Human Abilities: Meaning and Nature | Educational Psychology

After reading this article you will learn about the meaning and nature of human abilities.

Meaning of Human Abilities:

A human ability is a union of a native process (or processes) in humans and a content (or contents) inferred from relatively permanent changes in behaviour. Abilities are of two kinds: Cognitive and Psycho­motor. When a child understands the meaning of a statement in acquiring language or comprehending a word, his understanding means a process or operation and also certain content i.e. words or their meaning.

A psychomotor ability, on the other hand, helps a human being to acquire specific skill for a specific work, e.g. manual dexterity needs acquisition of skill as well as well-guided arm-hand movement while manipu­lating an object. Persons high in this ability are able to perform any specific task involving manual dexterity.

Both cognitive and psychomotor abilities are the products of maturation and learning. In turn, possessing a particular ability facilitates further learning. Extensive researches con­ducted on human abilities have yielded beneficial results, so that it is now possible to easily identify and classify different human abilities.

As a consequence, important advances have been made in this research area and a series of new formations about the intellectual and learning abilities have been obtained. Substantial knowledge about human abilities are in store following hard work of different researchers in this field.

It has been established that abilities develop quite slowly across the years, but once developed they enable the individual to deal with his physical and social .world more effectively.

Nature of Human Abilities:

The identification of abilities by scientific methods is a complex process. An ability is, in fact, a configuration of abilities, identified through correlational and Experimental research. Any single ability needs consistency among separate performances involving that ability. In that sense an ability is a mediator which helps the individual to interpret the ideas and actions of others as well as to take action all by himself.

Fleishman and Bartlett (1969) in a comprehensive work on human abilities identified five important attributes of abilities:

1. Abilities are a product of maturation and learning. Much practice and learning are required to comprehend the concepts and principles of any subject. The maturational level of an individual child limits what he can learn. Thus abilities develop and mature at different rates from birth through adolescence. For example, verbal comprehension develops more rapidly than arithmetic reasoning in early childhood.

2. Abilities developed during the formative years permeates into adulthood and persists throughout the period.

3. The present abilities of the individual affect the rate at which he learns related new tasks. Thus, the student high in spatial ability and arithmetic reasoning achieves higher in physics than the one low in both, motivations and other factors being equal. Equally important is that the study of physics will probably contribute to further development of both abilities. They complement each other.

4. Abilities vary from specific to general, and the more general the ability the greater is its transfer. Arithmetic computation e.g., is an ability which facilitates only the learning of new tasks involving computation, whereas spatial ability facilitates the learning of broad classes of tasks in mathematics, science, engineering and other technical areas.

5. Abilities are more fundamental than skills. The term ‘skill’ refers to the level of proficiency on a unitary task or a configuration of tasks.

Basic abilities are basically involved in performing each skill. To summarize, an ability is:

(a) A product of maturation and learning;

(b) Developed during the formative years persists in adulthood;

(c) That the present abilities of the individual influence the rate at which he learns related new tasks;

(d) That one ability may underlie performance on more specific tasks than another;

(e) More fundamental than a skill.

On the contrary, Cronbach (1970) shows that there is very little distinction between abilities, skills and achievements— one is the complement to the other. People develop the skills and achieve with an underlying ability through practice. Now, as they develop their skills and consequent achievements, the underlying abilities are also being improved—skills and achievements are, hence, considered synonymous.