Cultural variation of the Big 5 personality traits

Gene Expression has been presenting (via multiple posts) an interesting integration of phenotypic variatic of personality traits, as per the Big 5 theory, across different global cultures. Although personality research is a bit off-task for IQs Corner, I've had an ongoing interest in the Big 5 theory given that its empirical birth is similar to that of the CHC Theory of Cognitive Abilities (namely, draws heavily from factor analytic research)


Technorati Tags: psychology, educatonal psychology, counseling psychology, clinical psychology, personalith, Big 5 personality, cultural differences, phenotype, Gene Expression

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On-line measure of planning ability - Tower of Hanoi

Thanks to SharpBrains for the link to an on-line version of the classic test of planing ability (part of executive functioning - typically associated with the frontal lobes), the The Tower of Hanoi


Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, school psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, executive functioning, frontal lobes, planning ability, cognitive, cognition, IQ, intelligence, education.psychology testing, assessment, Tower of Hanoi

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Definitions of various self constructs

Thanks to Affective Teaching for the brief defitions of self-esteem, self-efficacy, self-confidence, and self-concept.


Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, school psychology, education, self-efficacy, self-concept, self-confidence, self-esteem, edcuation, conative, aptitude

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Brain teaser: Visual processing of color

An interesting brain teaser about the processing of colors by the visual system over at SharpBrains.


Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, vision, visual perception, cognition, cognitive, brain teaser, visual illusion

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Breastfeeding kids makes them smart, right? Guest post by Joel Schneider

The following is a guest blog post by Joel Schneider (Clinical psychologist, Illinois State University), a member of IQs Corner Virtual Community of Scholars project.

Breastfeeding kids makes them smart, right?

Well, maybe not!

A new paper by Der, Batty, and Deary (2006) suggests that although breast milk has many wonderful properties, IQ enhancement is not one of them. Here is a summary of the evidence:

• Like virtually every other study on the matter, this paper found in a large representative sample of U.S. mothers and their children that breast-fed children have higher IQ scores than children who were not breast-fed. The advantage is about 4.5 IQ points, which is substantial but not huge (a 4.5 point boost would move an average score to the 62^nd percentile).
• Unlike most other studies, this one also measured the IQ scores of the mothers. Once mothers’ IQ is controlled for statistically, the breast milk boost shrinks to only 1.3 IQ points.
• The researchers also found a subset of mothers in their sample who breastfed some of their children but not others. On average, the breast-fed siblings did not score significantly higher than their siblings who were not breast fed.
• A systematic review of other studies that also controlled for maternal IQ also found that breastfeeding had little effect on IQ.

This paper deals a strong blow to the theory that breastfeeding has long-term cognitive benefits beyond those that can be had from the responsible use of high-quality formula milk. It appears that the higher IQ of breast-fed children is not a result of the breast milk itself but is instead inherited directly from their high-IQ mothers.

It is possible that future research will refine our understanding of the cognitive benefits of breast milk. There is reason to believe that this paper is not final word on the matter. This study measured “IQ” with the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT), a test of math reasoning and reading comprehension. While it is true that this test correlates strongly with traditional IQ tests, traditional IQ typically measure a much broader array of abilities. It is possible that breast milk enhances abilities that were not measured by the PIAT. For example, perhaps breast milk enhances nonverbal reasoning, mental processing speed, or short-term memory. These kinds of abilities are less strongly influenced by the effects of schooling and the family environment and are more directly tied to the overall biological integrity of the brain.

The researchers strongly caution against overinterpreting the results of the study. It is not known how the results might have been different for preterm infants or for infants from developing nations. They agree with the World Health Organization’s statement that breast milk is “an unequalled way of providing ideal food for the healthy growth and development of infants.”

• Der, G., Batty, G.D., & Deary, I.J. (2006). Effect of breast feeding on intelligence in children: prospective study, sibling pairs analysis, and meta-analysis, British
  Medical Journal, doi:10.1136/bmj.38978.699583.55

Abstract

• Objective: To assess the importance of maternal intelligence, and the effect of controlling for it and other important confounders, in the link between breast feeding and children’s intelligence.
• Design: Examination of the effect of breast feeding on cognitive ability and the impact of a range of potential confounders, in particular maternal IQ, within a national database. Additional analyses compared pairs of siblings from the sample who were and were not breast fed. The results are considered in the context of other studies that have also controlled for parental intelligence via meta-analysis.
• Setting: 1979 US national longitudinal survey of youth.
• Subjects: Data on 5475 children, the offspring of 3161 mothers in the longitudinal survey.
• Main outcome measure: IQ in children measured by Peabody individual achievement test.
• Results: The mother’s IQ was more highly predictive of breastfeeding status than were her race, education, age, poverty status, smoking, the home environment, or the child’s birth weight or birth order. One standard deviation advantage in maternal IQ more than doubled the odds of breast feeding. Before adjustment, breast feeding was associated with an increase of around 4 points in mental ability. Adjustment for maternal intelligence accounted for most of this effect. When fully adjusted for a range of relevant confounders, the effect was small (0.52) and non-significant (95% confidence interval − 0.19 to 1.23). The results of the sibling comparisons and meta-analysis corroborated these findings.
• Conclusions: Breast feeding has little or no effect on intelligence in children. While breast feeding has many advantages for the child and mother, enhancement of the child’s intelligence is unlikely to be among them.

Technorati Tags: psychology, educatonal psychology, school psychology, developental psychology, infants, mothers, breastfeeding, cognitive, cognition, IQ, intelligence, child care

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NCLB negatively impacting kids with disabilities?

Some interesting food for thought regarding a potential unintended negative side effect of the standards and test-driven impact of NCLB on kids at the extremes. Check out the Quick and the ED blog.

For a prior post (at IQs Corner) related to NCLB and teacher expections, check out the Forrest Gump post and report.


Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, educatoin, school psychology, NCLB, testing, educational standards, disabilities, special education, teacher expectations

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CHC cognitive abilities and expertise - Guest post by Ruben Lopez

Over on the CHC listserv there has been some good discussion of CHC cognitive abilities, SLODR, and the development of expertise. Ruben Lopez, a regular and thoughtful contributor to the IAP list, made the following post today. I liked it so much I asked if I could post it as a guest blog comment here at IQs Corner. Ruben agreed...thanks Ruben.

"I just ran across a discussion of CHC and SLODR in The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance by Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich, and Hoffman (2006). (It seems that the findings on expertise and expert performance have important implications for teaching kids to become experts-well, at least proficient-in school subjects.)

About CHC and SLODR, Earl Hunt says, "Gf and Gc are correlated, which makes it possible to speak reasonably about g. However, correlations between measures of different types of cognitive abilities are highest toward the low end of the general intelligence scale, and markedly lower at the high end (Detterman & Daniel, 1989, Deary et al., 1996). This is important, as expertise is generally associated with high levels of performance.

Measures of Gf have substantial correlations with measures of the performance of working memory. A high-Gf person is probably good at keeping track of several things at once and concentrating his or her attention in the face of distractions (Engle, Kane & Tulhoski, 1999; Kyllonen & Christal, 1990). These talents are good to have during the learning phase of most psychomotor activities (e.g., skiing, riding a bicycle, playing tennis). However, they are much less needed once an activity has been learned. Laboratory studies of how people learn to do psychomotor tasks have shown that intelligence is a reasonably good predictor of performance early in learning but does not predict asymptotic levels of learning very well (Ackerman 1996; Fleishman, 1972).

... Some aspects of expertise, such as swinging a golf club, require learning a constant relationship between stimulus and response. Other aspects, such as the analogical reasoning typical of the law, involve varied mappings, the development of mental models of a situation, and extensive knowledge. Demands on both Gf and Gc never cease." (pp. 32-33)

CHC applied to the study of expert performance-cool."

Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, school psychology, IQ, intelligence, Spearman, CHC, CHC theory, cognitive, cognition, expertise, Gf, Gc, SLODR, working memory

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Todays random tidbits from the brain and mind blogsphere 10-5-06

• I just discovered a new statistical blog-Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science. I will be monitoring it via my RSS feed.
• Interesting news article (over at PsycPORT.com) regarding researcher who suggests that the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia function like digital computers.
  

Technorati Tags: psychology, statistics, educational psychology, intelligence, cognition, cognitive, neuropsychology, brain, neuroscience, prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, causal modeling, statistical modeling

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Recent literature of interest 10-04-06

This weeks recent literature of interest can be found by clicking here.

I'm now experimenting with listing the references by journal title...I find it easier when looking up articles via the university library.

Technorati tags: teaching tool. psychology. educational psychology. school psychology.

IQs Corner headlines from the brain and mind blogsphere 10-3-06

This is the fourth installment of IQs Corner Headlines from the Brain and Mind Blogsphere

Today's random tidbits from the brain and mind blogspheree 10-4-06

Sorry the povert of posts recently. I'm again swamped. But, I shall return, hopefully with more creative material and not just FYI posts like this one. So much to read, learn and blog about...so little time.

• Mind Hack's has produced its "essential sites for students" for the year 2006
• See animated crawling brain information at Omni Brain
• Interesting article re: rare MR syndrome (Williams Syndrome) and the brain and music over at the Science Blog
• As per usual, another great post on Developing Intelligence. This time comments (and link to overview article) on the nativist and empiricist views of grammar learning.
  

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Recent literature of interest 9-29-06

This weeks recent literature of interest can be found by clicking here.

I'm now experimenting with listing the references by journal title...I find it easier when looking up articles via the university library.

Technorati tags: teaching tool. psychology. educational psychology. school psychology.

Divided selective attention - Gorrilla in our midst

Most folks have heard of the classic divided visual selection attention study involving the "gorrilla in our midst." SharpBrains has posted a link to the original article and a video so you can try it yourself. Of course, if you know what is going to happen in the video you are not a naive subject.


Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, school psychology, neuropsychology, cognition, cognitive, selective attention, executive functioning, attention, divided attention, working memory, neuroscience, education, teaching tool

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New brain fitness blog - SharpBrains

A new blog on the block devoted to the brain fitness revolution - SharpBrains

Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, neurology, brain fitness, brain, cognitive, cognition, brain technology, intelligence, IQ

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CHC-based analysis of Spearman's law of diminishing returns in KABC-II

Kudos to one of the best quantoids in school/educational psychology (Dr. Tim Keith), and a serious quantoid in the making (Keith's doctoral student, Mathew Reynolds) re: their "in press" article in Intelligence.

• Reynolds, M. & Keith, T. (2006, in press). Spearman's law of diminishing returns in hierarchical models of intelligence for children and adolescents, Intelligence (click here to view)

Using CFA methods, Reynolds and Keith investigated Spearman's law of diminishing returns (SLODR) in the norm sample for the CHC-based KABC-II. I'm excited about this paper due to the elegant use of CFA to evaluate whether SLODR exists, and, if it does, at what level of the CHC taxonomy (stratum I, II, or III - with five broad CHC abilities being represented--Gf,Gc,Gv,Glr,Gsm). The abstract provides a sufficient summary...so I won't waste any bandwidth.

Abstract

• Spearman's “law of diminishing returns” or SLODR refers to a decrease in g saturation as ability level increases. SLODR has been demonstrated in a number of intellectual batteries but several important aspects of the phenomenon are not yet well understood. We investigated the presence of SLODR in the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children—Second Edition (KABCII), a popular measure of intelligence for children. We used confirmatory factor analysis to investigate the invariance of two hierarchical factor structures across ability groups; the subtest variance explained by the ability factors across groups; and whether SLODR was produced only by subtests with low loadings on the general ability factor. We found that SLODR was present in the KABC-II, and its presence was not dependent on the hierarchical model of intelligence. Moreover, our findings suggest that SLODR acts on g and not on the broad abilities, although the contribution of g to various broad abilities is lower in the high ability group. Finally, SLODR was not produced by the subtests with the lowest g loadings on the general factor.

Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, neuropsychology, school psychology, special educaton, IQ, IQ testing, intelligence, CHC, Cattell-Horn-Carroll, g, general intelligence, Spearman, SLODR, CFA, Gf, Gc, Gv, Glr, Gsm, KABCII, KABC-II

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IQs Corner Headlines from the mind/brain blogsphere 9-27-06

This is the third installment of IQs Corner Headlines from the Brain and Mind Blogsphere

Want to start a blog? Check out this new introductory book

Thanks to Boing Boing for the recommendation on an introductory book on blogging.


Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, book

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Dickens, Flynn, Rushton, Jensen and Murray on black-white IQ differences - lots being published

Thanks to Paul Barrett re: the availabiliy of the Dickens and Flynn black-white IQ difference manuscript (Dickens, W. T. & J. R. Flynn. In press. Black Americans reduce the racial IQ gap: Evidence from standardized samples. Psychological Science) mentioned in a post last week. In addition, Dickens and Flynn's rejoinder to Rushton and Jensen is also available (click here), Finally, the Rushton and Jensen critique can be viewed at Rushton's web page (click here).

Charles "Bell Curve" Murray is also near completion of a manuscript presenting his analyses of the black/white IQ analyses of the three editions of the Woodcock-Johnson battery.

Stay tunned.


Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, school psychology, neuropsychology, social psychology, education, IQ, intelligence, g, IQ testing, race, racial differences, IQ differences, general intelligence, cognition, cognitive

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Lets hear it for cat naps!! Napping may improve declarative memory

Let's hear it for naps!!!!!!!! Boing Boing provides a post (and link) to a recent article that suggests that napping can improve declarative memory.

I'm headed to the couch....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz


Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, neuropsychology, cognition, cognitive, memory, declarative memory, Glr, naps, napping, education, school psychology

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New blog on music cognition

A new blog on the block devoted to the interdisciplinary study of the psychology of music (music cognition). Check out Sound and Mind. I've added it to my regular Bloglines monitoring. Thanks to Mixing Memory for the tip.


Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, neuropsychology, cognition, cognitive, music, musical ability, musical cognition, Ga, auditory processing

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