival and evolutionary progress); (3) an identifiable core operation or set of operations – particular capacities serves as a core to other functions, and they contribute to the effectiveness of functions at the higher level, e.g. “linguistic intelligence includes core operations of phonemic discriminations, command of syntax, sensitivity to the pragmatic uses of language, and acquisition of word meanings” (Gardner, 1999, p.37); (4) susceptibility to encoding in a symbol system – each system develops in cultural context, specific social setting and it is meant to be understood by certain groups of people (e.g. biology students, medics, business professionals); (5) a distinct developmental history – to reach a mastery in a given area, one must develop different skills and they are acquired in a different way, (6) the

his orthogenetic approach) and that MI theory basically mirrors cognitive styles as described by Mayers-Briggs (especially in terms of logical-mathematical intelligence which has practically the same description as the field independent cognitive style, or bodily-kinesthetic intelligence to cognitive styles ' sensory modalities and motor control). Also Visser, Ashton and Vernon (2006) had noticed striking similarity of Gardner 's descriptions of intelligence to the factors distinguished by Carrol (1993; in: Visser, Ashton&Vernon, 2006). They found also some degree of convergence with Thurstone 's theory of primary mental abilities or group factors (1938; in: Visser, Ashton&Vernon, 2006). Although it is hard to imagine that these theories were not known to Gardner at the time of formulation of his MI theory and are similar by coincidence, we can interpret these concurrences as forming a base of its development and serve as a confirmation of its theoretical