Timing Performance as a Predictor of Psychometric Intelligence as Measured by Speed and Power Tests
Abstract
In the present study, the relationship between timing performance and psychometric intelligence as measured by a speed and a power test of intelligence was examined. For this purpose performance on the Zahlen-Verbindungs-Test (ZVT), the Wiener Matrizen-Test (WMT), seven psychophysical temporal tasks, and the Hick reaction-time paradigm was obtained in 190 participants. Correlational and principal component analyses suggested a unitary timing mechanism referred to as temporal g. Performance on single temporal tasks and individual factor scores on temporal g were substantially related to both speed and power measures of psychometric intelligence. Temporal g exhibited higher sensitivity to the prediction of performance on the power test than on the speed test. Furthermore, stepwise multiple regression analysis and commonality analysis revealed that timing performance provides a more powerful predictor of psychometric intelligence than traditional reaction-time measures derived from the Hick paradigm. These findings support the notion that the temporal resolution capacity of the brain as assessed with psychophysical temporal tasks reflects an essential property of brain functioning, which is relevant to a wide range of intelligence-related aspects of neural information processing.
References
(1972). Duration discrimination of noise and tone bursts. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 51, 1219–1223
(2001). Annotation: Conceptions of intelligence. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42, 287–298
(1986). Reaction time and intelligence: A replicated study. Intelligence, 10, 9–40
(1995). Intelligence and complexity of the averaged evoked potential: An attentional theory. Intelligence, 20, 27–39
(1979). Time and consciousness. In G. Underwood & R. Stevens (Eds.), Aspects of consciousness: Vol. 1, Psychological issues (pp. 179-217). London: Academic Press
(1990). Cognitive models of psychological time. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
(2003). Psychological timing without a timer: The roles of attention and memory. In H. Helfrich (Ed.), Time and mind II. Information processing perspectives (pp. 41-59). Göttingen: Hogrefe & Huber
(1993). Eliminating the IQ-RT correlation by eliminating an experimental confound. Intelligence, 17, 475–500
(1999). Differential effects in temporal discrimination: Timing performance as a function of base duration and psychophysical procedure. In P.R. Killeen & W.R. Uttal (Eds.), Fechner Day 99. The end of the 20th century psychophysics (pp. 228-233). Tempe, AZ: The International Society for Psychophysics
(2000). Temporal-order judgment and rhythmic acuity: Description and comparison of two psychophysical timing tasks. In C. Bonnet (Ed.), Fechner Day 2000. Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the International Society for Psychophysics (pp. 157-162). Strasbourg, France: The International Society for Psychophysics
(1992). Intelligence. San Diego: Academic Press
(1995). Temporal information transformed into a spatial code by neural network with realistic properties. Science, 267, 1028–1030
(1997). Further argument for the existence of a pacemaker in the human information processing system. Acta Psychologica, 97, 129–143
(1999). What's an internal clock for? From temporal information processing to temporal processing of information. Behavioural Processes, 45, 59–72
(1993). Human cognitive abilities. A survey of factor-analytical studies. New York: Cambridge University Press
(1890). Mental tests and measurement. Mind, 15, 373–380
(1896). Physical and mental measurement of the students of Columbia University. Psychological Review, 3, 618–684
(1961). The Culture Free Intelligence Test, Scale 3. Champaign, IL: Institute for Personality and Ability Testing
(1966). The scree test for the number of factors. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 1, 245–276
(1977). A comprehensive trial of the scree and KG criteria for determining the number of factors. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 12, 289–325
(2004). The relationship between estimated and psychometric personality and intelligence scores. Journal of Research in Personality, 38, 505–513
(1966). Subjective time. In J.T. Fraser (Ed.), The voices of time (pp. 257-275). New York: Braziller
(1976). Evaluation research in education. Theory, principles, and practice. New York: Irvington Publishers, Inc
(1973). A constant error in the perception of brief temporal intervals. Perception & Psychophysics, 13, 99–104
(1962). Human discrimination of auditory duration. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 34, 582–593
(2000). Looking down on human intelligence: From psychometrics to the brain. New York: Oxford University Press
(1987). What does reaction time tell us about intelligence?. In P.A. Vernon (Ed.), Speed of information-processing and intelligence (pp. 177-200). Norwood, NJ: Ablex
(1976). Manual for the kit of factor-referenced cognitive tests. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service
(1987). Speed of information processing, reaction time, and the theory of intelligence. In P.A. Vernon (Ed.), Speed of information-processing and intelligence (pp. 21-67). Norwood, NJ: Ablex
(1985). Personality and individual differences. New York: Plenum
(2001). Speed of information processing, psychometric intelligence and time estimation as an index of cognitive load. Personality and Individual Differences, 30, 1009–1021
(2005). Individual differences in time estimation related to cognitive ability, speed of information processing, and working memory. Intelligence, 33, 5–26
(1979). Wiener Matrizen-Test. Weinheim: Beltz
(1984). Perception and estimation of time. Annual Review of Psychology, 35, 1–36
(1883). Inquiries into human faculty and its development. London: Macmillan
(1908). Memories of my life. London: Methuen
(2002). Understanding the nature of the general factor of intelligence: The role of individual differences in neural plasticity as an explanatory mechanism. Psychological Review, 109, 116–136
(1991). Origins of scalar timing. Learning and Motivation, 22, 3–38
(1983). Sources of variance in an information processing theory of timing. In H.L. Roitblat, T.G. Bever, & H.S. Terrace (Eds.), Animal cognition (pp. 465-488). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
(1934). An empirical comparison of audition, vision, and touch in the discrimination of short intervals of time. American Journal of Psychology, 46, 243–258
(1993). Duration discrimination of empty and filled intervals marked by auditory and visual signals. Perception and Psychophysics, 54, 383–394
(2001). From physical time to the first and second moments of psychological time. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 22–44
(1999). When to start explicit counting in time-intervals discrimination task: A critical point in the timing process of humans. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 25, 993–1004
(1998). Sensory effects on judgements of short time intervals. Psychological Research, 61, 261–268
(1954). Psychometric methods. New York: McGraw-Hill
(1954). Some necessary conditions for common factor analysis. Psychometrika, 19, 149–161
(1993). Cerebral glucose metabolism and intelligence. In P.A. Vernon (Ed.), Biological approaches to the study of human intelligence (pp. 317-332). Norwood, NJ: Ablex
(1982). The biological basis of intelligence, Part 1: Theory. In H.J. Eysenck (Ed.), A model for intelligence (pp. 151-196). New York: Springer
(1980). The biological basis of individual differences in intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 1, 3–34
(1952). On the rate of gain of information. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 4, 11–26
(1959). Auditory perception of temporal order. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 31, 759–767
(1953). Stimulus information as a determinant of reaction time. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 45, 188–196
(1890). Principles of psychology. New York: H. Holt & Co
(1980). Bias in mental testing. New York: Free Press
(1982). Reaction time and psychometric g. In H.J. Eysenck (Ed.), A model for intelligence (pp. 93-132). New York: Springer
(1987). Individual differences in the Hick paradigm. In P.A. Vernon (Ed.), Speed of information-processing and intelligence (pp. 101-175). Norwood, NJ: Ablex
(1993). Spearman's g: Links between psychometrics and biology. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 702, 103–131
(1998). The g factor. Westport, CT: Praeger
(1979). Reaction time, movement time, and intelligence. Intelligence, 3, 121–126
(1991). Simple adaptive testing with the weighted up-down method. Perception & Psychophysics, 49, 227–229
(1974). An index of factorial simplicity. Psychometrika, 39, 31–36
(1973). Multiple regression in behavioral research. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston
(1989). Inspection time and intelligence: A meta-analysis. Intelligence, 13, 329–348
(1993). Speed and intelligence in old age. Psychology and Aging, 8, 207–220
(1984). Jensen's reaction time investigations of intelligence: A critique. Intelligence, 8, 139–160
(1986). The real and the unreal: A reply to Jensen and Vernon. Intelligence, 10, 181–191
(1963). Discrimination. In R.D. Luce, R.R. Bush, & E. Galanter (Eds.), Handbook of mathematical psychology, (vol. 1, pp. 191-243). New York: Wiley
(2002). Effects of aging on absolute identification of duration. Psychology and Aging, 17, 363–378
(2005). The relationship between three auditory inspection time tasks and general intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 38, 1835–1845
(1978). The making of the present: A tutorial review. In J. Requin (Ed.), Attention and performance VII (pp. 89- 111). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
(1985). The compleat time experiencer. In J.A. Michon & J.L. Jackson (Eds.), Time, mind, and behavior (pp. 21-52). Berlin: Springer-Verlag
(1994). Intelligence and brain myelination: A hypothesis. Personality and Individual Differences, 17, 803–832
(1977). Identification of short time intervals under LSD25 and mescaline. Activas Nervosa Superior, 19, 103–104
(2005). Can personality factors predict intelligence?. Personality and Individual Differences, 38, 1021–1033
(2005). Psychological testing: Principles and applications. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall
(2004). What is common to brain activity evoked by the perception of visual and auditory filled durations? A study with MEG and EEG co-recordings. Cognitive Brain Research, 21, 250–268
(1987). Inspection time and intelligence. In P.A. Vernon (Ed.), Speed of information-processing and intelligence (pp. 295-346). Norwood, NJ: Ablex
(2005). Uncertainty about the biology of intelligence: A role for a marker task. Cortex, 41, 234–235
(1991). Intelligence and RT: A modified Hick paradigm and a new RT paradigm. Intelligence, 15, 175–193
(1997). The mental speed approach to the assessment of intelligence. In J. Kingma & W. Tomic (Eds.), Advances in cognition and educational practice: Reflections on the concept of intelligence (pp. 149-174). Greenwich, CT: JAI
(2000). Physiological approaches to human intelligence: A review. Psychologische Beiträge, 42, 161–173
(1992). Intelligence, attention, motivation, and speed-accuracy trade-off in the Hick paradigm. Personality and Individual Differences, 13, 1325–1332
(1995). Intelligence and spatiotemporal patterns of event-related desynchronization (ERD). Intelligence, 20, 249–266
(1997). Elementary cognitive processes in choice reaction-time tasks and their correlations with intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 23, 715–728
(1997). Intelligence and reaction times in the Hick, Sternberg, and Posner paradigms. Personality and Individual Differences, 22, 885–894
(1987). Der Zahlen-Verbindungs-Test (ZVT). [Number connection test]. Göttingen: Hogrefe
(1969). Retention of visual and name codes of single letters. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 81, 10–15
(1967). Chronometric analysis of classification. Psychological Review, 74, 392–409
(1994). Effects of practice and signal energy on duration discrimination of brief auditory intervals. Perception & Psychophysics, 55, 454–464
(1999). Neuropharmacological evidence for different timing mechanisms in humans. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Section B: Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 52, 273–286
(2001). Ageing and temporal processing of durations within the psychological present. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 13, 549–565
(2001). Internal consistency of indicators of performance on temporal discrimination and response times as obtained by adaptive psychophysical procedures. In E. Sommerfeld, R. Kompass, & T. Lachmann (Eds.), Fechner Day 2001. Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the International Society for Psychophysics (pp. 565-570). Lengerich: Pabst
(2002). On the relationship between general fluid intelligence and psychophysical indicators of temporal resolution in the brain. Journal of Research in Personality, 36, 507–530
(2004). Aspects of temporal information processing: A dimensional analysis. Psychological Research, 69, 115–123
(2005). Performance on temporal information processing as an index of general intelligence. (submitted)
(1991). Duration discrimination of filled and empty auditory intervals: Cognitive and perceptual factors. Perception & Psychophysics, 50, 565–574
(1998). Stimulus characteristics and temporal information processing: Psychophysical and electrophysiological data. Journal of Psychophysiology, 12, 1–12
(2001). Counting models of temporal discrimination. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8, 270–277
(1960). Probabilistic models for some intelligence and attainment tests. Kopenhagen: Nielson & Lydicke
(1968). An individualistic approach to item analysis. In P.F. Lazarsfeld & N.W. Henry (Eds.), Readings in mathematical social science (pp. 89-197). Cambridge: MIT Press
(1938). Progressive matrices. London: Lewis
(1947). Advanced progressive matrices. London: Lewis
(1958a). Advanced progressive matrices (2nd ed.). London: Lewis
(1958b). Standard progressive matrices. London: Lewis
(1964). Die Geschwindigkeit der Verarbeitung von Information und ihr Zusammenhang mit Intelligenz. [The speed of information processing and its relationship to intelligence] Zeitschrift für Experimentelle und Angewandte Psychologie, 11, 616–623
(1991). Mediation of adult age differences in cognition by reductions in working memory and speed of processing. Psychological Science, 2, 179–183
(1989). Accuracy of temporal coding: Auditory-visual comparisons. Memory & Cognition, 17, 384–397
(1979). Cognitive neural adaptability: A biological basis for individual differences in intelligence. Psychophysiology, 16, 199–
(1982). Neural adaptability: A biological determinant of behavioral intelligence. International Journal of Neuroscience, 17, 183–191
(1985). Neural adaptability: A biological determinant of g factor intelligence. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 8, 240–241
(1995). Hypothesen zu den biologischen und kognitiven Grundlagen allgemeiner Intelligenz. [Hypotheses on biological and cognitive sources of general intelligence] Zeitschrift für Differentielle und Diagnostische Psychologie, 16, 67–81
(2005). An overview of research into the cognitive basis of intelligence. Journal of Individual Differences, 26, 43–51
(2004). Attention and working memory as predictors of intelligence. Intelligence, 32, 329–347
(1904). General intelligence, objectively determined and measured. American Journal of Psychology, 15, 201–293
(1927). The abilities of man: Their nature and measurement. New York: Macmillan
(1980). Tests for comparing elements of a correlation matrix. Psychological Bulletin, 87, 245–251
(1897). Psychische Präsenzzeit. [Psychological present] Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, 13, 325–349
(1998). Human abilities. Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 479–502
(1966). High-speed scanning in human memory. Science, 153, 652–654
(1969). Memory-scanning: Mental processes revealed by reaction-time experiments. American Scientist, 57, 421–457
(1973). The perception of temporal order: Fundamental issues and a general model. In S. Kornblum (Ed.), Attention and performance IV (pp. 629-685). New York: Academic Press
(1968). Timing of behavior in senescence and the role of the central nervous system. In G.A. Talland (Ed.), Human aging and behavior (pp. 1-35). New York: Academic Press
(1990). The internal clock: Evidence for a temporal oscillator underlying time perception with some estimates of its characteristic frequency. Perception, 19, 705–743
(1983a). Speed of information processing and general intelligence. Intelligence, 7, 53–70
(1983b). Recent findings on the nature of g. Journal of Special Education, 17, 389–400
(1985). Individual differences in general cognitive ability. In L.C. Hartlage & C.F. Telzrow (Eds.), The neuropsychology of individual differences: A developmental perspective. New York: Plenum
(1993a). Intelligence and neural efficiency. In D.K. Dettermann (Ed.), Current topics in human intelligence (Vol. 3, pp. 171-187). Norwood, NJ: Ablex
(1993b). Der Zahlen-Verbindungs-Test and other trail-making correlates of general intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 14, 35–40
(1986). Reaction time correlations with intelligence test scores obtained under either timed or untimed conditions. Intelligence, 10, 315–330
(1985). Reaction times and speed-of-processing: Their relationship to timed and untimed measures of intelligence. Intelligence, 9, 357–374
(1993). Predicting intelligence with multiple speed of information-processing tests. Personality and Individual Differences, 14, 413–419
(1972). Perceptual indices of performance: The measurement of “inspection time” and “noise” in the visual system. Perception, 1, 263–295
(1997). Age and IQ effects on stimulus and response timing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 23, 962–979
(1989). Procedural effects on performance on the Hick paradigm: Bias in reaction time and movement time parameters. Intelligence, 13, 63–85
