The public perception of people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is that it is a disability.  However, when seen through the lens of Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, the situation is more complex with both strengths and challenges serving as a truer picture of autism.  People identified with ASD usually have difficulty with...Read More

Do you know your IQ?  Do you even care?  Howard Gardner at Harvard University says that IQ is far too limited a measure of a person’s human potential.  In his renowned theory of multiple intelligences, he came up with 8 and possibly even 9 intelligences that give a greater range of human accomplishment.  What are...Read More

There’s a growing awareness in the scientific community that animals are far more intelligent than we previously supposed (for an excellent summary of what’s known about ”animal cognition” click here).  Now we can expand our understanding of this field by connecting it to Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences.  Gardner says there are eight (or...Read More

Were people intelligent in prehistoric times?  There’s no reason not so think so, given the fact that the times haven’t been long enough to account for significant genetic changes one way or the other. There’s a field of study called cognitive archeology that attempts to hypothesize the inner cognitive processes of our prehistoric ancestors. An...Read More

The old adage ”use it or lose it” seems to apply to the human brain according to findings in neuroscience.  Studies of lifelong learners (most famously, a group of nuns in Mankato, Minnesota) show that engaging in a variety of stimulating activities throughout adult life can result in lower incidence of Alzheimer’s disease and better...Read More