[jkaplan]

> That does not mean there isn't a general underlying "cognitive ability" factor.

Careful. "g" is a statistical regularity, not proof of a generalized "underlying cognitive ability."

From the same Wikipedia article:

>It is a variable that summarizes positive correlations among different cognitive tasks

>Yet, there is no consensus as to what causes the positive correlations between tests

This whole subject is a scientific, statistical, and ethical can of worms (as pg alludes to in the essay), and this isn't the place to get into it... I just want to flag that it's a bit more complicated/controversial than it might sound at first.

[tshaddox]

I also haven’t seen any explanations for why positive correlation between any particular set of tests leads to the conclusion that this is truly a general cognitive ability. If you test people on the ability to play the piano, organ, and harpsichord, and find positive correlation between competency in all of them, you wouldn’t conclude that this demonstrates general cognitive ability. You’d just conclude that those musical instruments are similar. Likewise, choosing a bunch of tests from, say, all the common areas of study in Western schools, doesn’t automatically say anything about the entire range of cognitive abilities.

[PeterisP]

The argument for general cognitive ability is because the correlation is observed among all the various measures related to cognitive ability that we have. If you test people on the ability to play the piano, organ, and harpsichord, and assert that this is a reflection of general cognitive ability, then this is prediction is testable by later correlating this ability with other measures, and gets falsified by observing the metrics with which it does not correlate. So far, the concept of "G" survives because it actually does succeed in various tests of alternative metrics of cognitive ability - e.g. "emotional intelligence" metrics, biological metrics such as reaction speed, and various 'outcomes' e.g. job performance and future income controlled for socioeconomic background.

In essence, the answer to "why positive correlation between any particular set of tests leads to the conclusion that this is truly a general cognitive ability" is that many respectable people have tried to find measures of aspects of cognitive ability that are separate and uncorrelated, however, as far as I know, all such attempts have failed so far and their experiments on alternative metrics did correlate with everything else and just became more data supporting the concept.

[darawk]

> Careful. "g" is a statistical regularity, not proof of a generalized "underlying cognitive ability."

I mean, the statistical regularity in question is the mean of all other cognitive abilities correlating. I'm not sure how else you'd define "underlying cognitive ability" than "the correlated first principal component of other, specific cognitive abilities".