[learnstats]

Answer: Not at all. Science rarely has such unanimity on any topic as that illustrated by this article.

There is only one study cited here showing negative correlation between any two aspects of intelligence, despite this being worthy of study for the whole of a century. That shouldn't even register as random noise.

[D_Alex]

A strong negative correlation does not support the claim that intelligence is modular (which I interpret as "made up of somewhat independent modules"), it would in fact support the claim that a common factor is responsible for high performance in one area and low performance in another.

We do know that the brain itself is quite modular, with various areas of the brain having specific functions. I had a rather disturbing experience that vividly illustrated just how specialised the function of different brain region is. It statrted with a short episode of hemianopia, which was a really bizzare experience in itself - I lost the ability to see the right half of my normal vision. In both eyes. Then, after normal vision returned, I noticed that when looking at text I could make out individual letters, I could see the words as a collection of letters, but I could not put the letters together and understand any of the words.

I had a pile of tests afterwards, including a brain CAT scan, that fortunately found nothing terribly wrong, and the episode was diagnosed as a vascular spasm. But apparently the brief interruption of blood flow to some particular region of the brain had interfered with the "module" that made words out of letters, while leaving other brain functions unaffected.

I have since then formed a belief that our minds are assembled from numerous modules, rather than being a monolithic whole.