Intelligence is the ability to carry on abstract thinking. Munn: It is the capacity for flexible adjustment. Goddard: Intelligence is the degree of availability of one’s experiences for the solution of immediate problems and the anticipation of the future ones. Spearman.
Intelligence is a concept and thus is impossible to completely define by one comprehensive definition. Since intelligence is a concept, there are no words that are able to completely explain the concept, but there are words that can give a general idea of the concept.
Another characteristic is that children move through the stages in an invariant sequence. Piaget believed that there is a same order that children follow. Third, the stages are universal. Stages in cognitive theory assume the theory to include all children everywhere (Berk, 2003).
For example, in 1921,the American psychologists Lewis M. Terman and Edward L. Thorndike debated about the the definition of intelligence, Terman stressing the ability to think abstractly and Thorndike emphasising learning and the ability to give good responses to questions.
