Measurement of practical intelligence via video technology

For years (actually, since I finished my dissertation on the topic) I've found Stephen Greenspan's Model of Personal Competence, which includes (depending on which revision of his model one is examining) the broad competence domains of physical and emotional competence and conceptual, practical, and social intelligence, a useful meta-model for conceptualizing human competence. [Note - For CHC thinkers, CHC abilities would fall under the broad umbrella of Conceptual Intellignece.] However, a major stumbling block in research and applied measurement has been difficulty in developing valid measures of social and practical intelligence.

Although based on a very small sample of convenience, Greenspan and Yahon-Chamovitz recently pubished the following encouraging article. The article reports on the promising use of technology (video portrayal of everday events) in the development of potentially valid measures of the cognitive component of practical intelligence. The article reference and abstract is provided below.

Anyone interested in developing measures of the cognitive component of practical intelligence should give this brief article a quick look. I can envision subjects responding to questions based on their viewing of video clips of everyday events presented via the screen of a handheld PDA (personal digital assistant).

YalonChamovitz, S., & Greenspan, S. (2005). Ability to identify, explain and solve problems in everyday tasks: preliminary validation of a direct video measure of practical intelligence. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 26(3), 219-230.

• Recent developments in the definitional literature on mental retardation emphasize the need to ground the concept of adaptive behavior in an expanded model of intelligence, which includes practical and social intelligence. Development of a direct measure of practical intelligence might increase the likelihood that an assessment of this domain would be included in the diagnostic process of mental retardation. The current paper reports on the preliminary exploration of the validity and utility of using a videotaped portrayal of everyday tasks, with built-in errors, as a measure of practical intelligence. A correlation of .79 was found between the practical intelligence video score and the Vineland domestic and community sub-domains score in 50 adults with mild and moderate mental retardation. This suggests that the instruments are essentially measuring the same domain of human competence. The unexplained variance may be attributed to the fact that the video measure is more directly measuring cognition.