Intelligence/WM essay Q

Question 1

What is intelligence?

Answer 1

Abilities to learn from experience, adapt to new situations, understand and handle abstract concepts, and use knowledge to manipulate one’s environment.

Question 2

What is fluid intelligence (Cattell)?

Answer 2

Ability to problem solve, think abstractly, it can be trained, learn new things - seems like a skill related to WM?

Question 3

How do you measure intelligence? (why is it important to define measurement in this context)

Answer 3

There are many measurements (how can you measure an intangible concept). Intelligence Quotient is the most commonly used measure (uses spatial, verbal, logic and memory)
Important to define how to measure otherwise results can be ‘stretched’ e.g. if it is defined as purely comphrehension, it will correlate better than more complex measures

Question 4

How do WM and ‘intelligence’ correlate?

Answer 4

Kane + Engle (2002) - WM SPAN correlates with executive functions and general fluid intelligence. High WM span people performed well on cognitive tasks

Question 5

What area of the brain is crucial in this research?

Answer 5

Prefrontal cortex (specifically - dorsolateral PFC)

Question 6

What was Kane+Engle (2002)’ s method?

Answer 6

Review of prefrontal cortex lesions and trauma damage in humans and monkeys. (Both literature and fMRI studies)

Question 7

What is fMRI and what does it do?

Answer 7

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Detects changes in blood + oxygenation, brain region involved in a task requires more oxygenation (shows as more active)

Question 8

Pros of fMRI (Coltheart)

Answer 8

Widely available
Shows an entire network of brain activity for one task
Non-invasive
Damage to dPFC can affect both sub and regular cortex, which is shown with fMRI
It is difficult to map executive-functions on brain regions (fMRI helps)

Question 9

Cons of fMRI

Answer 9

Biological + Physical constraints (e.g. noise etc - demands more attentional control, which can affect hydrostatics - Raz, 2005).

Question 10

What is the relationship between dPFC and fluid intelligence?

Answer 10

Prefrontal cortex is incredibly evolved (associated with highest human qualities - such as intelligence)
The dPFC is associated with generating fluid intelligence

Question 11

What is the evidence for the relationship between dPFC and fluid intelligence?

Answer 11

It is limited, but shows fluid g has a mild reliance on dPFC

Question 12

What (from WM) does NOT correlate with GF? And why?

Answer 12

Digit span and word span

Tasks assessing these only require memory storage, they do not demand processing (simple tasks)

Question 13

What does correlate (from WM) with GF?

Answer 13

WMspan tasks: Memory and processing are used. Make more demands on attentional control and executive functions (fluid intelligence…)

Question 14

What is problematic about Kane + Engle’s review?

Answer 14

Using monkey’s (cannot extrapolate animal studies to humans)
Human lesion/brain damaged patients may have specific damage (new synaptic growth) which is not generalisable to healthy populations
Monkey’s can only learn (after thousands of trials) a narrow breadth of tasks
Damage to dPFC may affect individuals differently

Question 15

fMRI evidence of dPFC and WM?

Answer 15

Tasks of WM and attention show that the dPFC is active

Evidence that WM capacity, executive attention and fluid intelligence share a neurological substrate from lesions and brain damaged patients

Question 16

What do Kane + Engle (2002) predict about high span people who damage their dPFC?

Answer 16

Damage in the dPFC in high span people will result in them acting more like low span people on tasks

Question 17

What are low WM span and low fluid intelligence people both susceptible?

Answer 17

Interference with LTM (retrospective, prospective and fan-effect)

(May not be relevant for WM, just interesting they are affected in similar ways - perhaps suggests connection)

Question 18

Conclusion? How do they all link?

Answer 18

WM capacity and the ability to hold information (executive attention) despite interference or distraction is crucial for predicting general success across higher order domains (intelligence) - which particularly relies on cells in the dPFC

Question 19

In regards to domain specificity / domain general functioning?

Answer 19

Kane and Engle state that WM capacity, executive attention and fluid intelligence reflect a domain free process. At the same time, specific tasks show WM involves domain specific and general (domain free) components

Question 20

Empirical evidence for importance of executive attention and WM and intelligence all together?

Answer 20

Success at stroop tasks (Kane + Engle 2003) with incongruent trials (colour word conflict) correlates modestly with fluid intelligence measures (r = .49)

Question 21

Poor WM is associated with a lower IQ, what can this cause and what are the implications of this?

Answer 21

It is a key marker of developmental disorders
Can lead to:
ADHD (poor attention)
Dyslexia (PL deficits)
SLI/reading difficulties (verbal WM deficits)

Question 22

What are the interventions?

Answer 22

S: Strategy training (verbal/visual mnemonics to facilitate poorer WM capacities)
A: Adaptive strategies (train WM with tasks that gradually get harder)
C: Classroom-based support (Minimise WM load)

Question 23

Discuss Strategy Training

Answer 23

Verbal mnenomics:
Acronyms, Acrostics, Rhymes, Chunking (Miller)
(Gliden found verbal mnemonics were effective for children with learning difficulties (not in the long-term however)
Visual mnemonics:
Mind-map
Method of Loci (O’Hara - LTM benefits)
Key word method (Atkinson)

Question 24

Near-transfer effects

Answer 24

Improvements in similar training (to WM). Experimental evidence that gains in WM are limited to tasks similar to training activities

Question 25

Far-transfer effects

Answer 25

Benefits skills and abilities unrelated to the task at hand

Question 26

Why are effects of cognitive training hard to untangle?

Answer 26

Is the person developing strategies? Or becoming better at the task at hand only? (Chimpanzee study Inoue & Matsuzawa, 2007)
Is the underlying memory improved?

Question 27

Klingberg, Forssberg + Westerberg (2002)

Answer 27

Computer (adaptive) training of WM in children with ADHD. 30 minutes for 20 days improved WM and showed far transfer effects

Dose-response increase

However: Sample was small (7)

Question 28

Jaeggi et al (2008)

Answer 28

Far-transfer effects: Fluid intelligence with WM training. Participants had to listen and watch (two sources of information - similar to dichotic listening tasks, touches on executive attentional control)
More time spent = WM skills transfered to better fluid intelligence

Question 29

Who contested the adaptive strategy training studies?

Answer 29

Redick et al (2013): No evidence of intelligence improvement after WM training

Melby-Lervag & Hulme: Results show no convincing evidence of Far-Transfer effects

Woolrich (2015): However, training should occur when children are young and their brains are plastic

Question 30

Why is WM more than intelligence?

Answer 30

Fluid intelligence is just STM problem-solving (it is more than just this)

Question 31

What else does WM help?

Answer 31

Proactive goal maintanence
Independent living
Doing two things at once
Acquiring language
Perception (feature-binding/rep. + perp. neglect)
Learning (discuss behavioural development issues)
Far transfer effects (however this is dependent on the measurement of intelligence)