construct of intelligence

[edieb]

I was reading a journal article about the WAIS and its theoretical frameworks. In the article in talks about how Wechsler looked at IQ as a unitary construct and, hence, the subtests on the WAIS are posited to measure g, but in different ways.

However, I also know that certain psychological tasks given to infants have been predictive of certain facets of IQ. For example, infants' visual attention and visual recognition memory is predictive of later verbal IQ (probably because they can remember vocab words better)

Looking at this finding, doesn't this disprove Wechsler's view of intelligence? In other words, if Wechlers view of IQ as a unitary construct were true/valid, wouldn't span of infant visual attention correlate highly with IQ as a whole rather than just one facet (vocabulary)?

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[VeggieDelight]

G is a loaded construct (no pun intended). The WAIS-IV makes an effort to distinguish between fluid and crystallized intelligence. I don't know much about infant assessment, but it could be that those tests have good predictive validity specifically for crystallized g.

 

[IOPsych]

as veggie mentioned specific facets of intelligence can be measured and can often be more predictive of specific outcomes, but each of the facets of intelligence all share large amounts of common variance, this variance is what is commonly called "g".

For a good overview on intelligence look at Gottfredson's 1997 editorial published in intelligence.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

Excellent topic. I'll have more to add when I find some time.