smarter but slower;

smarter but slower;
The report will comprise the following: Title and Abstract on one page; the abstract should be no more than 120 words. Introduction; beginning on a new page. The pdf of slides from Ted Nettelbeck’s lecture on the practical assignment is located under Practical within MyUni and the voice recording covering this session is located in Lectures. Briefly, Woodley, te Nijenhuis and Murphy (2013) published an analysis of simple reactions times (RT), measured initially by Galton towards the end of the 19 century and, subsequently, throughout the 20th century. They concluded that slower RTs in recent times are consistent with dysgenic fertility being responsible for a mean loss of 13 IQ points in the general population. This is despite the evidence of Flynn that IQ has steadily risen across the 20th century. Critical to their argument is an assumption that individual differences in general intelligence (g) are substantially determined by individual differences in simple RT. Nettelbeck (2014) and several other commentators have challenged this conclusion. The aim of the practical is to test two hypotheses that have been drawn from consideration of this dispute. 1. Simple RT correlates more with Gs than with Gf. This hypothesis derives from past work by Burns and Nettelbeck (2003) who found that inspection time (IT) and the decision time (DT) component of choice RT loaded on different broad factors, defined by a CHC model of psychometric intelligence. IT loaded on Gs (speediness) and DT loaded on Gf (fluid intelligence). This distinction is the basis for an argument by Woodley that, although IT, a measure of perceptual speed, is not directly relevant to g, simple RT is. The fallacy here is the implied assumption that simple and choice RT measure the same underlying psychological processes. However, where within a CHC psychometric model simple RT loads has not been established. To test this hypothesis requires locating simple RT within a CHC psychometric model, following Burns and Nettelbeck (2003). 2. When simple RT is repeatedly measured from the same individual, the initial measure is faster than later measures. Woodley et al.’s proposition relies heavily on faster simple RTs as measured by Galton in his South Kensington, London, Anthropometric laboratory 1884-5 with a pendulum apparatus (Johnson et al., 1985). Achieving a choice reaction that is as fast as possible requires that every response be at the individual’s threshold for maintaining accuracy. This assumption can never be met literally but an approximation to the ideal is achieved if the respondent registers a small number of occasional errors. However, whereas errors for choice reactions can be reliably identified as incorrect stimulus-response pairings, an error for simple RT can only be observed by the occurrence of an anticipated response, registered before the signal occurs. Modern practice has been to exclude responses deemed anticipatory (Jensen, 2006) and Jensen routinely omitted latencies of 150ms or less, a practice that inevitably increased mean and median latencies. Johnson et al.’s (1985) account of Galton’s method suggests that this did not exclude implausibly fast responses if these occurred. The hypothesis derives from an assumption that higher proportions of anticipatory responses will be generated, when participants are attempting to “react as quickly as possible”.

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