Final answer:
Howard Gardner, a Harvard psychologist, identified eight independent middle-level abilities known as the Multiple Intelligences: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic.
Step-by-step explanation:
The individual who identified eight independent middle-level abilities in intelligence, based on correlational analyses of numerous studies using the bottom-up approach, was Howard Gardner. Gardner, a Harvard psychologist, developed the Multiple Intelligences Theory.
According to Gardner, the eight intelligences are linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, musical intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, spatial intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, and naturalistic intelligence.
Despite criticism from some cognitive psychologists for a lack of empirical evidence, Gardner's theory is widely recognized and utilized in educational settings due to its inclusive nature, suggesting that everyone has strengths in different types of intelligence.