Intelligence predicted by simple visual task The Parliamentary Information Office of the Parliamentary Yearbook reports on a new study which indicates that a simple visual test predicts a person’s intelligence quotient (IQ). A team of researchers at the University of Rochester in New York has shown that a simple visual test can be used to predict a person’s intelligence quotient or IQ. The visual test used in the study measures the brain’s unconscious ability to filter out visual information. The study showed that subjects whose brains are better at suppressing background motion perform better on standard intelligence tests. This is the first purely sensory assessment to be strongly correlated with IQ. In the study 53 subjects watched brief video clips of circles of black and white bars moving across a computer screen. They were asked to identify the direction in which the bars drifted, to the right or to the left. The bars were presented in three different versions which varied in size. The smallest version was limited to a circular area in the centre of the screen which roughly covered the width of a thumb when the hand is extended. The IQs of all subjects were measured using a separate standardised intelligence test. Previous research has shown that people with higher IQs make simple perceptual judgements more swiftly and have faster reflexes. In line with this, the study found that those with higher IQs were faster at catching the movement of the bars when observing the smallest image. The surprising result came from the subjects’ performance on detecting the motion of larger images. In this case, the higher the person’s IQ the worse they performed on this task. Previous research suggested that all subjects would be worse at detecting the movement of larger images but in this study subjects with high IQ scores were found to be “much, much worse”, according one of the lead researchers, doctoral student Michael Melnick. The researchers interpret this relative inability to perceive direction of drift in larger moving images as a perceptual marker for the brain’s ability to suppress “background” motion. The drift of the large bars is treated as a background distractor by the perceptual system and is more readily filtered out by those of higher IQ. In making sense of the results the authors explain that in most situations background movement is less important than small moving objects in the foreground. They give the example of driving in a car or walking down a hall, where the background is constantly in motion and relatively suppressed under normal circumstances. This situation is modeled in the small-bar display. Those of higher IQ suppress background more successfully and more readily identify direction of small-bar drift. With large-bar drift the background suppressed is the drift itself. Subjects with higher IQ are consistently better at suppression of background distractions, and in the large-bar display this background distraction is the drift itself; hence they perform worse than those of lower IQ with large bars but not with small bars. The key discovery of the study is of course how closely this natural filtering ability is linked to a person’s IQ score. The researchers report a 71% correlation between large-bar motion suppression and IQ scores. This is the strongest correlation between intelligence and natural sensory ability identified to date. Research on the relationship between intelligence and colour discrimination, sensitivity to pitch and reaction times have only shown a 20-40% correlation. The strong link between intelligence and motion was so unexpected that co-lead researcher Duje Tadin recalls her initial reaction: “In our first experiment [involving only 12 subjects], the effect for motion was so strong…that I really thought it was a fluke.” Consequently, the group tried to disprove their initial 12 subject study - which identified a 64% correlation between intelligence and motion - by rerunning recent experiment with 53 subjects in this recent study at the University of Rochester. The development of a visual test - which relies on visual sensory processing alone - to predict IQ is important because it may provide a non-verbal and culturally unbiased tool for scientists trying to understand neural processes associated with general intelligence. “Because the test is simple and non-verbal, it will also help researchers better understand neural processing in individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities”, said Loisa Bennetto, co-author and associate professor at University of Rochester. parliamentaryyearbook.co.uk Email: [email protected]
Posted on: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 10:54:27 +0000
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