From good senses to good sense: A link between tactile information processing and intelligence

Abstract

Since the 1970s there has been an reemerging interest in Galton's (1883) senses-intelligence hypothesis. The essence of this hypothesis is the conceptual link between fine-tuned sensory functioning and superior intellectual ability. Several studies have investigated the sensory-cognitive link within auditory and visual modalities. In this study, the intersystemic relationship between sensory and cognitive functioning was extended to the tactile modality by examining the associations between three measures of tactile information processing and intelligence in a heterogeneous sample of middle-aged adults (N = 179; age range = 30-51). Two of the three tactile tasks measured discrimination ability (i.e., roughness discrimination and part-whole matching), whereas the third task measured tactile pressure sensitivity. Results from a series of analyses indicate that sensory measures from the tactile morality are at least as highly correlated with intellectual ability (r = .18 to .33) as measures of auditory (r =. 15) or visual (r = .20) acuity. All together, the three tactile measures accounted for 20.8% of the total variance in intelligence. The two tactile discrimination measures were found to be better predictors of intelligence than measures of simple sensory acuity.Galton (1883) proposed a potential association between intellectual ability and "the avenues of the senses". His original argument was that the more perceptive the senses are of differences, the wider the field upon which an individual's judgment and intelligence can Direct all correspondence to:

Sensory discrimination as related to general intelligence

“…Our use of a diverse test battery with a sample that was over 15 times the size of the latter undergraduate sample, however, may yield more precise point estimates than in previous studies. The above findings on pitch discrimination, combined with our finding of an age-partialled correlation of .31 between g and a test of color discrimination and with other investigators' findings of age-partialled correlations of .23 and .31 between g and two tests of tactile discrimination (Li et al, 1998), form a consistent network of modest associations between sensory discrimination and general intelligence.…”

“…Deary (1994a), Deary, Caryl, Egan, and Wight (1989), and Deary, Head, and Egan (1989), by contrast, have sided with Cattell, claiming that the correlation between AIT and intelligence is separable from the relation of AIT to pitch discrimination. Both the Spearman and Cattell explanations suggest an important role for elementary information processing in explaining g; the Spearman explanation, however, rules out the possibility of a negligible relation between measures of sensory discrimination and g. Despite one study of tactile discrimination that found evidence for weak associations with g (Li, Jordanova, & Lindenberger, 1998), these hypotheses have up to now been tested primarily in the auditory modality using only small samples.…”

Exploring structural dynamics within and between sensory and intellectual functioning in old and very old age: Longitudinal evidence from the Berlin Aging Study

“…Both our LGM and DCSM results demonstrate that correlations among intellectual and sensory Level components are high, and do not primarily reflect shared mean age trends; when controlling for age at initial testing, these correlations continued to be substantial and statistically reliable. This finding confirms and extends evidence based on cross-sectional analyses of the present and comparable samples (Anstey et al, , 1993Anstey & Smith, 1999;Anstey, 1999b;Clement, 1974;Li et al, 1998;Lindenberger & Baltes, 1994;Rabbitt, 1991;Roberts et al, 1997;Schaie, 1996;Salthouse et al, 1996Salthouse et al, , 1998Stankov, 1986;Stankov & Anstey, 1997;Stankov, Seizova-Cajić, & Roberts, 2001). In old and very old age, intellectual and sensory domains of functioning are closely related (e.g., Clark, 1960;Cohn, Dustman, & Bradford, 1984;Dirken, 1972;Heron & Chown, 1967;Lindenberger & Baltes, 1994;Welford & Birren, 1965).…”

Short-Term Fluctuations in Elderly People’s Sensorimotor Functioning Predict Text and Spatial Memory Performance: The MacArthur Successful Aging Studies

“…Even in a much younger sample and with a more restricted age range (i.e. age range from 30 to 50 years), Li et al [32] also found that elementary tactile information processing predicts individual differences in intelligence.…”