The Nine Multiple Intelligences

Intelligence is the capacity to process information and produce ideas and products that are useful to the current culture. The theory of multiple intelligences is a complete way of viewing intelligence. Information, ideas and products come in many forms, and so a measure of multiple intelligences can help find more areas for students to be successful in school and their personal life.

MI Advantage™ identifies nine distinct intelligences:

Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence icon Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence involves the ability to move and manipulate your body and objects within your environment in a fine-tuned, coordinated manner. It includes the ability to control both gross and fine motor muscles and coordinating the mind and body to control muscle groups so as to perform and remember body movements.
Existential intelligence iconExistential Intelligence involves the ability to view the big picture of how the world works and to ask questions that go beyond our normal sensory experiences. People with a high level of this intelligence tend to seek answers to difficult questions and seem more aware of their place in the world, and how everything fits together.
Interpersonal intelligence icon Interpersonal Intelligence includes understanding and working with people, establishing and maintaining person-to-person relationships, seeing the world from another’s perspective, communicating well verbally and nonverbally, cooperating in a group, having influence, and responding to the mood, temperament and intentions of others.
Intrapersonal intelligence icon Intrapersonal Intelligence includes the ability to understand oneself. This intelligence enables you to objectively reflect upon your own thinking and behavior, learn from that reflection, seek future self-improvement, and establish inner self-confidence.
Linguistic intelligence icon Linguistic Intelligence includes the ability to understand and use language effectively in reading, writing, speaking, and other symbolic forms, such as sign language and Braille. It also affects vocabulary and the ability to recognize and use humor, create verbal images, understand language patterns, and recognize relationships between words.
Logical-Mathematical intelligence iconLogical-Mathematical Intelligence includes a good ability to reason inductively (make conclusions based on observations) and deductively (make conclusions based on hypotheses). This intelligence also involves finding relationships between abstract ideas, recognizing logical sequences and patterns, recognizing problems and solving them.
Musical intelligence icon Musical Intelligence is the ability to play an instrument or sing, and encompasses a number of other capacities such as: recognizing and distinguishing tones, tonal patterns, rhythm and beat, discerning and differentiating sounds, enjoying and analyzing music, understanding musical structures, and creating melodies and rhythms.
Naturalist intelligence icon Naturalist Intelligence involves being able to recognize, appreciate and classify various features in the environment:. It also allows one to see the connections between different parts of the environment, to easily recognize when environmental changes occur, and to understand what impacts those changes might have.
Spatial intelligence icon Spatial Intelligence includes the ability to perceive objects accurately, transform and recreate images, and recognize how shapes and objects relate to each other. Spatial intelligence can be employed through touch and even hearing.

Return to Research page