Charles E Spearman was born on 10th of September 1863 in the city of London. He was a British psychologist who came up with the two-factor theory of intelligence, which we would be discussing in the later stages of this video. While, filling in as an official in the British Armed Forces, Spearman came to accept that any huge development, in way of thinking, would come about primarily through the study of psychology.
Throughout the following ten years, he worked for the British Army. worked in consistency with Wilhelm Wundt, the author of Experimental Psychology, at the University of Leipzig, and he took his PhD there. He joined the staff of University College, London, and was professor there for about 20 years.
He has done a lot of work and development in the field of general intelligence. Now let us talk about Spearman's two-factor theory of general intelligence. He proposed this theory in the year of 1904. His theory suggests that intelligence consists of two factors, the basic and general intelligence known as the G-factor, and specific skills and abilities known as the S-factor.
The first factor is the G-factor. The G stands for general intelligence. General intelligence is the basic intelligence that you are born with. You do not have to learn this or work on it.
It is the inborn intelligence. that supports your day-to-day tasks. It is genetic to a certain extent. These abilities do not need to be polished or improved, they are constant.
Also, these abilities vary from person to person. Their intensity is different in each individual. It is primarily just a general mental energy. These abilities include the way you walk, the way you talk, etc. The second factor is the S-factor.
The S stands from specific abilities. Specific abilities refer to the skills that are inculcated in you from your external environment. It is a skill that you learn and then ace.
You have to be consistent in practicing these skills. These skills are not exactly constant, the more you practice, the better they get, but if you do not practice, your skills will wear out. You can have more than one specific ability. Specific abilities are not necessarily the same. These abilities don't exactly help in day-to-day tasks, but instead they help you in enhancing your overall personality.
This ability varies from activity to activity. As in, a person could be amazingly good at one task, but he could perform really terribly at another task. These abilities also vary from person to person. One person could ace an ability, but on the other hand, another person could be very terrible at the same ability. These abilities include dancing, singing, cooking, etc.
So, all in all, according to Spearman, intelligence has two parts, general, and specific. We are born with general abilities as we inherit that from our parents, whereas, we learn specific abilities according to our interests. This is all about Spearman's two-factor theory.
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