WHAT ARE CRYSTALLIZED INTELLIGENCE AND FLUID INTELLIGENCE? - PSYCHOLOGY - 2025

The Crystallized intelligence is a type of intelligence that depends on the life experience of the person, solidifies over the years and undergoes minimal processing. It was developed by the British psychologist Raymond Bernard Cattell in the middle of the last century.

It is a type of intelligence that implies knowledge that comes from previous training and past experience. Crystallized intelligence is opposed to fluid intelligence, a type of knowledge that refers to the ability to solve problems in a broad and strict sense.

Crystallized intelligence is a competence that is mainly made up of skills related to verbal comprehension, the establishment of semantic relationships, the evaluation and appreciation of experience, the establishment of judgments and conclusions, mechanical knowledge and spatial orientation.

Cattell coined the term crystallized intelligence to refer to the skills and abilities that people acquire through learning. It encompasses a set of skills, strategies and knowledge that represent the level of cognitive development achieved through the person's learning history.

Crystallized intelligence is included within Catell's theory and, according to the British psychologist, constitutes one of the two main cognitive abilities of the person together with fluid intelligence.

In fact, according to this theory, the development of crystallized intelligence depends on the extent to which a person invests his fluid intelligence in learning experiences.

In other words, the ability to learn new concepts (fluid intelligences) and the effort dedicated to learning will determine the degree of crystallized intelligence of people.

In this sense, crystallized intelligence and fluid intelligence feed into each other when establishing the intellectual development of the person. Likewise, both structures are closely related to physiological, psychological and contextual components.

Crystallized intelligence vs fluid intelligence

In order to properly understand the properties of crystallized intelligence, it is not only necessary to review its characteristics and elements, but its relationship with fluid intelligence must be analyzed.

In fact, the relationship between the two constructs constitutes the overall intellectual capacity of the person, which is why both types of intelligence constantly feed back.

Crystallized intelligence

Crystallized intelligence refers to the set of capacities, strategies and knowledge that constitute the degree of cognitive development achieved through learning, fluid intelligence makes up a set of thinking or reasoning abilities that can be applied to any topic or content.

In other words, fluid intelligence determines the ability of the person to learn, while crystallized intelligence refers to the knowledge acquired by the person.

Fluid intelligence

Unlike crystallized intelligence that can increase throughout life, fluid intelligence reaches its peak of development early, around adolescence.

Thus, according to Cattell's theory, it is understood that general intelligence is the sum of fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence.

The higher the fluid intelligence, the greater the development capacity of the crystallized intelligence, so the fluid one would determine the learning potential of the person, while the crystallized one establishes the total knowledge acquired over the years.

Components of Crystallized Intelligence

The term crystallized intelligence defines a type of intelligence in a broad and global sense. In other words, this concept does not refer to specific skills or abilities.

In this way, crystallized intelligence must be distinguished from other types of more specific classifications, such as naturalistic intelligence, musical intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence or interpersonal intelligence.

These constructs refer to specific abilities, on the other hand, crystallized intelligence defines all the competences that the person is capable of acquiring through learning and their abilities to acquire new knowledge (fluid intelligence).

In this sense, six main components of crystallized intelligence have been described:

• Language comprehension
• Use of semantic relationships
• Assessment of experience
• Establishment of judgments and conclusions
• Mechanical knowledge
• Spatial Orientation

Language comprehension

The skills that a person develops to understand and elaborate the meaning of language is one of the basic elements of crystallized intelligence.

In fact, linguistic ability is a key element for human beings to develop any type of learning. Thus, the ability to understand language is considered the most important element of crystallized intelligence.

The development of this competence is mainly determined by the fluid intelligence of the person. That is, in their personal abilities to develop understanding of language.

In addition, the effort and time spent on language learning is also related to the ability to understand language that the person develops.

As with most elements related to crystallized intelligence, several studies suggest that linguistic understanding can increase its development until late stages, including adulthood.

Use of semantic relations

Closely related to the understanding of language, another important element of crystallized intelligence appears: the use of semantic relationships.

This construct refers to the ability of the person not only to understand the meaning of language, but to construct, develop and express it.

In the elaboration of this intellectual competence lies a good part of the communicative capacity of the person, both in writing and orally.

Most studies on the development of semantic relationships suggest that the learning process is a key element. The greater the training aimed at increasing this type of competence, the greater the linguistic development of the individual.

Assessment of experience

Experience rating encompasses the outcome that occurs from all the learning experiences a person is exposed to. In this sense, this element constitutes all knowledge that an individual is capable of acquiring through both the training processes and the experience of concrete experiences.

At present it is maintained that this aspect of crystallized intelligence does not present a stable pattern of development. That is, it is not possible to establish a beginning and an end of the knowledge acquired by the person.

For this reason, the assessment of experience is a highly dynamic construct that does not limit its development to specific stages of the life of a subject, a fact that does happen with the competences related to fluid intelligence.

Establishment of judgments and conclusions

The establishment of judgments and conclusions is an element that is closely related to both the intellectual skills of the person and their personality traits.

It refers to the ability to elaborate personal thoughts and opinions, which are based on experience and the cognitive style developed by the individual.

It is a highly important construct since it allows the elaboration of personal cognitions, as well as the establishment of individual judgments and conclusions.

The establishment of judgments and conclusions is developed to a great extent from the evaluation of experience and plays a fundamental role in the development of self-knowledge.

Mechanical knowledge

The mechanical knowledge constitutes all those competences related to the performance of certain behaviors that a person develops.

This element of crystallized intelligence encompasses all kinds of competencies. Learning to ride a bicycle is a mechanical knowledge in the same way as knowing how to drive or being able to repair a freezer.

In this sense, mechanical knowledge can be as much or even broader than theoretical knowledge. The acquisition of both one and the other is modulated by the individual's learning capacity (fluid intelligence).

Spatial Orientation

Finally, spatial orientation is a basic skill that plays a major role in children's development and learning. In fact, aspects such as lateralization or psychomotor development depend on this competence of crystallized intelligence.

On the other hand, spatial orientation plays a fundamental role in the acquisition of writing and reading, so it is directly related to other elements such as language comprehension or linguistic development.

Likewise, this element is highly important when developing an adequate mental organization that allows a large number of activities and behaviors to be carried out correctly.

Cattell intelligence theory

Raymond Cattell was one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century. He dedicated his career to conducting multiple investigations about intelligence, as well as motivation and human personality.

Regarding his theory of intelligence, Cattell adopted the model of general intelligence of his professor Charles Sperman and transformed it, indicating the existence of two main types of intellectual capacities: fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence.

On the other hand, it should be noted that Cattell's theory of intelligence (beyond Sperman), was also influenced by the concepts postulated by Thurstone and Hebb, two important psychologists of the time.

More specifically, Cattell adopted from Sperman the core idea of ​​general intelligence or "g" factor and the possibility of creating intelligence tests. These elements are essential when constituting the intelligence tests that are used today.

On the other hand, Cattell picked up from Hebb the idea that intelligence could be divided into two main parts. Hebb divided it into:

• Intelligence A, which refers to the biological potential that allows the acquisition of knowledge
• Intelligence B that refers to the intellectual capacity determined by the acquisition of sociocultural knowledge.

The parallelism between both theories is highly observable. Hebb's intelligence A refers to Cattell's fluid intelligence and intelligence B corresponds to crystallized intelligence.

Finally, Cattell adopted the second-order factorial analyzes of the primary abilities described by Thurstone.

Cattell's model can be considered to synthesize the main ideas about intelligence that have existed during the last decades. It supports the existence of a general intelligence of people and establishes the presence of an intellectual subdivision between fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence.

The elements postulated in Cattell's theory have been confirmed in studies of age and intelligence, genetic determination of intelligence and integration of learning with abilities.

For this reason, the Cattell model is one of the most proven and the evaluation of crystallized intelligence and fluid intelligence is applied today in a large number of different fields.

Crystallized intelligence and aging

One of the lines of research that most effectively demonstrate the existence of two types of intelligence (fluid and crystallized) is that which focuses on assessing age-related cognitive decline.

At present, there is a broad consensus and high scientific evidence showing that, with age, people's cognitive and intellectual abilities tend to decrease.

This fact becomes especially noticeable during old age, at which time greater cognitive difficulties may appear. However, it has been observed that while fluid intelligence tends to decrease over the years, crystallized intelligence remains more stable.

That is, age-related cognitive impairment motivates a reduction in the person's learning capacity (fluid intelligence) but does not motivate an excess deterioration of the knowledge acquired throughout life (crystallized intelligence).

References

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6. Thurstone, LL (1938). Primary mental abilities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.