Kristóf Kovács

For over a century, the standard view in the field of human intelligence has been that there is a ‘general intelligence’ that permeates all human cognitive activity. This general ability is supposed to explain the positive manifold, the finding that mental tests with different content correlate strongly. Yet there is a lack of consensus regarding the psychological basis of such an ability, moreover, its existence is contradicted by a large number of empirical findings. The aim of the current proposal is to establish and solidify a novel theoretical framework for the study and measurement of intelligence and to redefine the concept of IQ as an emergent or formative rather than a latent or reflective construct. The project is based on our recently published theory, Process Overlap Theory (POT, Kovacs & Conway, 2016), which explains the positive manifold without proposing an all-purpose cognitive mechanism.