The Development of Social Intelligence
Although the psychometric and personality views of social intelligence are opposed on many important points, such as the matter of comparative assessment of individuals, they come together nicely in recent work on the development of social intelligence (for reviews, see Greenspan, 1979; Greenspan, 1997). Of course, social intelligence has always played a role in the concept of mental retardation. This psychiatric diagnosis requires not only evidence of subnormal intellectual functioning (i.e., IQ < 70) but also demonstrated evidence of impairments in "communication, self-care, home living, social and interpersonal skills, use of community resources, self-direction, functional academic skills, work, leisure,health, and safety" (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p. 46). In other words, the diagnosis of mental retardation involves deficits in social as well as academic intelligence. Furthermore, the wording of the diagnostic criteria implies that social and academic intelligence are not highly correlated -- it requires positive evidence of both forms of impairment, meaning that the presence of one cannot be inferred from the presence of the other.