Intelligence from a Cognitive Perspective (and Beyond): Buz's Challenge I Roberto Colom

Three decades ago I began to study intelligence from a cognitive perspective directly under the framework developed by Buz Hunt. I shared his intuition that cognitive psychology might help to refine this key question: what do... [ view full abstract ]

Three decades ago I began to study intelligence from a cognitive perspective directly under the framework developed by Buz Hunt. I shared his intuition that cognitive psychology might help to refine this key question: what do ‘smarter’ people do that characterizes them that way? I will discuss basic and applied studies from my research group based on Hunt’s cognitive correlates approach. Our basic studies addressed relations among attention, working memory, and reasoning ability. Specifically, I will discuss the relevance of balance between verbal and visuospatial processing resources (Buz’s ‘tilt’) for explaining individual differences in cognitive performance. Our applied research has focused on development of computerized tasks for measuring dynamic spatial ability. We analyzed the relations between spatial ability measured by ‘static’ standardized tests and visuospatial performance on ‘dynamic’ tasks. Finally, I will offer some thoughts regarding our recent efforts to integrate psychometric, cognitive, and neuroscientific research on intelligence.