Isolating the Components of Intelligence.

In a recent volume Intelligence, Information Processing, and Analogical Reasoning The Componential Analysis of Human Abilities, 1977, the writer proposed a method called componential analysis that provides a means to isolate the components of intelligent performance. The method was described in detail, and then tested in a series of experiments. But an important question was left unanswered by this early work -- whether componential analysis 1s generalizable to tasks other than analogies. More recently, he has been investigating the generalization of the methodology to other tasks, and has also been engaged in extending the methodology in order to increase its flexibility of application. The present article 1 briefly summarizes the structure of a componential analysis 2 Describes the method of precueing--the method originally used for isolating the components of intelligence, and 3 describes new methods that have also been successful in isolating these components in a variety of reasoning tasks.