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Nature of intelligence

1. Problems with IT

   • Spearman etc. emphasis novelty, problem solving, educing relations that have no obvious place in IT model
   • Counter-intuitive that perceptual speed closely related to measures of intelligence
   • Causal circularity: opposite argument can be made: IT is a consequence of g
   • Little evidence that g contributes more to IT than to other measures
   • Studies play down influence of strategy and experience
   • An obvious problem in interpreting any correlation between two variables, is deciding what constitutes a “good” relationship

2. Hick test

   • Subject begins with finger on home button; after variable interval (1-4 sec) one of the 8 lights turns on, which must be turned off as quickly as possible Reaction time & movement time are measured
   • the slow individual will demonstrate a much steeper reaction time slope across blocks than the fast individual
   • the correlation of reaction time to g appears to increase as a function of the number of alternatives, whereas movement time does not reliably covary in this way
   • studies have demonstrated significant correlations with g, both in terms of simple reaction time (releasing the home button) and the reaction time slope

3. problems with the hick test

   • Implicit assumption is that reaction time represents some limit on biological or neural transmission time
   • the speed at which a person responds is not necessarily the speed at which he or she can respond
   • Extended practice reduces the association between speed and g (Ackerman, 1988), suggesting that the initial sensitivity to g may have more to do with between-subject differences in the active control of attention.
   • Reaction time does correlate with g but so does everything else!