Tom DeWeese age 12, of Danville, I11., for his question:

WHAT IS INTUITION?

Intuition is knowledge that comes to a person without any conscious remembering or reasoning on his part. Some people incorrectly call intuition "the sixth sense."

Investigation usually shows that intuitions are based on experience, particularly the experience of individuals with great sensitivity. A person's experience is a storehouse of memories and impressions. These bits of experience, with proper stimulation, shape into a thought or judgment. Then the person "knows" something, or believes he knows it, but cannot say where his knowledge came from. He calls this kind of sudden impression an intuition, or "hunch."

Intuitions are sometimes followed in card games, detective work and military planning. They often occur in scientific work.

Women are sometimes said to be more intuitive than men, but there is no scientific evidence for this claim. Modern psychologists have given little study to intuition because they like to use scientific methods, and it is difficult to study intuition in this way.