Spearman's G Research Paper

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Spearman’s g (1904)
By Emily Nash s1300743

Introduction and Phenological Terminology
This essay will explore and critique an intelligence theory, “Spearman’s g”, conceived by the English psychologist Charles Spearman (1863-1945) in 1904. Spearman developed his theory of g based on statistical tests that showed correlations. In order to understand Spearman’s theory we will define the key terms coined and commonly used by him:
“g” – Simply, g stands for “general intelligence” (Gardner, H., 1999., Piaget, J., 1967). Spearman believed that g was an underlying mental energy within people which is applied during all intellectual activities. (Gardner, H., Kornhaber, M.L. & Wake, W.K.,1996., Richardson, K. & Spears, D.,1972). In other words, g is …show more content…

& Lomax, D.E., 1972., Richardson, K. & Spears, D., 1972). Eysenck (1973), however, argues that many critics failed to read the message that Spearman was trying to convey that there is a general level of ability which is not one simply a number to represent intelligence within everyone that is also influenced by s (Eysenck, H.J., 1973).
Spearman’s use of participants has been criticised for using small samples of school children, therefore, making his results non-generalizable to the adult population (Sternberg, R. J. & Wagner, R. K.,1986). Due to the low sample size and unrepresentative age sampling Spearman’s studies are potentially unreliable and non-applicable to the broad population (Cooper, C., 1999). Eysenck (1973) reports that Spearman did take into acknowledgement that that his participants did not represent the range in ability amongst the vast population. Consequently, it is questionable why Spearman did not then conduct further testings on a mass scale on the adult population in order to validate his previous …show more content…

Correlation simply measures the degree that two arbitrary measures vary together from the average, therefore, it does not measure similarity. Simply put, correlation does not in itself imply causation. For instance a correlation between the number of ice creams bought and cases of sunburn does not mean causation between the two. Rationale deciphers that warm weather is the causation (Richardson, K., 1991). Cooper (1999) draws to attention that the correlations have a “positive manifold” e.g. if you imagine the correlations as vectors, they all emerge from the same

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