Multiple Intelligences

In the classic book "Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences", Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner outlines his theory of "multiple intelligences" in which we are said to have seven different types of intelligences. IQ tests only evaluate people for logical-linguistic
intelligence. People are frequently more intelligent in some categories that others, sometimes dramatically so. Gardner's intelligence types are:

Musical Intelligence
Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence
Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
Linguistic Intelligence
Spatial Intelligence
Interpersonal Intelligence
Intrapersonal Intelligence
Naturalistic Intelligence

In his book, "Creating Minds:An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky,Eliot, Graham and Gandhi " Gardner describes innovators from various fields and assesses the relative strengths of their different types of intelligences. Einstein had brilliant logical-spatial abilities, but extremely poor personal intelligence. Gandhi had great personal and linguistic skills, but poor artistic abilities. Picasso was extremely spatial, but had great difficulties handling logical issues and did very poorly in school. Freud had outstanding linguistic and personal intelligence, but was lacking in spatial and musical abilities.

In the book "Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World", author Jeffrey Freed argues that ADDers are very often powerful visual/spatial thinkers. This is often described as being "right-brained" because the right hemisphere of the brain has been associated with visual thinking as well as other traits often associated with visual thinkers. I took the little self test in the book and came out "somewhat right-brained" as I think most ADDers would, and the learning style described by the author certainly fits the way my son learns. Extreme visual thinkers may be dyslexic and have general learning difficulties when taught using traditional methods. Some of our most famous scientists were very visual thinkers who had relative verbal difficulties or verbal memory problems.Einstein, Faraday, Edison and DaVinci are examples. DaVinci even wrote his notes in "mirror" writing which no one else could read unless they held the notes up to a mirror, something which dyslexics are known for. The learning and thinking styles of eleven famous visual thinkers are described in the book "In the Mind's Eye : Visual Thinkers, Gifted People With Dyslexia and Other Learning Difficulties, Computer Images and the Ironies of Creativity by Thomas G. West.

Instead of thinking of weak areas as something that went wrong, consider the opposite. Maybe something went right, you're just looking in the wrong direction! Learn to exploit what you're good at naturally.