Essentials of Human Intelligence

If you want your baby to become smart, you have to understand what human intelligence is all about. Human intelligence includes certain key elements in the human brain: curiosity; creativity; self-control, verbal communication; and non-verbal communication.

Curiosity may kill a cat, but it will surely boost your baby’s brain cells. Your baby must show his desire to explore and experience new things through his sensory organs; his brain cells must be able to expect certain results based on his own observation; his brain must then test and evaluate his expectation before he stores his acquired and verified information in the database of his brain. This whole mental process increases his brain cells by preparing him mentally to ask questions, such as “what if” and “why not,” further down the road to intelligence. Arouse your baby’s curiosity to know more, and gratify his desire with more know-how.

Creativity is essential to intelligence in that it lets the mind think out of the preconditioned mindset to perceive new relationships between old things. It also involves a healthy dose of risk-taking, without which the mind may become static and uncreative.

Self-control or delayed self-gratification may also play a pivotal role in increasing intelligence over the long haul. Why? It is because distractions may be a stumbling block to learning; if your baby’s brain can stay on task and say “no” to any unproductive distractions, he can increase his intelligence.

Verbal communication skills play a pivotal role in the long-term development of intelligence. All babies have to learn the different sounds of the language they speak (phonemes), and understand the social implications of those words. Once the verbal skills of communication are acquired and mastered, learning in other areas will advance and accelerate Provide every opportunity to interact with your baby to teach him verbal skills to communicate with you.

Nonverbal communication skills are as important as, if not more important than, the verbal ones in assessing human intelligence. The explanation is that nonverbal skills require the mental capability to read the mind of another by looking at the behavior and facial expression of that individual. Babies love to look at human faces. Give your baby every opportunity to study your face to develop his own nonverbal communication skill. According to psychologist Paul Ekman, all humans use similar facial muscles to express their similar emotions of anger, fear, sadness, and happiness, that is, their body language.

All in all, intelligence is the capability of the mind to connect dots that are seemingly unconnected through creativity and imagination.

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Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau