PSYC 2500 Chapter 8: Chapter 8 Readings – Intelligence
5 Dec 2016
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Document Summary
Intelligence is notoriously difficult to define, but this has not kept people from trying. Part of the difficulty is that intelligence can legitimately be described at three levels of analysis: as one thing, as a few things, or as many things. Some researchers view intelligence as a single trait that influences all aspects of cognitive functioning. Supporting this idea is the fact that performance on all intellectual tasks is positively correlated: children who do well on one tend to do well on others too. These positive correlations occur even among dissimilar intellectual tasks for example, remembering lists of numbers and folding pieces of paper to reproduce printed designs. G or general intelligence cognitive processes that influence the ability to think and learn on all intellectual tasks. Numerous sources of evidence attest to the usefulness of viewing intelligence as a single trait. Measures of g, such as overall scores on intelligence tests, correlate positively with school grades and achievement test performance.
