Fluid intelligence involves being able to think and reason abstractly and solve problems. This ability is considered independent of learning, experience, and education.
Generational Intelligences
People often claim that their intelligence seems to decline as they age. However, research suggests that while fluid intelligence begins to decrease after adolescence, crystallized intelligence continues to increase throughout adulthood.
Psychologist Raymond Cattell first proposed the concepts of fluid and crystallized intelligence and further developed the theory with his student John Horn. The Cattell-Horn theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence suggests that intelligence is composed of different abilities that interact and work together to produce overall individual intelligence.
What is Fluid Intelligence?
- Global capacity to reason
- Ability to learn new things
- Think abstractly and solve new problems
- Both types of intelligence increase throughout childhood and adolescence.
- Crystallized intelligence continues to grow throughout adulthood.
- Many aspects of fluid intelligence peak in adolescence and begin to decline progressively beginning around age 30 or 40.
What is Crystallized Intelligence?
- Prior learning and past experiences
- Based on facts
- Increases with age
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Crystallized intelligence continues to grow throughout adulthood.
- Many aspects of fluid intelligence peak in adolescence and begin to decline progressively beginning around age 30 or 40.
The ability to perceive relationships independent of previous specific practice or instruction concerning those relationships. This aspect of intelligence involves the ability to solve problems and reason about things independent of previously existing knowledge.1 When you encounter an entirely new problem that cannot be solved with your existing knowledge, you must rely on fluid intelligence to solve it.
Fluid intelligence tends to decline during late adulthood. Certain cognitive skills associated with fluid intelligence tend to decline as people reach later adulthood. Fluid intelligence has long been believed to peak quite early in life, but research published in 2015 suggests that some aspects of fluid intelligence may peak as late as age 40.
Crystallized intelligence does tend to peak later in life, hitting its apex around age 60 or 70.
- Extended self
- Digital self
- Customer loyalty
- Object attachment
- Social media