There’s no such thing as “true” general intelligence. There’s just a bunch of specific cognitive traits that happen to (usually) be positively correlated with each other. Some proxies are more indicative than others (in the sense that getting high scores on them consistently correlate with doing well on other proxies), and that’s about the best you can hope for.
Within the human range of intelligence and domains we’re interested in, IQ is decent, so are standardized test scores, so (after adjusting for a few things like age and location of origin) is income, so is vocabulary, so (to a lesser degree) is perception of intelligence by peers, and so forth.
I am not asking about ‘true’ general intelligence? Or whatever that implies.
If your not sure, I am asking regarding the term commonly called ‘general intelligence’, or sometimes also known as ‘general mental ability factor’ or ‘g-factor’, in mainstream academic papers. Such as those found in pedagogy, memetics, genetics, etc…
Where many many thousands of researchers over the last few decades are referring to this.
Here is a direct quote by a pretty well known expert among intelligence researchers, writing in 2004:
“ During the past few decades, the word intelligence has been attached to an increasing number of different forms of competence and accomplishment-emo-tional intelligence, football intelligence, and so on. Researchers in the field, however, have largely abandoned the term, together with their old debates over what sorts of abilities should and should not be classified as part of intelligence.
Helped by the advent of new technologies for researching the brain, they have increasingly turned their attention to a century-old concept of a single overarching mental power. They call it simply g, which is short for the general mental ability factor. The g factor is a universal and reliably measured distinction among humans in their ability to learn, reason, and solve problems. It corresponds to what most people mean when they describe some individuals as smarter than others, and it’s well measured by IQ (intelligence quotient) tests, which assess high-level mental skills such as the ability to draw inferences, see similarities and differences, and process complex information of virtually any kind. Understanding g’s biological basis in the brain is the new frontier in intelligence research today.
The g factor was discovered by the first mental testers, who found that people who scored well on one type of mental test tended to score well on all of them.
Regardless of their contents (words, numbers, pictures, shapes), how they are administered (individually or in groups; orally, in writing, or pantomimed), or what they’re intended to measure (vocabulary, mathematical reasoning, spatial ability), all mental tests measure mostly the same thing. This common factor, g, can be distilled from scores on any broad set of cognitive tests, and it takes the same form among individuals of every age, race, sex, and nation yet studied. In other words, the g factor exists independently of schooling, paper-and-pencil tests, and culture.”
There’s no such thing as “true” general intelligence. There’s just a bunch of specific cognitive traits that happen to (usually) be positively correlated with each other. Some proxies are more indicative than others (in the sense that getting high scores on them consistently correlate with doing well on other proxies), and that’s about the best you can hope for.
Within the human range of intelligence and domains we’re interested in, IQ is decent, so are standardized test scores, so (after adjusting for a few things like age and location of origin) is income, so is vocabulary, so (to a lesser degree) is perception of intelligence by peers, and so forth.
I am not asking about ‘true’ general intelligence? Or whatever that implies.
If your not sure, I am asking regarding the term commonly called ‘general intelligence’, or sometimes also known as ‘general mental ability factor’ or ‘g-factor’, in mainstream academic papers. Such as those found in pedagogy, memetics, genetics, etc…
See: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%252C5&q=“general+intelligence”&btnG=
Where many many thousands of researchers over the last few decades are referring to this.
Here is a direct quote by a pretty well known expert among intelligence researchers, writing in 2004:
“ During the past few decades, the word intelligence has been attached to an increasing number of different forms of competence and accomplishment-emo-tional intelligence, football intelligence, and so on. Researchers in the field, however, have largely abandoned the term, together with their old debates over what sorts of abilities should and should not be classified as part of intelligence. Helped by the advent of new technologies for researching the brain, they have increasingly turned their attention to a century-old concept of a single overarching mental power. They call it simply g, which is short for the general mental ability factor. The g factor is a universal and reliably measured distinction among humans in their ability to learn, reason, and solve problems. It corresponds to what most people mean when they describe some individuals as smarter than others, and it’s well measured by IQ (intelligence quotient) tests, which assess high-level mental skills such as the ability to draw inferences, see similarities and differences, and process complex information of virtually any kind. Understanding g’s biological basis in the brain is the new frontier in intelligence research today. The g factor was discovered by the first mental testers, who found that people who scored well on one type of mental test tended to score well on all of them. Regardless of their contents (words, numbers, pictures, shapes), how they are administered (individually or in groups; orally, in writing, or pantomimed), or what they’re intended to measure (vocabulary, mathematical reasoning, spatial ability), all mental tests measure mostly the same thing. This common factor, g, can be distilled from scores on any broad set of cognitive tests, and it takes the same form among individuals of every age, race, sex, and nation yet studied. In other words, the g factor exists independently of schooling, paper-and-pencil tests, and culture.”