Intelligence and P3 components of the event-related potential elicited during an auditory discrimination task with masking

The relationship between fluid intelligence (indexed by scores on Raven Progressive Matrices) and auditory discrimination ability was examined by recording event-related potentials from 48 women during the performance of an auditory oddball task with backward masking. High ability (HA) subjects exhibited shorter response times, greater response accuracy, larger P3b amplitude and shorter P3b latency to target stimuli than the lower ability (LA) subjects. There were no differences between high and low ability groups for the P3a component of the ERP. Correlation and multiple regression analyses indicated that frontal P3b latency and, to a smaller extent, P3b amplitude are the best predictors of mental ability. These results are consistent with previous studies reporting a relation between intelligence and ERPs and provide further evidence that individual differences in mental ability are reflected in the P3b component, an electrocortical index of the efficiency of stimulus evaluation processes.