“Correspondence Between the General Ability to Discriminate Sensory Stimuli and General Intelligence”, 2010-01-13 (; similar):
For more than a century the veracity of Spearman’s postulate that there is a nearly perfect correspondence between general intelligence and general sensory discrimination has remained unresolved. Most studies have found statistically-significant albeit small correlations. However, this can be used neither to confirm nor dismiss Spearman’s postulate, a major weakness of previous research being that only single discrimination capacities were considered rather than general discrimination.
The present study examines Spearman’s hypothesis with a sample of 1,330 5–10-year-old children, using structural equation modeling.
The results support Spearman’s hypothesis with a strong correlation (r = 0.78). In addition, age-group-specific analyses explored the age differentiation hypothesis.
Results are discussed in terms of the validity of the general sensory discrimination factor.