Thursday 12 December 2013

ISIR Conference: Basic predictors of intelligence

 

The conference has now moved on to the first symposium, which is mostly about basic predictors. Dr Neubauer has taken the Chair:

Neural efficiency as a function of task demands.
aljoscha.neubauer@uni-graz.at

Brighter individuals show lower brain activation than less bright individuals when working on the same cognitive tasks. Consequently, the same task is more easy for individuals with higher cognitive ability, but more difficult for less intelligent individuals. The new results suggest that neural efficiency reflects an ability-dependent adaption of brain activation to task demands. According to the refined definition, neural efficiency describes the phenomenon that more intelligent individuals show lower brain activity than less intelligent ones only when working on cognitive tasks with a comparable sample-based difficulty. It looks as if each person works out the difficulty level for them of each task, and then has to devote less brain activation to the tasks they find manageable. Interestingly, it is still the case that bright people use less of their brain when doing difficult tasks.


Perceived workload and performance in difficult nonverbal cognitive
tasks predict academic achievement.
  MFrey@Otterbein.edu; CLaurie-Rose@Otterbein.edu

This study is trying to find out why high-achieving students sometimes take longer to solve difficult nonverbal cognitive task items.

 

The structure of working memory and how it relates to intelligence in
children.
david.giofre@gmail.com; irene.mammarella@unipd.it; cesare.cornoldi@unipd.it

It seems that working memory predicts a large portion (66%) of the variance in general intelligence, confirming that the two constructs are separable but
closely related in young children.


Genetic and environmental influences on the relationship between
musical discrimination tasks and IQ.
Miriam.Mosing@ki.se; Fredrik.Ullen@ki.se

Rhythm, melody and pitch discrimination is associated with intelligence at about r=0.39, as measured in 10,000 twins.

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