Spearman's concept of 'g' stands for

Charles Spearman, a British psychologist, proposed one of the earliest and most influential theories of intelligence. He introduced the concept of a two-factor theory of intelligence, which includes the ‘g’ factor and ‘s’ factor. 

Key Points

•  General intelligence is what Spearman’s ‘g’ stands for. According to him, ‘g’ represents a common core of mental ability that underlies all intelligent behavior.
• It is a general cognitive ability that influences performance across a wide variety of tasks such as problem-solving, reasoning, and understanding.
• Individuals with a high ‘g’ tend to perform well in multiple areas of intellectual functioning.
• Spearman identified this factor through statistical analysis (factor analysis), which revealed that people who did well in one type of cognitive test often did well in others.

Hint

• Group intelligence refers to collective intellectual performance and is not linked to Spearman’s theory.
• Genetic intelligence relates to the hereditary basis of intelligence but is not the meaning of ‘g’ in this context.
• Graded intelligence implies intelligence divided into levels or grades, which is unrelated to Spearman’s general factor theory.

Hence, the correct answer is general intelligence.