Goal Neglect and Spearman's g: Competing Parts of a Complex Task

In g oal neglect, a person ignores some task requirement though being able to describe it. Goal neglect is closely related to general intelligence or C. Spearman's (1904) g (J. Duncan, H. Emslie, P. Williams, R. Johnson, & C. Freer, 1996 ). The authors tested the role of task complexity in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychology. General 2008-02, Vol.137 (1), p.131-148
Main Authors: Duncan, John, Parr, Alice, Woolgar, Alexandra, Thompson, Russell, Bright, Peter, Cox, Sally, Bishop, Sonia, Nimmo-Smith, Ian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Aged
Attention
Biological and medical sciences
Brain
Cognition. Intelligence
Cognitive Processes
Correlation
Data Interpretation, Statistical
Experimental psychology
Female
Frontal Lobe - physiology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Goals
Human
Humans
Hypothesis Testing
Intellectual and cognitive abilities
Intelligence
Male
Memory
Memory - physiology
Middle Aged
Objectives
Psychology - statistics & numerical data
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Short Term Memory
Task Complexity
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Summary:In g oal neglect, a person ignores some task requirement though being able to describe it. Goal neglect is closely related to general intelligence or C. Spearman's (1904) g (J. Duncan, H. Emslie, P. Williams, R. Johnson, & C. Freer, 1996 ). The authors tested the role of task complexity in neglect and the hypothesis that different task components in some sense compete for attention. In contrast to many kinds of attentional limits, increasing the real-time demands of one task component does not promote neglect of another. Neither does neglect depend on preparation for different possible events in a block of trials. Instead, the key factor is complexity in the whole body of knowledge specified in task instructions. The authors suggest that as novel activity is constructed, relevant facts, rules, and requirements must be organized into a "task model." As this model increases in complexity, different task components compete for representation, and vulnerable components may be lost. Construction of effective task models is closely linked to g .
ISSN:0096-3445
1939-2222
DOI:10.1037/0096-3445.137.1.131