Sensory discrimination as related to general intelligence

The hypothesis, originally proposed by Galton and elaborated by Spearman, t hat there is a functional correspondence between sensory discrimination and general intelligence (g) continues to spark debate. Previous findings sugg est that pitch discrimination and tactile discrimination are only weakly co rrelated with g. This study sought to replicate the pitch discrimination fi ndings and to expand them to the modality of color discrimination in a larg e sample (N = 899) by correlating two sensory discrimination measures with the general factor from a battery of 13 cognitive-ability tests. The modest correlations found between g and measures of pitch discrimination (r = .21 ) and color discrimination (r = .31) suggest that sensory discrimination is relatively distinct from general intelligence. Although consistent with th e neural processing speed explanation of g, these results cast doubt on a s trong form of the sensory discrimination explanation of g. (C) 2001 Elsevie r Science Inc. All rights reserved.