If we stick to its etymological meaning, the word ‘intelligence’ means ‘to choose between’ … so that being intelligent could well be defined as knowing how to choose. And not in vain has intelligence been defined as the ability that allows us to solve problems and choose the best solution. However, we must not forget that the question of the definition of what intelligence is remains unresolved and experts continue to grapple with this elusive aspect of human reality.
A recent approach to this concept is the role played by factors such as information processing and working memory in intelligence. As early as 2013, Melnick and his team of collaborators found that a higher intelligence quotient (IQ) was related to a better ability to discriminate relevant and non-relevant visual information and process it as quickly as possible in order to make a decision. In this study, participants had to tell whether a stimulus appearing on a screen was moving to the right or left.
More current is the work of Cai-Ping Dang and other collaborators that has recently been published in Personality and Individual Differences (2015). The research involved 253 Chinese university students who performed different tasks to assess the speed of information processing, the storage capacity of short-term memory and their working memory, in addition to measuring their fluid intelligence (less dependent on education formal) and crystallized (more related to acquired knowledge).
According to the data, the speed of information processing is an important aspect of the system since, together with the short-term storage capacity of the data, it would be at the base of the relationship between the working memory (capacity to maintain and manipulate information online in mind) and intelligence. In fact, it seems that processing speed would explain the commonly found relationship between fluid intelligence and working memory.
All this would mean that being able to store a lot of data for a short time and process the information faster would somehow contribute to being more adept at holding and manipulating different data in memory and operating with them until a decision is made. And interestingly, this phenomenon would be more relevant in fluid intelligence tasks, which do not depend so much on the knowledge acquired in school or books as on our ability to solve problems and adjust to situations flexibly.
The most interesting thing of all is that although they do not depend on formal education, processing speed, working memory and problem solving can be trained. If with this we can consider ourselves more intelligent and allow us to adapt better, then welcome.
Marisa Fernández, Senior Neuropsychologist, Unobrain
