• Defined- the education of elations and correlates o The ability to detect patterns in stimuli
  • It’s what person does when they don’t know what to do
  • The ability to purposely adapt to, shape and select novel environments using cognitive processes
  • Different to expertise- practicing problems

Individual differences in memory:

  • The most basic cognitive ability test is a short-term memory test o g. digit span forward (repeat the following digits in the order presented) o About 90% of people can remember somewhere between 5 and 8 digits o Has a correlation (r =.35) with a GPA o Correlates with years of education complete (.44)

Digit span and practice:

  • A person’s digit span can be enhanced very substantially through practice/training
  • A key element of the definition of intelligence is ‘novel’ problem or environments (practice makes the intelligence test invalid)
  • The rate at which can improve their digit span through practice would be expected to correlate positively with their level of intelligence

Digit span backward:

  • Made as a better indicator of intelligence
  • Participants to recall the digits in the reverse order with which they were presented
  • R=.35 with GPA

Working memory capacity (WMC):

  • The ability to maintain two or more pieces of info in consciousness simultaneously and manipulate that information in a very basic manner
  • Some have argued WMC is a fundamental basis of intelligence, not the case

Fluid intelligence:

  • Core component of intelligence
  • Represents the ability to perceive complex relationships, develop aids to learning, reason, abstract and solve novel problems in which a cultural context is not needed
  • Spearman originally defined intelligence as the ‘education of relations and correlates’
  • Raven’s progressive matrices is consider the most common measure of non-verbal fluid intelligence o Fill in the missing shape

o Reliability estimate of internal consistency greater than .80 (lots of items) o Good predictive validity (e.g. academic achievement, career success) o Is not a pure measure of intelligence, but fluid intelligence

Processing speed:

  • The notion that more intelligent people are quicker at processing speed has a long history
  • Two common methods used to measure individual differences o Reaction time o Inspection time

Reaction time:

  • The time in milliseconds it takes an individual to respond cognitively to a stimulus
  • Very simple version:
    • Places finger on a button, looks at screen
    • Remove finger from button when a dot appears on a computer screen o Time between presentation and removal represents reaction time o Known as simple reaction time
  • Choice reaction time:
    • Choose two alternatives presented
    • Two words presented, participant decides whether they are synonyms or antonyms by pressing the left or right button
    • Speed at which the button is pressed is the choice reaction time
  • Movement time:
    • Must distinguish between reaction time and movement time o Reaction time is cognitive process (taking a finger off the button is the time measured, pressing a button is movement time)
    • Many researchers fail to distinguish reaction time from movement time
  • Simple reaction time correlated with intelligence at -.30
  • Choice reaction time correlated with intelligence at -.50

Inspection time:

  • Basic visual stimulus is presented on a computer screen
  • ‘flash mask’ is the presented for 300-500msec
  • Correlates with intelligence around .50

Processing speed:

  • Clinician’s do not use reaction time and inspection time as a measure of processing speed
  • Use tests such as Coding or trials A and B

Crystallised intelligence:

  • Represents an individuals acquired knowledge, not culture free

o Knowledge of world facts o Vocabulary size

  • Many people believe that crystallised intelligence should not be considered important, as it would be influenced by opportunity
  • However a very good indicator of intellectual functioning
  • Highly heritable

Crystallised intelligence- heritability:

  • Researchers have tested twins vocabulary size
  • Monozygotic twins (100% genes) and dizygotic (50% genes shared)
  • Monozygotic twins vocabulary (r=.79)
  • Dizygotic twins vocabulary (r=.25)

Positive manifold:

  • People who have good memories, tend to have good reasoning skills, and good vocabularies, and good processing speed etc.
  • General consensus that most cognitive abilities correlate positively with each other
  • Not a perfect correlation, vary from .20 to .75
  • rne of the first researchers was Charles Spearman o Theorised that the positive manifold arises because of a general factor of intelligence o Developed analytic techniques to test and estimate the general factor of intelligence

Nature/strength of g factor:

  • Fluid intelligence is the strongest indicator of g (.93), second strongest is crystallised (.86)
  • Processing speed is the weakest indicator (.52)
  • The g factor accounts for up to 85% of the variability in test scores
  • Lower-order factors (gf, gc, gsm, gs) account for much less of the variability in test scores, questioned whether it is justifiable to interpret them in applied contexts

Intelligence and age:

  • Fluid intelligence peaks around 25 years
  • Crystallised intelligence peaks at around 45 years

Self-report intelligence:

  • Some researchers use self-report questionnaires to measure a person’s intelligence
  • They know it won’t replace an IQ test, just want t know well people can rate their own intelligence
  • g. self-reported questionnaire in university students:
    • Internal consistency reliability .73
    • PCA uncovered one dimension with positive loadings from all of the items (.35-.75) o The correlation between elf-report IQ and task based IQ was .30 o So 9% of the variance in task based iq WAS accounted for by the self-report questionnaire

Implications for personality:

  • If self-report IQ has validity of only .30 as an indicator of “objective” IQ, should we expect the same validity for self-report personality and “objective” personality?
  • “I’m the life of the party”
  • …probably correlates with an objective test of life of the party at around .30 to .50.
  • Intelligence researchers would never take seriously the notion of measuring of intelligence via self-report.
  • It’s bizarre that personality researchers are satisfied with self-report.

Education assessment – Blooms taxonomy:

  • Taxonomy for learning teaching and assessing
  • Two overall dimensions:
    • Knowledge
    • Cognitive processing

Cognitive processing dimension model:

  • The original model had evaluation at the top of the model, now revised to have creating at the top of the model