Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Robert J. Sternberg 207
intelligence through three fundamental subtheories, including the contextual, componential, and
experiential, as he structures his Triarchic Theory of Intelligence. The componential focuses on
the relation of intelligence to the internal world, the experiential addresses the varying levels
of experience in task performance, and the contextual suggests that information processing is
applied to experience in order to achieve one of the three broad goals of environmental adaptation,
change, or selection.
Within each subtheory, there are specific mental-processing components. For the componential
subtheory, there are metacomponents, performance components, and knowledge acquisition components.
Metacomponents relate to recognizing the existence of a problem, assessing the nature
of the problem, selecting and organizing the lower-order mental processes to solve the problem,
implementing and monitoring the problem-solving mental strategy, judiciously soliciting external
feedback, and evaluating the problem-solving process. The performance components refer
to the lower-order mental processes that are activated to fulfill the instructions of the metacomponents.
The knowledge acquisition components learn what is needed for the metacomponents
and performance components to eventually fulfill their tasks. It engages the mental processes of
selective encoding, which involves determining relevant from irrelevant information; selective
combination, which requires that seemingly isolated pieces of information are merged into a
useful whole that may or may not resemble the original parts; and selective comparison, which
entails the connection of newly acquired information to previously acquired information. According
to Sternberg, the problem-solving approach related to the componential framework is
analytical, which reflects those skills used to analyze, judge, evaluate, compare, or contrast. This
paradigm is most consistent with the traditional psychometric conceptualizations and measures
of intelligence.
The experiential subtheory addresses intelligence from the perspective of whether a task
or situation is relatively novel or in the process of automatization or habituation. Assessing
intelligence as a function of task novelty is an essential element of Sternberg’s theory because
he believes that intelligence is not only demonstrated in the ability to learn and reason with new
ideas but to do so within new conceptual models. It is not sufficient to grow within a particular
conceptual system with which one is familiar but to expand one’s learning and reasoning across
conceptual systems that may be somewhat or completely unfamiliar. For Sternberg, the intelligent
person is the one who can not only apply existing knowledge to new situations in order to achieve
a particular goal but also more readily move from conscious efforts to learn a new task to an
automatization of the new learning. The problem-solving approach associated with this subtheory
is the creative, which includes skills used to create, invent, discover, imagine, or suppose.
The contextual subtheory conceptualizes intelligence as mental activity to achieve one or
more of three particular goals, including environmental adaptation, shaping of environment,
or environment selection. The focus of this subtheory is not with the specific behavior or the
external forces that facilitate or impede the contextualized activity but rather with the specific
mental activities utilized to select and attain a particular goal. Within this paradigm, Sternberg
concentrates on assessing intelligence as a function of how individuals engage their real-world
everyday external environments. Sternberg seeks to recognize that socialization has an impact
on how individuals determine which goal is appropriate and how they then work to achieve the
particular goal. In terms of a problem-solving approach, practical abilities, represented by skills
used to apply, put into practice, implement, or use, are characteristic of the contextual subtheory.
While this framework is often considered in terms of possessing “street smartness,” it is more
significantly about an individual’s purposive adaptation to her real-world environment in order to
achieve particular goals.
Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence has been described as the model that synthesizes
the paradigms of intelligence that preceded it. While this is a fair assessment, it falls short of