The concept of intelligence and its role in lifelong learning and success.

This article proposes a definition of intelligence as com-prising the mental abilities necessary for adaptation to, as well as selection and shaping of any environmental context. According to this definition, although the behav-ior that is labeled as intelligent may differ from 1 envi-ronmental context o another, the mental processes un-derlying this behavior do not. An individuals ability to apply these processes may differ from 1 context o an-other, however. The abilities are applied to achieve xter-nal correspondence to the world and internal coherence among various knowledge and belief structures. The rele-vance of the definition for understanding current theo-ries, testing in the field of intelligence, as well as for understanding the role of inteUigence in lifelong learning is discussed. S uppose some psychologists wrote a book sug- i gesting that green people are better educated, more economically successful, and more socially adept than purple people, largely because the green people are more intelligent than the purple ones. Such comparisons are, in fact, made, although the groups that are compared in the real world are not, typically, either green or purple. Before we draw any conclusions about either group of people, we may wish to consider exactly what is meant by intelligence.