FROM GOOD SENSES TO GOOD SENSE - A LINK BETWEEN TACTILE INFORMATION-PROCESSING AND INTELLIGENCE

Since the 1970s there has been an reemerging interest in Galton's (188 3) senses-intelligence hypothesis. The essence of this hypothesis is t he conceptual link between fine-tuned sensory functioning and superior intellectual ability. Several studies have investigated the sensory-c ognitive link within auditory and visual modalities. In this study, th e intersystemic relationship between sensory and cognitive functioning was extended to the tactile modality by examining the associations be tween three measures of tactile information processing and intelligenc e in a heterogeneous sample of middle-aged adults (N = 179; age range = 30-51). Two of the three tactile tasks measured discrimination abili ty (i.e., roughness discrimination and part-whole matching), whereas t he third task measured tactile pressure sensitivity. Results from a se ries of analyses indicate that sensory measures from the tactile modal ity are at least as highly correlated with intellectual ability (r = . 18 to .33) as measures of auditory (r = .15) or visual (r = .20) acuit y. All together, the three tactile measures accounted for 20.8% of the total variance in intelligence. The two tactile discrimination measur es were found to be better predictors of intelligence than measures of simple sensory acuity.