1. If you have
digested all I have deposited so far on WHAT MAKES A GENIUS, then you will
certainly realize that OUR PERRENNIAL ALBASTROS IN THIS BACKWARD MOVING
CONTRAPTION BY BRITISH COLONIAL OPPRESSORS IS ENDEMIC.
2. It will take
hundreds of years for this nation to recover from THE DAMAGES THAT THE
INTRODUCTION OF QUOTA SYSTEM HAS DONE TO EXCELLENCE IN EVERY FACET OF
DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA.
3. Therefore,
all I am trying to make Nigerians UNDERSTAND is that WE ARE FOREVER DOOMED SO
LONG AS WE FAIL TO REALISE THE WICKEDNESS OF OUR FORMER BRITISH COLONOAL SLAVE
DRIVERS!
Let us start from the basic information on
INTELLIGENCE as informed psychologists see the development of this all
important trait in human beings and then compare and contrast WHAT WE HAVE IN NIGERIA
FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE LEARNING ABILITY
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A variety of factors determine
an individual’s ability to learn and the speed of learning. Four important
factors are the individual’s age, motivation, prior experience, and
intelligence. In addition, certain developmental and learning disorders can
impair a person’s ability to learn.
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A.
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Age
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Animals and people of
all ages are capable of the most common types of learning—habituation,
classical conditioning, and operant conditioning. As children grow, they become
capable of learning more and more sophisticated types of information. Swiss
developmental psychologist Jean Piaget theorized that children go through four
different stages of cognitive development. In the sensorimotor stage (from
birth to about 2 years of age), infants use their senses to learn about their
bodies and about objects in their immediate environments. In the preoperational
stage (about 2 to 7 years of age), children can think about objects and events
that are not present, but their thinking is primitive and self-centered, and
they have difficulty seeing the world from another person’s point of view. In
the concrete operational stage (about 7 to 11 years of age), children learn
general rules about the physical world, such as the fact that the amount of
water remains the same if it is poured between containers of different shapes.
Finally, in the formal operational stage (ages 11 and up), children become
capable of logical and abstract thinking. See also Child Development.
Adults continue to learn
new knowledge and skills throughout their lives. For example, most adults can
successfully learn a foreign language, although children usually can achieve
fluency more easily. If older adults remain healthy, their learning ability
generally does not decline with age. Age-related illnesses that involve a
deterioration of mental functioning, such as Alzheimer’s disease, can severely
reduce a person’s ability to learn.
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B.
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Motivation
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Learning is usually most
efficient and rapid when the learner is motivated and attentive. Behavioral
studies with both animals and people have shown that one effective way to
maintain the learner’s motivation is to deliver strong and immediate reinforcers
for correct responses. However, other research has indicated that very high
levels of motivation are not ideal. Psychologists believe an intermediate level
of motivation is best for many learning tasks. If a person’s level of
motivation is too low, he or she may give up quickly. At the other extreme, a
very high level of motivation may cause such stress and distraction that the
learner cannot focus on the task. See Motivation.
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C.
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Prior Experience
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How well a person learns
a new task may depend heavily on the person’s previous experience with similar
tasks. Just as a response can transfer from one stimulus to another through the
process of generalization, people can learn new behaviors more quickly if the
behaviors are similar to those they can already perform. This phenomenon is
called positive transfer. Someone who has learned to drive one car, for
example, will be able to drive other cars, even though the feel and handling of
the cars will differ. In cases of negative transfer, however, a person’s
prior experience can interfere with learning something new. For instance, after
memorizing one shopping list, it may be more difficult to memorize a different
shopping list.
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D.
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Intelligence
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Psychologists have long
known that people differ individually in their level of intelligence, and thus
in their ability to learn and understand. Scientists have engaged in heated
debates about the definition and nature of intelligence. In the 1980s American
psychologist Howard Gardner proposed that there are many different forms of
intelligence, including linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, and
interpersonal intelligence. A person may easily learn skills in some categories
but have difficulty learning in others. See Intelligence.
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E.
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Learning and Developmental
Disorders
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A variety of disorders
can interfere with a person’s ability to learn new skills and behaviors.
Learning and developmental disorders usually first appear in childhood and
often persist into adulthood. Children with attention-deficit hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD) may not be able to sit still long enough to focus on specific
tasks. Children with autism typically have difficulty speaking, understanding
language, and interacting with people. People with mental retardation,
characterized primarily by very low intelligence, may have trouble mastering
basic living tasks and academic skills. Children with learning or developmental
disorders often receive special education tailored to their individual needs
and abilities.
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All
rights reserved.
INTELLIGENCE
AND BEHAVIOR IN MONKEYS
Monkeys are among the most social of
all mammals. Some species live in small family groups, but many form much
larger troops that may contain more than a hundred animals. The size of these
social groups is strongly influenced by what each species eats and the risks it
has to take when foraging for food.
Like other primates, monkeys have
varied diets. Some species, such as howler monkeys, feed largely on leaves, but
most eat a mixture of foods, including leaves, flowers, bird eggs, and small
animals. The leaf-eaters often live in small groups, noisily defending their
area of forest from their neighbors. Foraging high in the forest canopy, they
are safe from most ground-based predators, although they do have to be on their
guard against birds of prey. Monkeys that often feed on the ground take greater
risks because their food is more scattered. They face a greater chance of being
attacked by large predators, such as cheetahs, lions, and hyenas. To survive,
they tend to band together into larger troops.
Apart from the fearsome-toothed
baboons, few monkeys have good defensive weaponry. Instead, they survive
largely by using their intelligence. Ground-feeders, traveling in troops, often
take turns acting as sentinel, making specific alarm calls to alert their
companions to approaching danger. In trees, monkeys have other ways of
outwitting their enemies. Capuchins, for example, sometimes fend off
inquisitive predators by urinating on them from high above or by jumping up and
down to make dead branches fall on the predators. Most monkeys can breed
at any time of the year, so their troops often contain young of many different
ages. Courtship is typically brief, with few of the complex rituals seen in
many other animals (see Animal Courtship and Mating). Female monkeys
show that they are receptive to mating by changes in behavior, scents, and
visual signals. In Old World monkeys, these
signals include color changes in patches of bare skin around the genitals.
Unlike many mammals, primates have good color vision, so these changes soon
attract the interest of the males.
Monkeys usually give birth to just one
or two young, but some, such as marmosets, are known to have triplets. Most
monkeys seem to have gestation periods ranging from 4 to 8 months, but the
length of gestation of many species is unknown. As with other primates, a long
period of growth and development enables the young to learn skills from the
adults around them. The young stay with their mothers at least until they are
weaned, and in many species the daughters remain with their mother’s family
group for life. In many species, males often leave their mother’s family group
when they reach adolescence. Depending on the species, adolescent and young
adult males may lead solitary lives, live in bachelor groups, or move from
group to group.
Compared to other mammals, monkeys are
often long-lived. Life spans in the wild are difficult to gauge accurately, but
in captivity some monkeys have survived to be more than 50 years old.
Microsoft
® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
WHEN SHALL WE BEGIN TO BUILD AIRCRAFTS
OR INVENT LIKE OTHER NATIONS ARE DOING
