TASK 2 – THE HIGHEST VIRTUE
CHAPTER 10: MENTAL ABILITY
Differences in mental abilities are differences among people in their maximum performance in producing
correct answers to various questions
10.1 THE DOMAIN OF MENTAL ABILITY
• Mental ability – the capacity to solve problems that demand thinking-related skills
o an area of human individual differences that is usually considered to be separate from that
of personality
• This domain should be assessed by tasks whose difficulty is due to their demands on mental
processes, such as reasoning, understanding, imagining and remembering
• This domain should NOT be assessed by tasks whose difficulty is due to their demands on physical /
sensory skills and abilities
10.2 THE STRUCTURE OF MENTAL ABILITY: ONE DIMENSION OR MANY?
• Multidimensional Aptitude Battery (MAB) test – widely used
intelligence test
o 4 tasks:
1. Vocabulary – identify which of several alternative
words is closest in meaning to the given word
2. Arithmetic – figure out how to solve an arithmetic
problem and then correctly perform the needed
calculations
3. Spatial – asks respondents to consider a given 2D
shape and to indicate which of several alternative
shapes would match it when rotated
4. Picture arrangement – figure out which sequence
of comic strip panels would make the most
beautiful story
• If you expect a ‘general’ mental ability à all correlations would be
positive
• If you expect several completely independent mental abilities à all
correlations would be near 0
FIRST RESEARCHER TO ASSESS MENTAL ABILITIES – ALFRED BINET
• Developed a variety of tasks that he used in measuring mental ability of children (Intelligence)
• Not answered: is there a single major dimension of mental ability or independent varieties?
,SPEARMAN AND THE G FACTOR
QUESTION OF STRUCTURE OF MENTAL ABILITY INVESTIGATED - CHARLES SPEARMAN
• Examined student’s grades in school and calculated correlations among the grades in various
courses
o Results: grades in various courses tended to be substantially positively correlated with each
other
o Ie. most students who achieved low grades in geometry also scored low in French
o Suggested that grades in these courses were assessing a general, all-around academic
ability
• Further research: tested students on a variety of tasks intended to assess different aspects of Mental
Ability
o Results: scores had substantial positive correlations with each other
o Correlations among the various tasks indicated that performance on each task was
influenced by a general mental ability
• Thus indicated existence of a single, major dimension of mental ability
• Some tasks tended to show high correlations, others lower
o Suggested that how well someone did on those tasks was a good indication of their overall
level of mental ability
• Used factor analysis à obtained one factor of general mental ability
• The tasks that tended to correlate strongly with other tasks showed high loadings on that factor (g)
• Dimension of general mental ability is involved even in tasks that appear to be very different from one
another
WHICH TASKS WERE THE BEST INDICATORS OF GENERAL MENTAL ABILITY?
1. The content of the task does not matter
a. The principle of the indifference of the indicator à the content of the task (indicator) was
unimportant in determining whether the task would show a high g-loading or low
2. Mental processes involved in the task do matter
a. Most of the high g-loaded tasks involved reasoning in some form
b. Tasks with low g-loadings involved simpler mental processes / automatic / following rules
c. Highly g-loaded tasks involve a process called “eduction of relations and correlates”
d. Raven’s matrices test à very highly g-loaded task
3. Highly g-loaded tasks can have any kind of content but they frequently demand reasoning of some
kind, often involving the process of ‘educing relations and correlates’
GROUP FACTORS
• Spearman showed that people who did well on one mental ability task tended to do well on other
mental ability tasks à underlying ‘g’ factor
• He found that if 2 tasks had similar content or demanded similar mental processes, they would tend
to be strongly correlated with each other, even if those tasks did not correlate strongly with various
other tasks
, • g alone could only partly account for the correlations between similar tasks, since there were also
several smaller factors, each of which would account for the part of the correlation between tasks
not accounted for by g
o Each of these smaller factors would apply to a particular group of related tasks à thus
‘group’ factors
10.2.3 THURSTONE AND SEVERAL PRIMARY FACTORS
IDENTIFYING 7 PRIMARY FACTORS OF MENTAL ABILITY – LOUIS THURSTONE
• He found one could identify several distinct kinds of mental ability
• Interpreted results from student tests in terms of several factors, not just one ‘g’
• Concluded there were at least 7 Primary Factors of mental ability:
1. Verbal fluency – ability to produce many words
related to a category
2. Verbal comprehension – ability to understand
words, on their own / in passage
3. Numerical facility – ability to work quickly with
numbers
4. Spatial visualization – ability to imagine shapes from
different perspectives
5. Memory – ability to remember strings of info / paired
associations
6. Perceptual speed – ability to notice quickly
similarities / differences between objects
7. Reasoning – ability to infer patterns, similar to
‘eduction of relations and correlates’
• Two tasks measuring any one of these factors could correlate
strongly with each other and more strongly than with tasks
measuring other mental abilities
• People who were above average in the tasks belonging to one primary mental ability also tended to
be above average in the tasks belonging to another primary mental ability
• Each of the primary mental ability factors had something in common with one another – that
common element being g factor
10.2.4 CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE STRUCTURE OF MENTAL ABILITIES
• By 1940s, researchers were reaching fairly similar conclusions about structure of mental abilities
• Research teams concluded that individual differences in mental abilities could be summarized with
one large general factor plus several additional, smaller factors
• The general factor usually accounts for a large amount of the variability between persons, and for
most of the variability accounted for by all factors combined
• The overall score based on a variety of mental ability tasks is a predictor of many outcome variables
(ie. academic performance, health)
CHAPTER 10: MENTAL ABILITY
Differences in mental abilities are differences among people in their maximum performance in producing
correct answers to various questions
10.1 THE DOMAIN OF MENTAL ABILITY
• Mental ability – the capacity to solve problems that demand thinking-related skills
o an area of human individual differences that is usually considered to be separate from that
of personality
• This domain should be assessed by tasks whose difficulty is due to their demands on mental
processes, such as reasoning, understanding, imagining and remembering
• This domain should NOT be assessed by tasks whose difficulty is due to their demands on physical /
sensory skills and abilities
10.2 THE STRUCTURE OF MENTAL ABILITY: ONE DIMENSION OR MANY?
• Multidimensional Aptitude Battery (MAB) test – widely used
intelligence test
o 4 tasks:
1. Vocabulary – identify which of several alternative
words is closest in meaning to the given word
2. Arithmetic – figure out how to solve an arithmetic
problem and then correctly perform the needed
calculations
3. Spatial – asks respondents to consider a given 2D
shape and to indicate which of several alternative
shapes would match it when rotated
4. Picture arrangement – figure out which sequence
of comic strip panels would make the most
beautiful story
• If you expect a ‘general’ mental ability à all correlations would be
positive
• If you expect several completely independent mental abilities à all
correlations would be near 0
FIRST RESEARCHER TO ASSESS MENTAL ABILITIES – ALFRED BINET
• Developed a variety of tasks that he used in measuring mental ability of children (Intelligence)
• Not answered: is there a single major dimension of mental ability or independent varieties?
,SPEARMAN AND THE G FACTOR
QUESTION OF STRUCTURE OF MENTAL ABILITY INVESTIGATED - CHARLES SPEARMAN
• Examined student’s grades in school and calculated correlations among the grades in various
courses
o Results: grades in various courses tended to be substantially positively correlated with each
other
o Ie. most students who achieved low grades in geometry also scored low in French
o Suggested that grades in these courses were assessing a general, all-around academic
ability
• Further research: tested students on a variety of tasks intended to assess different aspects of Mental
Ability
o Results: scores had substantial positive correlations with each other
o Correlations among the various tasks indicated that performance on each task was
influenced by a general mental ability
• Thus indicated existence of a single, major dimension of mental ability
• Some tasks tended to show high correlations, others lower
o Suggested that how well someone did on those tasks was a good indication of their overall
level of mental ability
• Used factor analysis à obtained one factor of general mental ability
• The tasks that tended to correlate strongly with other tasks showed high loadings on that factor (g)
• Dimension of general mental ability is involved even in tasks that appear to be very different from one
another
WHICH TASKS WERE THE BEST INDICATORS OF GENERAL MENTAL ABILITY?
1. The content of the task does not matter
a. The principle of the indifference of the indicator à the content of the task (indicator) was
unimportant in determining whether the task would show a high g-loading or low
2. Mental processes involved in the task do matter
a. Most of the high g-loaded tasks involved reasoning in some form
b. Tasks with low g-loadings involved simpler mental processes / automatic / following rules
c. Highly g-loaded tasks involve a process called “eduction of relations and correlates”
d. Raven’s matrices test à very highly g-loaded task
3. Highly g-loaded tasks can have any kind of content but they frequently demand reasoning of some
kind, often involving the process of ‘educing relations and correlates’
GROUP FACTORS
• Spearman showed that people who did well on one mental ability task tended to do well on other
mental ability tasks à underlying ‘g’ factor
• He found that if 2 tasks had similar content or demanded similar mental processes, they would tend
to be strongly correlated with each other, even if those tasks did not correlate strongly with various
other tasks
, • g alone could only partly account for the correlations between similar tasks, since there were also
several smaller factors, each of which would account for the part of the correlation between tasks
not accounted for by g
o Each of these smaller factors would apply to a particular group of related tasks à thus
‘group’ factors
10.2.3 THURSTONE AND SEVERAL PRIMARY FACTORS
IDENTIFYING 7 PRIMARY FACTORS OF MENTAL ABILITY – LOUIS THURSTONE
• He found one could identify several distinct kinds of mental ability
• Interpreted results from student tests in terms of several factors, not just one ‘g’
• Concluded there were at least 7 Primary Factors of mental ability:
1. Verbal fluency – ability to produce many words
related to a category
2. Verbal comprehension – ability to understand
words, on their own / in passage
3. Numerical facility – ability to work quickly with
numbers
4. Spatial visualization – ability to imagine shapes from
different perspectives
5. Memory – ability to remember strings of info / paired
associations
6. Perceptual speed – ability to notice quickly
similarities / differences between objects
7. Reasoning – ability to infer patterns, similar to
‘eduction of relations and correlates’
• Two tasks measuring any one of these factors could correlate
strongly with each other and more strongly than with tasks
measuring other mental abilities
• People who were above average in the tasks belonging to one primary mental ability also tended to
be above average in the tasks belonging to another primary mental ability
• Each of the primary mental ability factors had something in common with one another – that
common element being g factor
10.2.4 CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE STRUCTURE OF MENTAL ABILITIES
• By 1940s, researchers were reaching fairly similar conclusions about structure of mental abilities
• Research teams concluded that individual differences in mental abilities could be summarized with
one large general factor plus several additional, smaller factors
• The general factor usually accounts for a large amount of the variability between persons, and for
most of the variability accounted for by all factors combined
• The overall score based on a variety of mental ability tasks is a predictor of many outcome variables
(ie. academic performance, health)
