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Theory of human intelligence formulated by Robert Sternberg
The Triarchic Theory of Intelligence or Three Forms of Intelligence, formulated by psychologist Robert Sternberg, aims to go against the psychometric approach to intelligence and take a more cognitive approach, which leaves it to the category of the cognitive contextual theories. The three meta components are also called triarchic components. Sternberg's definition of human intelligence is "(a) mental activity directed toward purposive adaptation to, selection and shaping of, real world environments relevant to one's life". Thus, Sternberg viewed intelligence as how well an individual deals with environmental changes throughout their lifespan. Sternberg's theory comprises three parts: componential, experiential and practical. Sternberg's theory has since been expanded and advanced in the book Experiential Intelligence by Soren Kaplan.

Sternberg associated the workings of the mind with a series of components. These components he labeled the metacomponents, performance components, and knowledge acquisition components. The metacomponents are executive processes used in problem solving and decision making that involve the majority of managing our mind. They tell the mind how to act. Metacomponents are also sometimes referred to as a homunculus. A homunculus is a fictitious or metaphorical "person" inside our head that controls our actions, and which is often seen to invite an infinite regress of homunculi controlling each other. Sternberg's next set of components, performance components, are the processes that actually carry out the actions the metacomponents dictate. These are the basic processes that allow us to do tasks, such as perceiving problems in our long term memory, perceiving relations between objects, and applying relations to another set of terms. The last set of components, knowledge acquisition components, are used in obtaining new information. These components complete tasks that involve selectively choosing relevant information from a mix of information, some of it relevant and some of it irrelevant. These components can also be used to selectively combine the various pieces of information they have gathered. Gifted individuals are proficient in using these components because they are able to learn new information at a greater rate. Whereas Sternberg explains that the basic information processing components underlying the three parts of his triarchic theory are the same, different contexts and different tasks require different kinds of intelligence.

This form of intelligence focuses on academic proficiency.

Psychologist Linda Gottfredson criticises the unempirical nature of triarchic theory. Further, she argues it is absurd to assert that traditional intelligence tests are not measuring practical intelligence, given that they show a moderate correlation with income, especially at middle age when individuals have had a chance to reach their maximum career potential, and an even higher correlation with occupational prestige, and that IQ tests predict the ability to stay out of jail and stay alive (all of which qualifies as practical intelligence or "street smarts"). Gottfredson claims that what Sternberg calls practical intelligence is not a broad aspect of cognition at all but simply a specific set of skills people learn to cope with a specific environment (task specific knowledge). There is evidence to suggest that certain aspects of creativity (i. e. divergent thinking) are separable from analytical intelligence, and are better accounted for by the cognitive process of executive functioning. More specifically, task switching and interference management are suggested to play an important role in divergent thinking. A more recent meta analysis found only small correlations between IQ and creativity.