Referential activity and intelligence

The ability to put into words the bodily, emotional and relational experience or Referential Activity (RA) (Bucci, 1985, 1997) play an important role in the human information processing. It is crucial in the interpersonal communication and in processing the emotional information in a symbolic or logical-sequential manner. It can therefore be considered as a basic cognitive skill, different but related to the other ones that compose the construct of intelligence. To study the relation between the RA and the Intelligence we administered to 25 subjects the Relationship Anecdotes Paradigm (RAP) Interview (Luborsky, 1998) and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) IV (Wechsler, 1998). Each interview has been transcribed and analyzed through the Italian Discursive Attributes Analysis Program (IDAAP) that comparing the texts with the Weighed Referential Activity Dictionary (WRAD) provides a measure of the RA of each participants (Mariani, Maskit, Bucci & De Coro, 2013). Only the scores of the WAIS subtests that require more ability to connect the sequential/verbal processing systems to parallel/non verbal ones (Comprehension, Blok Design, Matrix Reasoning, Visual Puzzles, Symbol Search, Coding) correlate with the RA index, while the WAIS subtests (Similarities, Vocabulary, Letter-Number Sequencing, Digit span) that mainly imply the connections between words and numbers within the verbal systems are not correlated with the RA index. These results indicate that ability to connect the nonverbal experience to the words is a central cognitive ability for some tasks and secondary for others. More psychometric studies on this cognitive function would be useful for the psychotherapeutic work that is aimed to translate the emotions into verbal narratives.