Sternberg's Triarchic Model of Intelligence

Index: Sternberg's Triarchic Model of Intelligence

Componential
Metacomponents
Performance components
Knowledge-acquisition components

Sternberg believes that intellectual skills and thinking skills are inseparable, there is more to intelligence than thinking. With this as background, Stemberg developed a triarchic theory of Intelligence, consisting of three elements designed to explain each of his three ideas of what intelligence "should do" He labeled the three elements componential, experiential, and contextual. Let's examine each of them in' some detail.

Componential

Sternberg identified three types of information-processing component’s that constitute the initial segment of our intelligence: metacomponents, performance components, and knowledge-acquisition components.

Metacomponents

Metacomponents are the executive components of intelligence, used to plan, monitor, and evaluate problem-solving strategies. Sternberg suggested ways to improve such strategies and provided sample problems to solve. The suggestions are to identify the nature of a problem, select the steps necessary to solve it, devise a plan, and evaluate?

Performance components

Performance components help us execute the instructions of the metacomponents; they are the implementation segment of intelligence. Among the most important of these are inferring relations, applying these relations in new stimuli and comparing attributes of stimuli. Students must learn when to use the various components and to use them in as wide a variety of situations as possible. Inference is particularly important. hospital and infer that she is ill or injured. But could she not have taken a job there? Students need to learn that they need as much information as before making any inferences. (This example should make us aware of how impulsivity can work against a student's achievement.)

Knowledge-acquisition components

Knowledge-acquisition components refer primarily to our ability to acquire and use language, thus, enabling us to seize on contextual cues in solving problems. The key here is to help students determine which fact; are pertinent. Sternberg identified three crucial processes. The first is encoding, in which the individual detects relevant facts that are not immediately obvious. In the discovery of penicillin, for example, Fleming noticed that although mold had ruined his experiment, it had also killed. The second in which the individual see's a way of combining unrelated facts. Which the person combines old and new information. Sternberg notes that the three components are highly interactive: they generally act in tandem as they allow a person to plan, act. and receive feedback.