scholarly journals Erratum to: Individual differences on speeded cognitive tasks: Comment on Chen, Hale, and Myerson (2007)

2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 985-985
Author(s):  
F. P. Leite ◽  
R. Ratcliff ◽  
C. N. White
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Tasks

Movies About Intelligence

2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 95-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Flynn
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Strong Tendency ◽  
General Intelligence ◽  
Nature Versus Nurture ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Trends Over Time ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Iq Tests

There is a strong tendency for the same people to do better or worse on a wide variety of IQ tests. On this basis, some psychologists posit the concept of g, or a general intelligence factor. Does g show that performance on a wide range of cognitive tasks is influenced by individual differences in brain quality? It may, but if so, g lacks a sociological dimension and cannot explain cognitive trends over time or assess their significance. It also encourages a paradox about nature versus nurture and oversimplifies the causes of the Black-White IQ gap.

scholarly journals Making Cognitive Latent Variables Manifest: Distinct Neural Networks for Fluid Reasoning and Processing Speed

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 1249-1258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Habeck ◽  
Jason Steffener ◽  
Daniel Barulli ◽  
Yunglin Gazes ◽  
Qolamreza Razlighi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Ability ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Latent Variables ◽  
Latent Variable ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Neural Activation ◽  
Strongly Correlated ◽  
Activation Patterns ◽  
Fluid Reasoning

Cognitive psychologists posit several specific cognitive abilities that are measured with sets of cognitive tasks. Tasks that purportedly tap a specific underlying cognitive ability are strongly correlated with one another, whereas performances on tasks that tap different cognitive abilities are less strongly correlated. For these reasons, latent variables are often considered optimal for describing individual differences in cognitive abilities. Although latent variables cannot be directly observed, all cognitive tasks representing a specific latent ability should have a common neural underpinning. Here, we show that cognitive tasks representing one ability (i.e., either perceptual speed or fluid reasoning) had a neural activation pattern distinct from that of tasks in the other ability. One hundred six participants between the ages of 20 and 77 years were imaged in an fMRI scanner while performing six cognitive tasks, three representing each cognitive ability. Consistent with prior research, behavioral performance on these six tasks clustered into the two abilities based on their patterns of individual differences and tasks postulated to represent one ability showed higher similarity across individuals than tasks postulated to represent a different ability. This finding was extended in the current report to the spatial resemblance of the task-related activation patterns: The topographic similarity of the mean activation maps for tasks postulated to reflect the same reference ability was higher than for tasks postulated to reflect a different reference ability. Furthermore, for any task pairing, behavioral and topographic similarities of underlying activation patterns are strongly linked. These findings suggest that differences in the strengths of correlations between various cognitive tasks may be because of the degree of overlap in the neural structures that are active when the tasks are being performed. Thus, the latent variable postulated to account for correlations at a behavioral level may reflect topographic similarities in the neural activation across different brain regions.

Individual Differences in Reported Visual Imagery and Cognitive Performance

1978 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 451-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart J. McKelvie ◽  
Mary M. Rohrberg
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Performance ◽  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Visual Space ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Abstract Reasoning ◽  
Numerical Ability ◽  
And Control

Selected on the basis of their scores on the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire, 16 High Visualizers and 14 Low Visualizers (equally divided by sex) completed various cognitive tasks thought to involve visual (Space Relations, Watch Rotation) and non-visual (Verbal Reasoning, Abstract Reasoning, Numerical Ability) processes. Although Low Visualizers (particularly males) were superior to High Visualizers in Numerical Ability, both groups performed equally well on the other tests. Since correlational analyses indicated that scores on the vividness questionnaire and the Gordon Controllability of Imagery Questionnaire were not independent, particularly for females, it was suggested that questionnaires ought to be developed better to differentiate the abilities to generate and control visual images.

scholarly journals A distributed brain network predicts general intelligence from resting-state human neuroimaging data

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1756) ◽  
pp. 20170284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julien Dubois ◽  
Paola Galdi ◽  
Lynn K. Paul ◽  
Ralph Adolphs
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Resting State ◽  
Brain Volume ◽  
Resting State Fmri ◽  
Brain Network ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Reliable Estimate ◽  
General Intelligence ◽  
Total Brain Volume ◽  
Human Connectome Project

Individual people differ in their ability to reason, solve problems, think abstractly, plan and learn. A reliable measure of this general ability, also known as intelligence, can be derived from scores across a diverse set of cognitive tasks. There is great interest in understanding the neural underpinnings of individual differences in intelligence, because it is the single best predictor of long-term life success. The most replicated neural correlate of human intelligence to date is total brain volume; however, this coarse morphometric correlate says little about function. Here, we ask whether measurements of the activity of the resting brain (resting-state fMRI) might also carry information about intelligence. We used the final release of the Young Adult Human Connectome Project (N= 884 subjects after exclusions), providing a full hour of resting-state fMRI per subject; controlled for gender, age and brain volume; and derived a reliable estimate of general intelligence from scores on multiple cognitive tasks. Using a cross-validated predictive framework, we predicted 20% of the variance in general intelligence in the sampled population from their resting-state connectivity matrices. Interestingly, no single anatomical structure or network was responsible or necessary for this prediction, which instead relied on redundant information distributed across the brain.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Causes and consequences of individual differences in cognitive abilities’.

scholarly journals Parasympathetic and Sympathetic Activity Are Associated with Individual Differences in Neural Indices of Selective Attention in Adults

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan J. Giuliano ◽  
Christina M. Karns ◽  
Theodore A. Bell ◽  
Seth Petersen ◽  
Elizabeth A. Skowron ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
Sympathetic Activity ◽  
Mean Amplitude ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Parasympathetic Activity ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Autonomic Physiology

AbstractMultiple theoretical frameworks posit that interactions between the autonomic nervous system and higher-order neural networks are crucial for cognitive regulation. However, few studies have directly examined the relationship between measures of autonomic physiology and brain activity during cognitive tasks, and fewer studies have examined both the parasympathetic and sympathetic autonomic branches when doing so. Here, 93 adults completed an event-related potential (ERP) auditory selective attention task concurrently with measures of parasympathetic activity (high-frequency heart rate variability; HF-HRV) and sympathetic activity (pre-ejection period; PEP). We replicate previous findings showing effects of selective attention on mean amplitude of the N1 ERP component (Hillyard et al., 1973; Coch et al., 2005), and extend this result to show that the effects of selective attention were associated with baseline values of HF-HRV and PEP. Individuals with higher resting HF-HRV and shorter resting PEP showed larger effects of selective attention on their ERPs. Follow-up regression models demonstrated that HF-HRV and PEP accounted for unique variance in selective attention effects on N1 mean amplitude. These results are consistent with the neurovisceral integration model, which posits that greater parasympathetic activity is a marker of increased cognitive capacity, as well as other theoretical models which emphasize the role of heightened sympathetic activity in more efficient attention-related processing. The present findings highlight the importance of autonomic physiology in the study of individual differences in neurocognitive function, and given the foundational role of selective attention across cognitive domains, suggest that both parasympathetic and sympathetic activity may be key to understanding variability in brain function across a variety of cognitive tasks.

Habituation and Cognitive Performance: Relationships Between Measures at Four Years of Age and Earlier Assessments

1980 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dolores J. Miller ◽  
Gail Spiridigliozzi ◽  
Ellen B. Ryan ◽  
Mary P. Callan ◽  
Joan E. Mclaughlin
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Discriminant Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Performance ◽  
Early Infancy ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Predicting Performance ◽  
Median Split ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Visual Habituation

Relationships between measures of visual habituation and performance on cognitive tasks at 51 months of age and between these and previous assessments (at 39, 27, 15 months and early infancy) were examined in 24 children. Results suggest that youngsters currently characterized as faster habituators, in terms of first fixation data, may be somewhat advanced cognitively compared to slower habituators. The indexing of a group of fast and of slow habituators, through median split of ranked first fixation ratios, proved effective in predicting performance across the four cognitive tasks at 51 months according to a discriminant analysis. Correlations between these ratios and both current and previous cognitive scores showed some stability of individual differences from 15 through 51 months.

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