Abstract

We assessed the importance of academic and practical intelligence in rural and relatively urban Yup'ik Alaskan communities with respect to Yup'ik-valued traits rated by adults or peers in the adolescents' communities. A total of 261 adolescents participated in the study; of these adolescents, 145 were females and 116 were males, and they were from seven different communities, six rural ( n=136) and one relatively urban ( n=125). We measured academic intelligence with conventional measures of fluid and crystallized intelligence. We measured practical intelligence with a test of everyday-life knowledge as acquired in Native Alaskan Yup'ik communities. Finally, we collected ratings from the adolescents' peers and adults on the traits that are valued by the Yup'ik people; thus, we evaluated the reputation for the Yup'ik-valued competences. The objective of the study was to estimate the relative contributions of conventional knowledge and everyday-life knowledge in predicting the ratings on Yup'ik-valued traits. The results indicated that everyday-life knowledge predicts Yup'ik-valued traits in the presented sample and that the predictive power of this knowledge is higher in adolescents (especially boys) from rural communities than from the semiurban community. The obtained result pattern further strengthens our arguments for the multidimensionality of human abilities and the importance of practical intelligence in nonacademic settings.

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