From owner-biophys@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk Thu Feb 21 10:34:48 2002 Return-Path: Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3086917B72 for ; Thu, 21 Feb 2002 10:34:47 +0000 (GMT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1FC8917B6E for ; Thu, 21 Feb 2002 10:34:40 +0000 (GMT) Received: from niobium.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (niobium [193.62.192.41]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id F3E7417B6B for ; Thu, 21 Feb 2002 10:34:36 +0000 (GMT) Received: (from news@localhost) by niobium.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (8.9.3+Sun/8.8.8) id KAA13770 for biophys-list@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk; Thu, 21 Feb 2002 10:30:46 GMT X-Authentication-Warning: niobium.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk: news set sender to using -f From: volkmar-weiss@t-online.de (hjalmar) X-Newsgroups: bionet.biophysics Subject: Attentional capacity, EEG power spectrum density and IQ Date: 21 Feb 2002 02:30:40 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 47 Message-ID: <3ea32877.0202210230.4242348a@posting.google.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com To: biophys@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk Sender: owner-biophys@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Ever since attention became an object of scientific study, psychologists have recognized that it possesses a quantitative dimension in terms of the maximum number of items to which a person can attend at one time. It now seems almost universally accepted that memory span has a capacity limit of around seven plus or minus two. In 1963 Pascual-Leone applied a new type of learning experiments to children and proposed to Piaget the concept of mental capacity,capable of boosting a limited number of schemes to ensure their control of the subject's performance. There were precursors in psychology for this kind of model: Spearman's mental energy/g-factor, Luria's energy level of the central nervous system (as Pashler's concept of attention, now). All this is wellknown. However, relatively unknown remained in the English-speaking world the formula deviced by Helmar Frank. As a young man Frank http://www.uni-paderborn.de/extern/fb/2/Kyb.Paed/frank.html and http://www.uni-paderborn.de/extern/fb/2/Kyb.Paed/BK/index.html , respecectively, had the task to estimate the maximum amount of information which can be extracted from a complex situation such as in an artistic show (or reading a webpage or driving in dense traffic now) in a glimpse of an eye. Frank argued (see http://www.paderborner-impulse.de/KKKK/bk/bk6.pdf ) that the capacity H of short-term memory (measured in bits of information) is the product of the processing speed S (in bits per second, operationalized by Siegfried Lehrl as reading rate) and the duration time D (in seconds) of memory span. Hence, H (bits) = S(bits/s) x D (s). According to Frank and Lehrl, the mean channel capacity of an IQ of 130 is 140 bits, 105 bits for an IQ of 112, and 70 bits of IQ 92. Based on these experimental data by Lehrl, Frank und Pascual-Leone and even including data of the power spectrum density of the EEG, in a series of papers Weiss could bridge the gap between cognitive and differential psychology. Click to 'Memory span as the quantum of action of thought' www.volkmar-weiss.de/publ9-e.html and 'The relationship between short term memory capacity and EEG power spectral density' www.volkmar-weiss.de/publ10-e.html . Also of interest should be 'Major genes of general intelligence&' www.volkmar-weiss.de/majgenes.html , 'The advent of a molecular genetics of general intelligence' www.volkmar-weiss.de/intellig.html , and '100 higlhy gifted men have highly gifted male relatives' www.volkmar-weiss.de/table.html. If you have difficulties with these URLs, try first www.volkmar-weiss.de and www.volkmar-weiss.de/englisch.de . Do you know any other empirical application or confirmation of Frank's so called 'information psychology'? Volkmar Weiss, Leipzig (Germany) .