Intelligence & working memory Flashcards
Who found that having high WM span can lead to better reading comprehension?
Daneman & Carpenter (1980)
Adams & Hitch (1997) found that having a high WM span can lead to better…
…listening comprehension & problem-solving abilities
Who found that having high WM span can improve your ability to learn vocabulary?
Daneman & Green (1986)
Engle, Carullo & Collins (1991) found that having a high WM span can improve your ability to…
…follow directions
Who found that having high WM span can improve your ability to learn logic?
Kyllonen & Stephens (1990)
To test the idea of ‘knowledge is power’, we can compare pps…
…performance on a cognitive task (CP, cognitive performance) & how much they already know (DK, domain knowledge)
Pps have a low level of domain knowledge. How will the performance of pps with a low WM span & high WM span compare?
Pps with a high WM span will have higher cognitive performances than pps with a low WM span.
Pps listened to a passage about a baseball game. There were 3 groups WM span & DK - high, average, low
Who did this study & what did they find?
Hambrick & Engle (2002)
Pps with more DK did better on the memory task than pps with less DK
Pps with high WM span did better than pps with low WM, even if they all had the same level of DK
What did Hambrick & Engle (2002) conclude from their baseball study?
WM capacity has a positive effect on memory performance and DK doesn’t attenuate this effect
The lines on the graph remained parallel –> knowledge is not power (universal effect)
Brain regions active in pps with high WM span when the orientation of 2 coloured bars were compared in the presence of 2 distractors was similar to the brain areas active in pps with low WM span when no distractors were present.
Who found this & what does this imply?
Vogel, McCollough & Machizawa (2005)
Pps with high WM are able to ignore distractors, the brain activates as if the distractors do not exist
Who can remove irrelevant distractors from the display faster - people with low/high WM?
People with high WM can remove irrelevant distractors from the display faster than people with low WM
What ability is associated with intelligence?
Speed of processing
Why are IQ tests frequently recalibrated?
They get easier for each generation - each gen. gets more intelligent (= Flynn effect) because of better nutrition, education, etc.
What does the verbal scale on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale measure?
- information
- comprehension
- arithmetic
- similarities
- digit span
- vocabulary
What does Comprehension measure on the WAIS measure?
A person’s understanding of social conventions
A person’s ability to evaluate their past experiences
What does Similarities measure on the WAIS measure?
How objects/concepts are similar
Measures abstract thinking
What does the performance scale on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale measure?
- digit symbol
- picture completion
- block design
- picture arrangement
- object assembly
What does Digit Symbol test on the WAIS?
Tests a person’s speed of learning through timed coding tasks (have to relate numbers & shapes)
What does Picture Completion test on the WAIS?
Tests a person’s visual alertness & visual memory
What does Block Design test on the WAIS?
Tests a person’s ability to perceive & analyse patterns (have to copy designs with blocks)
What does Picture Arrangement test on the WAIS?
Tests a person’s understanding of social situations through comic strip-style pictures that must be arranged in the correct order to tell a story
What does Object Assembly test on the WAIS?
Tests a person’s ability to deal with part/whole relationships (have to complete puzzles)
What is Spearman’s ‘g’ (general factor) & who created it?
Spearman’s g is a broad mental capacity that influences our performance on cognitive ability measures
It is a measure of general intelligence
Proposed by Spearman (1923)
What is the ‘positive manifold’?
The tendency for performance on tests to correlate
- people who do well on one task tend to do well on other tasks
- people with high IQs are likely to do well on many tasks
Who claimed that WM capacity is not the same as Spearman’s g?
Conway, Kane & Engle (2003)
Conway, Kane & Engle (2003) claim that WM span tasks involve an executive control mechanism that combats interference. Which area of the brain mediates this?
PFC
Cattell (1963, 71) distinguished between fluid & crystallised intelligence. What are they?
gF = non-verbal intelligence, no knowledge is required, declines with age
gC = mediated by knowledge, improves with age
Turing explains the imitation game in relation to passing the Turing test
What is the imitation game and how do we pass the Turing test?
A computer must fool a human into thinking that they are interacting with another human to pass the Turing test
Why is human-level intelligence difficult to achieve?
It is hard to identify what info is relevant/irrelevant
Who proposed the ‘frame problem of AI’ and what is it?
McCarthy & Hayes (1969)
The frame problem is an issue with using first-order logic to express facts about a robot in the world.
Robots can demonstrate that they have solved the frame problem & show general human-level intelligence by recognising the intended & unintended consequences of their actions quickly enough to act in real-time.
What is the robot’s dilemma & who proposed it?
Dennett (1984)
The robot’s dilemma is the inability to follow through with consequences.
A robot must think about unintended consequences of its actions, but it doesn’t need to think about ALL the unintended consequences.
A robot must be able to tell apart intended consequences (ones that might actually cause a problem) & unintended consequences.
Separating intended from unintended consequences is a non-trivial task - it requires reasoning that humans can often manage but robot’s can’t.
