Why g matters: The complexity of everyday life
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provide evidence that intelligence has pervasive utility in work settings because it is essentially the ability to deal with cognitive complexity, in particular, with complex information processing, and the more complex a work task, the greater the advantages that higher g confers in performing it well.
About: This article is published in Intelligence.The article was published on 1997-01-01 and is currently open access. It has received 1300 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Everyday life & Cognitive complexity.
Summary (1 min read)
Jump to: [Why g Matters: The Complexity of Everyday Life] – [WHAT DOES “IMPORTANT” MEAN?] – [INFLUENCE OF INTELLIGENCE ON OVERALL LIFE OUTCOMES] and [THE FUTURE]
Why g Matters: The Complexity of Everyday Life
- This article provides evidence that g has pervasive utility in work settings because it is essentially the ability to deal with cognitive complexity, in particular, with complex information processing.
- Few claims in the social sciences are backed by such massive evidence but remain so hotly contested in public discourse.
- Besides demonstrating that g is important in practical affairs, I seek to demonstrate why intelligence has such surprisingly pervasive importance in the lives of individuals.
- I then use both the employment and literacy data to sketch a portrait of life’s challenges and opportunities at different levels of intelligence.
WHAT DOES “IMPORTANT” MEAN?
- The nature of the job and its context seem to determine whether g has any direct effect on task proficiency, net of job knowlege.
- As is well known in psychometrics (see also Gordon, 1997), the fact that an individual passes or fails any single test item says little about that person’s general intelligence level.
INFLUENCE OF INTELLIGENCE ON OVERALL LIFE OUTCOMES
- The effects of intelligence-like other psychological traits-are probabilistic, not deterministic.
- White adults in this range marry, work, and have children (Hermstein & Murray, 1994), but, as Table 10 shows, they are nonetheless at great risk of living in poverty (30%), bearing children out of wedlock (32%), and becoming chronic welfare dependents (31%).
- At this IQ level, fewer than half the high school graduates and none of the dropouts meet the military’s minimum AFQT enlistment standards.
- Most occupations are within reach cognitively, because these individuals learn complex material fairly easily and independently.
- Such as divorce, illness, and occasional unemployment, they rarely become trapped in poverty or social pathology.
THE FUTURE
- Complexity enriches social and cultural life, but it also risks leaving some individuals behind.
- Society has become more complex-and g loaded-as the authors have entered the information age and postindustrial economy.
- Accordingly, organizations are “flatter” (have fewer hierarchical levels), and increasing numbers of jobs require high-level cognitive and interpersonal skills (Camevale, 1991; Cascio, 1995; Hunt, 1995; Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, 1991).
- There is evidence that increasing proportions of individuals with below-average IQs are having trouble adapting to their increasingly complex modern life (Granat & Granat, 1978) and that social inequality along IQ lines is increasing (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994).
- As the military experience also illustrates, however, what is good pedagogy for the low-aptitude learner may be inappropriate for the high-aptitude person.
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Dissertation•
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated possible underlying mechanisms of this intellectual disparity and tested the effectiveness of one potential intervention, i.e., cognitive training for children born preterm/low birth weight (LBW).
Abstract: Well-established evidence shows that children born preterm/low birth weight (LBW) are at increased risk of academic difficulties (Lee, Yeatman, Luna, & Feldman, 2011; Pritchard et al., 2009) and, despite global IQ scores within the normal range, nonetheless display lower academic performance than their same age peers (Bhutta, Cleves, Casey, Cradock, & Anand, 2002; Kerr-Wilson, Mackay, Smith, & Pell, 2011). This is not fully understood and previous attempts to improve these circumstances through means of cognitive intervention have met with little success. Therefore, the current thesis investigates possible underlying mechanisms of this intellectual disparity and tests the effectiveness of one potential intervention. In doing so, the studies presented focus specifically on fluid intelligence (Taub, 2002). The investigation through fluid intelligence is relatively novel in the current literature and therefore worthy of further exploration. Normal individual differences in fluid intelligence have been explained with reference to information processing parameters. Previous studies have shown that children born preterm/LBW have impairments in basic processes identified with executive function (Aarnoudse-Moens, Smidts, Oosterlaan, Duivenvoorden, & Weisglas-Kuperus, 2009; Mulder, Pitchford, Hagger, & Marlow, 2009). However, the current study is the first to test whether differences in fluid intelligence, as measured by the Cattell Culture Fair Tests, between preterm (n = 217) and typically developing children (n = 145) could be accounted for by differences in working memory and cognitive flexibility, as measured by the digit span tasks and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test respectively. Results indicate that the seven to nine years old preterm cohort performed less well on measures of fluid intelligence than their peers across all age groups and their differences were partially mediated by both working memory and cognitive flexibility in a multiple mediation analysis. It also identified at least one year of developmental delay in fluid intelligence between the clinical group and their peers.
Provided with evidence from Study 1 and parallel research suggesting that computerized working memory training may enhance working memory and fluid intelligence in non-clinical groups (Jaeggi, Buschkuehl, Jonides, & Perrig, 2008; Klingberg, Forssberg, & Westerberg, 2002; Studer et al., 2009), the second goal of this thesis was to conduct a preliminary study to investigate the feasibility of cognitive training for children born preterm/LBW. Therefore, in the second study, the utility of a brief adaptive working memory span training program (Buschkuehl, Jaeggi, Kobel, & Perrig, 2008) was tested in typically developing children. Sixty-three children, aged seven to nine years, were randomly assigned to one of three groups: Intervention, active control and passive control. The intervention group was trained in the adaptive version of the working memory span task and the active control group was trained in the nonadaptive version. Both groups trained for 15 minutes each day for a duration of 20 days. Participants in the passive control group participated only in pre and post assessments. All participants were assessed using the digit span and spatial span tasks for measuring working memory, the Stroop task for measuring executive control, a reaction time task for measuring processing speed and the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices for measuring fluid intelligence. Results indicate that children in the intervention group improved on their trained task and demonstrated significant far transfer effects on the assessment of fluid intelligence compared to both control groups. However, no near transfer to other measures was found. The reason behind the occurrence of far transfer effect without evidence of near transfer effects was unclear. However, given that the adaptive complex working memory training task was not in any way similar to the fluid intelligence measure, significant differences in fluid intelligence gains were unlikely to have been a consequence of practice or general familiarity effects but, rather, a consequence of the training.
Although Study 1 identified that working memory and cognitive flexibility partially mediate birth status-related differences in Gf, the impact of these variables on academic performance in children born preterm is still unknown. Nonetheless, current evidence of far transfer to fluid intelligence after adaptive complex working memory span training provides support for the utility of WM training and modifiability in Gf. This in turn provides a preliminary evidence-base approach for psychologists to work toward providing neuro-remediation treatment options to targeted clinical groups, such as those born preterm with fluid intelligence deficiencies. In combination, the outcomes of these two studies provide both a theoretical contribution to our understanding of the deficits observed in children born preterm and an applied contribution to beginning the process of developing appropriate intervention programmes suitable for this clinical group in the future, with hopeful prospects for improving cognitive outcomes.
3 citations
Cites background from "Why g matters: The complexity of ev..."
...Binet and Simon (1916) originally designed such a test with the aim of predicting a person’s academic performance (Gottfredson, 1997; Jensen, 1998)....
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01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: Despite positive trends in the literature associated with early implantation, we cannot assume that children with cochlear implants learn just like their hearing peers, or even just like each other as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Despite positive trends in the literature associated with early implantation, we cannot assume that children with cochlear implants (CIs) learn just like their hearing peers, or even just like each other. Schools that include children with CIs must consider a range of factors that influence academic and social outcomes, and balance each child’s need for challenge and support. Considerations include parent education and emotional support, language and literacy development, social emotional learning, motor and sensory development, working memory and other cognitive skills, classroom acoustics and modifications, individualized support services, classroom supports, and other ecological inputs.
3 citations
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a regression analysis of personlighetsskalan Balans and Sharpekvot in the context of ekonomisk prestations data.
Abstract: Andelen privatpersoner som valjer att investera i aktier vaxer for varje ar. Darfor ar det viktigt att oka forstaelsen kring vilka faktorer som ligger bakom variationen i individers framgang. Den aktuella studien syftar till att undersoka huruvida personlighet respektive generell intelligens ar relaterade till privatsparares ekonomiska framgang i aktiehandel. De 90 aktiesparare som studerades genomforde ett personlighetstest, ett intelligenstest samt en enkat med fokus pa beteenden kring aktiehandel. Personlighetstestet utgick fran femfaktorsteorin och intelligenstestet avsag mata den generella intelligensen. Framgang mattes med procentuell avkastning pa deltagarnas aktieportfoljer samt med mattet Sharpekvot som mater avkastning justerat for risktagande. Testinformationen korrelerades mot ekonomisk prestationsdata, inhamtad fran deltagarnas aktieportfoljer over 19 manader. Resultaten visade att personlighetsskalan Balans var relaterad till hogre procentuell avkastning och en hogre Sharpekvot. Generell intelligens och ovriga personlighetsskalor uppvisade inga signifikanta korrelationer. Regressionsanalyser visade att personlighetsfaktorer tillsammans kunde forklara en del av variationen i Absolut avkastning och Sharpekvot. Den forklarade variansen uppmattes till 12 % respektive 10 %. Det finns alltsa en del av variansen i aktieframgang som kan tillskrivas personlighet. Fynden ger stod at den befintliga forskning som fokuserat pa psykologiska egenskapers betydelse inom finans.
3 citations
3 citations
01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: The ability to foresee and adequately model with appropriate techniques the future possible risks, taking into account the uncertainty of the situation, must be strongly embedded into the risk management process.
Abstract: Today various types of risk are present in any organization. The way how they are managed impacts the success of the whole organization and its activity. In order to facilitate and structure risk management in an organization, risk management standards have been developed. However, in contemporary risk management a lot of new issues arise, and there is a constant need to improve the standards, create innovative methodologies and develop adequate methods for successful risk management. A new concept and entire approach of Risk Intelligent enterprise management has been formulated, stressing that risk management should be integrated into enterprise strategy and operations. In the paper the concept of risk management intelligence is further developed in the sense that the ability to foresee and adequately model with appropriate techniques the future possible risks, taking into account the uncertainty of the situation, must be strongly embedded into the risk management process. The paper presents conceptual description of the presented concepts, as well as proposes the adequate methods and tools for implementing intelligent risk management.
3 citations
References
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