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Mary N. Meeker

American educational psychologist and entrepreneur

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Meeker was born in Louisiana and grew up there and in Texas. She attended the University of Texas at Austin and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology. Meeker subsequently moved to California and began graduate studies in educational psychology at the University of Southern California, where she studied with J. P. Guilford, whose work would be central to her career. Meeker earned a Master of Science, a Master of Education and, in 1971, a Ph.D. in Education from USC.

SI and SOI

Meeker's doctoral dissertation focused on applying Guilford's Structure of Intellect theory ("SI") to creating assessments and curriculum materials for use in teaching children and adults. The premise of SI is that intelligence comprises many underlying mental abilities or factors, organized along three dimensions—Operations (e.g., comprehension), Content (e.g., semantic), and Products (e.g., relations). In this three-dimensional model, each intersection of the three dimensions represents as a unique intellectual ability, such as comprehension of semantic relations; that is, understanding analogies.

During Meeker's studies, she saw the potential of applying SI in the field of education, based on a twofold premise: 1) intelligence can be precisely measured using a test that identifies an individual's aptitude on the multiple intellectual abilities identified in the Structure of Intellect model; and 2) the individual's intellectual abilities can be remediated or improved using learning materials that target each particular ability. Meeker called her application of Guilford's theory "SOI."

SOI testing

SOI assessment materials, including the SOI Learning Abilities (or "SOI-LA") test instrument, measure intelligence corresponding to those intellectual abilities from Guilford's SI model that Meeker determined to be most closely correlated to educational and professional success. (She excluded other SI abilities from SOI due to their perceived difficulty of assessment or their lack of correlation to educational requirements.) After she normed and validated the SOI-LA instrument in the late 1970s and early 1980s, she began producing tests and corresponding remedial materials for school districts and private clinics. In many states, the SOI-LA is accepted for screening students for admission into gifted and special education school programs, and worldwide, SOI-LA is used in private clinics.

SOI training

SOI learning materials are useful in addressing learning disabilities in early childhood education. Basic school tasks such as reading or arithmetic are actually complex tasks that require application of multiple underlying abilities. Because children who fail at these classroom tasks often lack the underlying abilities to succeed at them, attempts to teach those children to perform such tasks are not successful. Some children who cannot read may lack the underlying intellectual ability to associate a word (i.e., a series of graphical figures) with its meaning (i.e., a semantic unit); and some children who cannot perform arithmetic may lack the underlying intellectual ability to associate a digit (a numeric unit) with its meaning (a symbolic unit). SOI training can remediate these underlying intellectual abilities to enable mastery of reading and arithmetic.

The SOI model is designed to address learning disabilities in stages. An SOI test assesses the individual's underlying intellectual abilities, including the constituent abilities enabling performance of the targeted task. Then, after the individual's SOI profile is compared against the intellectual abilities that enable the targeted task (such as reading or arithmetic), specific intellectual abilities are identified for remediation. Finally, SOI curriculum materials train the identified abilities so that, after the abilities are remediated, the individual may learn to perform the more complex task.

The SOI model can be useful in assessing learning styles, because the SOI-LA test includes separate measures of visual and auditory learning abilities. SOI has been related to the multiple intelligences theory promulgated by Howard Gardner.

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