Intelligence and task structure complexity
Doctoral thesis on how the complexity of a task's structure produces goal neglect, and how that failure tracks fluid intelligence, in children and in adults.
- 01Fluid intelligence
- 02Task structure
- 03Goal neglect
The idea
This is the PhD, undertaken at the University of Western Australia in the School of Psychological Science, supervised by Mike Anderson. The thesis tests a mental-program account of intelligence: fluid g is tied to building a program for a problem, not only to holding facts in mind. Goal neglect is the failure that program is measured by. A requirement can be understood and remembered, and still drop out of behaviour at the moment it has to be carried out.
The approach
The experiments raise the complexity of the task structure by changing the instructions, and then watch what happens to performance. One line studies goal neglect in typically developing children. The other uses EEG. A more complex structure worsens performance and increases goal neglect, and the conditions that force that complexity also tighten the link between neglect and fluid g.
The EEG work separates an early evaluation of whether a stimulus is relevant to the task, around 200 milliseconds, from later interactions among theta, alpha, and beta. The child paper that came out of the thesis is linked below.
- Doctor of Philosophy, University of Western Australia, 2013
- Supervisor: Mike Anderson
- Goal neglect as a failure of the task program, not of reporting the rule
- Child studies and an EEG account of task structure complexity
The paper: research-repository.uwa.edu.au .