Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism.

The first introduction is a retrospective on the origins and cultural effects of Frames of Mind, first published in 1983. Gardner relates how the idea of multiple intelligences came to him. As a student of developmental and cognitive psychology, Gardner was struck by the absence of discussion of the arts in texts about measuring intelligence. Gardner, a skilled pianist, considered his own artistic study to be a fundamental aspect of his own intelligence. When studying the neurology of people who survived traumatic brain injuries, Gardner was again struck by their fragmented abilities: losing the ability to verbalize but not to compute, for example. He realized that different parts of the brain are responsible for different aspects of human intelligence.

These theories led Gardner to join the Project on Human Potential in 1979 in an effort to synthesize his studies of both brain damage and childhood cognitive development. He developed the theory of seven crucial areas of aptitude in the brain, all of which operate fairly independently of one another. He decided to call these aptitudes “intelligences,” knowing that doing so would place him in direct opposition to “the psychological establishment” (xi), which at the time was a huge proponent of intellectual quotient (IQ) tests as the premier measurement of intelligence.