Under Gardner's theory, the standard measures, verbal and analytical ability, still count. Where Gardner has focused on the content of our thought, Sternberg is intent on our method. The focus here is not mental ability , but mental styles or, how a person likes to use what intelligence he's got. Where ability is somewhat static, people can learn new styles. But they have inherent preferences, Sternberg claims, and he has developed a matrix to explain how these choices break down.
Legislative types like to work with their own ideas.
Judicial types do their best when allowed to evaluate and analyze. From here, the system gets more complicated. Earlier systems are really more fo cused on cognition or personality than on thinking style, he says. And the importance of his work, he contends, is that styles are critical to how abilities manifest themselves. If all this sounds abstract, it's not.