Factor Of Mental Ability Research Articles

Predicting Stress Levels of Secondary School Students' using Machine Learning Approaches

Stress is an emotional feeling that arises from any event or thought that has adverse effects on children since they feel frustrated, angry, tensed or nervous. Stress leads to severe problems such as less energy levels, unenthusiastic, poor attention, anxiety, depression and many other mental disorders. The level of stress observed in students studying in secondary school is increasing day by day which leads to poor academic performance. In recent days, lot of schools came in to existence and they are following different strategies in making their students to score high percentages in the board examinations. It is understandable that all children will not have the same capabilities and learning behaviour. Normally some students are able to overcome the stressful situations but it is not possible for few since they differ in terms of demographic factors, mental ability factors, study patterns, determination and psychological factors. So, it is necessary to predict the stress levels of the secondary school students and proper intervention mechanisms should be adopted at proper time for high risk students. This study aims to make the future generation a stress-free generation.

Higher-order g versus blended variable models of mental ability: Comment on Hampshire, Highfield, Parkin, and Owen (2012)

Hampshire et al. (2012) suggested that the positive correlations among all mental ability tasks do not necessarily imply the existence of a general intelligence (g) factor (e.g., Spearman, 1904), but could instead be explained by “task mixing”, that is, the influence of multiple independent ability factors on the various tasks. We note here that the task mixing model is conceptually very similar to the blended variables model proposed in the personality domain (Ashton et al., 2009) as an alternative to higher-order personality factors. Here we use CFA to compare a higher-order g model with a task mixing or blended variable model in relation to the data of Hampshire et al., and we find that the higher-order g model provides a much closer fit to the data. Following Thurstone (1938), we suggest that it is conceptually implausible that every task is influenced by every factor of mental ability. We also suggest that the non-existence of g would be demonstrated by finding mutually orthogonal markers of those factors; however, the data of Hampshire et al. and other mental ability datasets suggest that this cannot be achieved.

Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability.

The culture-only (0% genetic–100% environmental) and the hereditarian (50% genetic–50% environmental) models of the causes of mean Black–White differences in cognitive ability are compared and contrasted across 10 categories of evidence: the worldwide distribution of test scores, g factor of mental ability, heritability, brain size and cognitive ability, transracial adoption, racial admixture, regression, related life-history traits, human origins research, and hypothesized environmental variables. The new evidence reviewed here points to some genetic component in Black–White differences in mean IQ. The implication for public policy is that the discrimination model (i.e., Black–White differences in socially valued outcomes will be equal barring discrimination) must be tempered by a distributional model (i.e., Black–White outcomes reflect underlying group characteristics).

Effects of inbreeding on mental-ability factors

The differential effects of inbreeding on 11 subtests of the WISC, in a Japanese (Hiroshima) population, are related to the factor structure of the tests. The degree of inbreeding depression on mental abilities is most strongly correlated with the subtests' loadings on the General factor, g, which is common to all of the subtests. Loadings on the Verbal factor are also positively correlated with inbreeding depression. The (non-verbal) Performance factor, however, is slightly enhanced by inbreeding. One possible inference from these findings is that at least the General factor shows genetic dominance, which is theoretically consistent with natural selection for g in the course of human evolution. It is also noted that the factor structure of the WISC in the Japanese population is highly similar to that of the U.S. standardization sample.

TRANSFER OF MENTAL ABILITIES AT DIFFERENT STAGES OF PRACTICE IN THE SOLUTION OF CONCEPT PROBLEMS

ABSTRACTTheories of learning have typically failed to give an account of the role of human abilities, while accounts of mental abilities have not explained their relationship to learning in any rigorous way. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of a set of factor‐analytically derived ability measures to performance at different stages of practice in a learning set task employing concept problems, and to consider possible constructs to explain these relationships.Twenty‐six problems, each of which required the identification of a four‐dimensional conjunctive concept, were administered to a sample of 145 Princeton University undergraduates. To account for the complex learning involved in this task, a conceptual model involving information‐processing constructs was developed. Three higher‐order processes were postulated: a problem analysis process, which defined gaps between information available and information needed for solution; a search process, which looked among available responses for operators to reduce or to remove these gaps; and an organization process, which integrated operators thus found into a terminal program for solving the problems.A battery of 30 mental tests was administered to the same sample of students. The tests were selected as measures of factors chosen for their relevance to the model. The intercorrelations among the test scores were factor analyzed by a maximum‐likelihood procedure. This procedure extracted factors in accordance with a simple‐structure hypothesis set up in advance. A statistical test of this hypothesis showed it to be tenable.Ten mental ability factors were thus defined: three reasoning factors, two flexibility factors, three memory factors, and two visual speed factors.The relationship of performance at different stages of practice to each of the 10 factors was determined by a factor extension procedure. It was found that the abilities transferred differentially at different stages of practice.This differential transfer was explained in terms of the postulated information processes, under the assumption that certain processes were most relevant at certain stages of practice and that abilities related to these processes would transfer at that stage of practice.It was found that induction and flexibility factors transferred early in practice, at a time when search activities were assumed to be dominant, General reasoning transferred maximally at a later stage of practice, characterized by organizing or integrating activities.Verbal reasoning was the most highly related of all mental abilities to early success in obtaining the correct structuring rules for both positive and negative concept examples. This superiority was most marked in the case of negative information. Maximal transfer occurred at a stage of practice prior to that found for the organizing ability, General Reasoning. These results suggested that Verbal Reasoning was related to the problem analysis process.A new “chunking memory” factor was strongly related to learning performance, especially during early stages of practice. Transfer to solution scores from this factor occurred at an earlier stage than from Verbal Reasoning and decreased during late trials more rapidly. It was suggested that this factor reflected ability to encode and store stimuli in “buffer storage” in a form readily accessible to central processes.Significant interactions were noted with another memory factor. Memory Span interacted with Induction and Symbolic Flexibility on number of problems solved, while Spatial Scanning interacted with Memory Span. These interactions reflected strategies selected by different subjects high and low on these abilities.This study was seen to have implications to the problem of providing an empirical base for the construct validation of both mental tests and theories of complex human learning.