Premium
The role of general ability and specific talents in information processing
Author(s) -
O'Connor N.,
Hermelin B.
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
british journal of developmental psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.062
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 2044-835X
pISSN - 0261-510X
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-835x.1983.tb00911.x
Subject(s) - psychology , task (project management) , cognition , affect (linguistics) , set (abstract data type) , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , information processing , intellectual ability , nonverbal communication , intelligence quotient , contrast (vision) , communication , management , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , computer science , economics , programming language
In the studies reported here, the relationship between general intellectual ability and specific talents is investigated. It was found that independent of IQ, musically gifted children showed a greater capacity for the simultaneous processing of verbal material than did children gifted for the visual arts. However, the artistically gifted children were faster in recognizing hidden figures than were the musical and in fact equalled the performance of children with significantly higher IQs. In a recognition task, artistically gifted children with lower IQs seemed to encode and store non‐verbalizable material as efficiently as those with higher IQs. These lower IQ artistic children, in contrast to the other groups tested, recognized non‐verbal and verbal material equally well. They also were less affected by an increase in set size of non‐verbal items than were other children. The experiments demonstrated that not only general cognitive level, but also specific ability, can affect processing strategies and efficiency of task performance.