Intelligence/WM essay Q Flashcards
What is intelligence?
Abilities to learn from experience, adapt to new situations, understand and handle abstract concepts, and use knowledge to manipulate one’s environment.
What is fluid intelligence (Cattell)?
Ability to problem solve, think abstractly, it can be trained, learn new things - seems like a skill related to WM?
How do you measure intelligence? (why is it important to define measurement in this context)
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
How do WM and ‘intelligence’ correlate?
Kane + Engle (2002) - WM SPAN correlates with executive functions and general fluid intelligence. High WM span people performed well on cognitive tasks
What area of the brain is crucial in this research?
Prefrontal cortex (specifically - dorsolateral PFC)
What was Kane+Engle (2002)’ s method?
Review of prefrontal cortex lesions and trauma damage in humans and monkeys. (Both literature and fMRI studies)
What is fMRI and what does it do?
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Detects changes in blood + oxygenation, brain region involved in a task requires more oxygenation (shows as more active)
Pros of fMRI (Coltheart)
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)
Cons of fMRI
Biological + Physical constraints (e.g. noise etc - demands more attentional control, which can affect hydrostatics - Raz, 2005).
What is the relationship between dPFC and fluid intelligence?
Prefrontal cortex is incredibly evolved (associated with highest human qualities - such as intelligence)
The dPFC is associated with generating fluid intelligence
What is the evidence for the relationship between dPFC and fluid intelligence?
It is limited, but shows fluid g has a mild reliance on dPFC
What (from WM) does NOT correlate with GF? And why?
Digit span and word span
Tasks assessing these only require memory storage, they do not demand processing (simple tasks)
What does correlate (from WM) with GF?
WMspan tasks: Memory and processing are used. Make more demands on attentional control and executive functions (fluid intelligence…)
What is problematic about Kane + Engle’s review?
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
fMRI evidence of dPFC and WM?
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
What do Kane + Engle (2002) predict about high span people who damage their dPFC?
Damage in the dPFC in high span people will result in them acting more like low span people on tasks
What are low WM span and low fluid intelligence people both susceptible?
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)
Conclusion? How do they all link?
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
In regards to domain specificity / domain general functioning?
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
Empirical evidence for importance of executive attention and WM and intelligence all together?
Success at stroop tasks (Kane + Engle 2003) with incongruent trials (colour word conflict) correlates modestly with fluid intelligence measures (r = .49)
Poor WM is associated with a lower IQ, what can this cause and what are the implications of this?
It is a key marker of developmental disorders
Can lead to:
ADHD (poor attention)
Dyslexia (PL deficits)
SLI/reading difficulties (verbal WM deficits)
What are the interventions?
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)
Discuss Strategy Training
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)
Near-transfer effects
Improvements in similar training (to WM). Experimental evidence that gains in WM are limited to tasks similar to training activities
