Ability, thinking style and academic performance

A recent study by researchers at Yale University implies that thinking styles affect how well students
perform in school – specifically, how well students perform on different types of assessments. Elena
Grigorenko and Robert L. Sternberg conducted a study of 199 gifted high-school students enrolled in the
Yale Summer School Program. They conclude that “after controlling for levels of abilities, styles of
thinking significantly contribute to prediction of academic performance.”

A student’s ability level is a major predictor of her school success. Yet abilities are not completely
responsible for school performance. Researchers have been studying the style of students’ thinking,
perceiving, problem solving and remembering to determine its contribution to achievement in school.

A style of thinking is a preferred way of thinking, a tendency to use abilities in a certain way. People use
different thinking styles on different kinds of tasks, and thinking styles can change as we grow up and
age. No style is inherently good or bad, but some are more beneficial than others in certain situations or
for particular tasks.

According to Grigorenko and Sternberg, styles can be described as legislative (a preference for creating
and planning activities), executive (preference for implementing and doing) or judicial (preference for
judging, evaluating and comparing).

In addition to the types of preferred activity, people generally like to think either globally (large
abstractions) or locally (concrete specifics), and either in innovative ways or traditional. Individuals also
differ in the way they prefer to focus: to single-mindedly pursue one goal, to work on prioritized or
equally important multiple goals, or to be unstructured in their approach to a task.

In addition to thinking style, researchers theorize about different kinds of ability and its relationship to
academic achievement. Sternberg’s triarchic model of intelligence distinguishes three kinds of
intellectual giftedness: analytic, creative and practical.

The analytically gifted are strong in analyzing, evaluating and critiquing; the creatively gifted are good at
discovering, creating, and inventing; and the practically gifted excel in implementing, utilizing and
applying.

The purpose of Grigorenko and Sternberg’s study was to investigate the relationship between different
types of abilities and different thinking styles, and their effect on academic performance. Thirteen- to
sixteen-year-old high school students were divided into five groups for their four-week summer
psychology course. Students were defined as exhibiting either:

a high level of analytical ability, high creative ability, high practical ability, balanced abilities, or lack of
giftedness (they scored below the group average for all three abilities).

During the intensive college-level summer course, students read text, listened to a lecture series and
attended afternoon sessions. There were four types of afternoon sessions, in which leaders emphasized
different skills: memory (traditional), analytical thinking, creative thinking or practical thinking. The
students were divided into groups so that all groups had close to equal numbers of students showing
each of the five ability patterns. Thus, some students were placed in groups that matched their abilities,
while the remaining students were mismatched.

These researchers found that thinking styles predict school success. Students were viewed by their
teachers as achieving higher levels when the students’ profile of styles matched those of their teachers.
Teachers appear to value more highly students who are stylistically similar to themselves. All students
received identical kinds of assessments: two major exams that involved tasks testing analytical skills
(compare Freud’s theory of dreaming to Jung’s), creative skills (design an experiment to test a theory of
dreaming), and practical skills (discuss the implications of Jung’s theory of dreaming for your life).

Results

In summary, a variety of styles are associated with high levels of ability. Certain thinking styles, however,
contribute significantly to the predictions of academic performance. Whether the type of instruction
students were given matched their style, did not affect their performance. But students with particular
thinking styles do better in some forms of evaluation than in others. For example, the judicial style
(judging, evaluating and comparing) predicted better academic performance. They found no difference
in profiles of styles in girls versus boys, and there were no direct links between styles and abilities.

In conclusion, students’ performance was associated not only with their levels and types of ability, but
also with at least three thinking styles (executive, legislative and judicial). In this short, four-week
course, the type of instruction did not appear to have a significant impact on student performance.
However, different types of evaluation benefited some students more than others. Written
examinations were beneficial for judicial thinkers, whereas final projects favored legislative thinkers and
disadvantaged executive thinkers. These results clearly suggest that different types of assessment
benefit different types of thinkers. Grigorenko and Sternberg stress, therefore, that thinking styles do
matter. The diversity of styles among students implies that students need a variety of assessments to
maximize and reveal the extent of their talents and achievements.

“Styles of Thinking, Abilities, and Academic Performance”, Exceptional Children, Volume 63, Number 3,
Spring 1997,pp. 295-312.

*From Harv-Kays view it means that analytical skill is a problem solving skill. Anih (2003) said that
analytical skill centered on creative thinking. Anih, further stated that analytical skill is, a set of skill used
to process and generalize information and beliefs and the habit, based on intellectual commitment of
using these skills to guide behaviors, which can be constructed with acquisition and retention of
information.Analytical skill therefore can be described as that skill needed to solve a complex
problem.Sternberg & Scott (2011) defined analytical skill as the ability to visualize, articulate, and solve
both complex and complicated problems and concepts, and make decisions that make sense based on
available information. Such skills include demonstration of the ability to apply logical thinking to
gathering and analyzing information, designing solutions to problems and testing of hypotheses .(Harv-
Kay,2010). Based on the points raised by Sternberg (2003), he pointed out that Analytical skill is made
up of some basic components which includes critical thinking and argumentation, drawing inferences
and developing conclusion; problem definitions and identification; inductive reasoning, generating
alternatives to the problems at hand and lot more. The above components of analytical skill are of vital
importance in the teaching and learning of science subjects like Chemistry in a developing country like
Nigeria especially at the secondary school level. (Jimoh, 2004; Olehi, 2005, Anusiem, 2006). That is why
in Nigeria today great emphasis is being placed on industrial and technological development and
advancement; as a result, students mainly at the secondary school level are encouraged to learn
chemistry to a greater extent (Odesina, 2008). http://www.ijesi.org/papers/Vol%202(7)/Version-
2/I0272044057.pdf

Sternberg's Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

Sternberg's Triarchic Theory of Human Intelligence (1977, 1985, 1995) subsumes both Spearman�s g
and underlying information processing components. His triarchic theory includes three facets or
subtheories:

 Analytical (componential)
 Creative (experiential)
 Practical (contextual)

Sternberg's theory builds on his earlier componential approach to reasoning. His theory is mostly based
on observing Yale graduate students. Sternberg believes that if intelligence is properly defined &
measured it will translate to real-life success.

Sternberg's Triarchic Theory is an important effort to synthesize the various theories of intelligence.

Analytical (componential) Facet (or Subtheory)

Analytical Intelligence similar to the standard psychometric definition of intelligence e.g. as measured by
Academic problem solving: analogies and puzzles, and corresponds to his earlier componential
intelligence. Sternberg considers this reflects how an individual relates to his internal world.

Sternberg believes that Analytical Intelligence (Academic problem-solving skills) is based on the joint
operations of metacomponents and performance components and knowledge acquisition components
of intelligence

Metacomponents: control, monitor and evaluate cognitive processing. These are the executive
functions to order and organise performance and knowledge acquisition components. They are the
higher-order processes that order and organise the performance components. Used to analyze
problems and pick a strategy for solving them. They decide what to do and the performance
components actually do it.
Performance Components: execute strategies assembled by the metacomponents. They are the basic
operations involved in any cognitive act. They are the cognitive processes that enable us to encode
stimuli, hold information in short-term memory, make calculations, perform mental calculations,
mentally compare different stimuli, retrieve information from long-term memory.

Knowledge acquisition components: are the processes used in gaining and storing new knowledge - i.e.
capacity for learning. The strategies you use to help memorize things exemplify the processes that fall
into this category.

Sternberg feels that IDs in intelligence are related to IDs in the use of these cognitive processes. He feels
that people with better reasoning ability generally spend more time understanding the problem but
reach their solution faster than those who are less skilled at the task.
http://wilderdom.com/personality/L2-2SternbergTriarchicTheory.html#Analytical

Over the course of his career Sternberg seems to be intrigued by the ways different people actually use
their intelligence — the interplay of the varied “metacomponents.” He contends that what makes the
difference in determining if one is smart depends on how folks use and balance their mental aptitudes.
Early on, in describing these aptitudes Sternberg keyed in on our methods of mental self-government,
as well as how we balance and use them situationally. Thus in his view measuring intelligence not only
entails assessing how much of a certain ability we each have, but also how we use and/or combine our
abilities to solve problems or adapt to certain environments. In contrast to others’ descriptions of
intelligence, the governmental model leads to the assessment of how intelligence is used, directed, or
exploited. Two individuals of equal intelligence might use or combine metacomponents quite
differently. It then might be the recombination, use or directed application of the metacomponents that
could make one seem more intelligent or more successful than the other in tackling certain tasks.

(Summarized from: Sternberg, Robert (1988) The Triarchic Mind: A New Theory of Intelligence. NY:
Viking Press.) Leslie Owen Wilson, Ed. D…. http://thesecondprinciple.com/optimal-learning/sternbergs-
views-intelligence/

Analytical intelligence refers to the ability to complete academic, problem-solving tasks, such as those
used in traditional intelligence tests. These types of tasks usually present well-defined problems that
have only a single correct answer. For example, questions may ask about the meanings of words (such
as 'is the meaning of concave the same as or opposite to the meaning of convex?'). People with a high-
level of analytical intelligence would be likely to achieve well in school exams such as the GAT and in
similar types of tasks that mainly depend on what is learned in school and through books. This is why
Sternberg refers to analytical intelligence as being observed in people who are school smart or book
smart.