The Importance of Nonverbal Intelligence

Nonverbal intelligence is the ability to analyze information and solve problems using visual, or hands-on reasoning. In other words, it is the ability to make sense of and act on the world without necessarily using words.

What Are Nonverbal Skills?

Nonverbal tasks may involve concepts such as:

• Concrete or abstract ideas
• Internalized language-based reasoning
• Internalized reasoning without language

Nonverbal tasks involve skills like:

• Performing visual analogies
• Recognizing causal relationships in pictured situations
• Recognizing visual sequences and remembering them
  
• Understanding the meaning of visual information and recognizing relationships between visual concepts

Nonverbal Intelligence as Common Sense

In school, nonverbal intelligence enables students to analyze and solve complex problems without relying upon or being limited by language abilities. Many mathematical concepts, physics problems, computer science tasks, and science problems require strong reasoning skills.

Outside of school, nonverbal intelligence may be described as "common sense." While a person with common sense may or may not score high on a typical IQ test, it is common sense that gets us through our days.

A person who scores high on a typical IQ test may not have the basic nonverbal skills to, for example, get to the grocery store before the food runs out or put together a build-it-yourself piece of furniture.

Assessing Nonverbal Intelligence

Nonverbal intelligence is typically assessed in extended IQ tests. It's important, however, to distinguish between traditional IQ tests and IQ tests which specifically assess nonverbal intelligence.

IQ tests including the TONI-4, Comprehensive Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (CTONI), Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test-Second Edition (UNIT2), and Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM) assess the basic intelligence of people with speech and language challenges (people with autism, aphasia, and other disabilities). The TONI-4, in particular, is a language-free test, so children taking the test answer with gestures like pointing, nodding, or blinking.

These assessments are important because they remove the language barriers that may otherwise prevent parents, teachers, and physicians from accurately evaluating a student's true intellectual abilities.

Strengthening Nonverbal Intelligence

Nonverbal intelligence may be improved by working with hands-on tasks like picture puzzles, blocks, and building toys, find-a-word puzzles, mazes, and erector sets. Additionally, a wide range of support systems is available to help enhance nonverbal abilities. These include tools like alarms, time planners and organizers, and occupational therapy.