General intelligence, the "g" factor, is a major issue in psychology and neuroscience. However, the neural mechanism of the "g" factor is still not clear. It is suggested that the "g" factor should be non-modular (a property across the brain) and show good colinearity with various cognitive tests. This study examines…

Child prodigies are unusual for their early and exceptional adoption of what are traditionally thought of as adult abilities. As part of an effort to better understand the underpinnings of these extraordinary individuals' talent, the researcher examined the cognitive and developmental profiles of eight child prodigies by taking their developmental…

Jaeggi and her colleagues claimed that they were able to improve fluid intelligence by training working memory. Subjects who trained their working memory on a dual n-back task for a period of time showed significant improvements in working memory span tasks and fluid intelligence tests such as the Raven's Progressive Matrices and the Bochumer…

This article presents three studies, two of them longitudinal, which investigated the relations between age, processing speed, working memory (WM), and fluid intelligence ("g[subscript f]") from 4 to 16 years of age. Structural equation modeling showed that speed was a powerful covariate of age ([approximately] - 0.6 to - 0.7) from 4 to 13 years,…

Here we apply a method for automated segmentation of the hippocampus in 3D high-resolution structural brain MRI scans. One hundred and four healthy young adults completed twenty one tasks measuring abstract, verbal, and spatial intelligence, along with working memory, executive control, attention, and processing speed. After permutation tests…

Brain shape might influence cognitive performance because of the relationships between functions, spatial organization, and differential volumetric development of cortical areas. Here we analyze the relationships between midsagittal brain shape variation and a set of basic psychological measures. Coordinates in 2D from 102 MRI-scanned young adult…

Current theories concerning individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) suggest that WMC reflects the ability to control the focus of attention and resist interference and distraction. The current set of experiments tested whether susceptibility to distraction is partially responsible for the established relationship between…

Working memory (WM) has been predominantly studied in adults. The insights provided by these studies have led to the development of competing theories on the structure of WM and conflicting conclusions on how strongly WM components are related to higher order thinking skills such as fluid intelligence. However, it remains unclear whether and to…

Much is written regarding the associations between human intelligence and cognition. However, it is unusual to find comprehensive studies. Here twenty four measures tapping eight cognitive abilities and skills are considered for assessing a sample of one hundred and eighty five young adults. The simultaneous relationships among fluid,…

This study examined whether children's growth on measures of fluid (Raven Colored Progressive Matrices) and crystallized (reading and math achievement) intelligence was attributable to domain-specific or domain-general functions of working memory (WM). A sample of 290 elementary school children was tested on measures of intelligence across three…

The acknowledged high relationship between working memory and intelligence suggests common underlying cognitive mechanisms and, perhaps, shared biological substrates. If this is the case, improvement in working memory by repeated exposure to challenging span tasks might be reflected in increased intelligence scores. Here we report a study in which…

The failure to correctly report two targets ("T[subscript 1]", "T[subscript 2]") that follow each other in close temporal proximity has been called the "attentional blink" (AB). The AB has, so far, mainly been studied using experimental approaches. The present studies investigated individual differences in AB performance, revealing (among further…

According to the cognitive cascade hypothesis, age-related slowing results in decreased working memory, which in turn affects higher-order cognition. Because recent studies show complex associative learning correlates highly with fluid intelligence, the present study examined the role of complex associative learning in cognitive cascade models of…

This study explored the controversy surrounding working memory: whether it is a unitary system providing general purpose resources or a more differentiated system with domain-specific sub-components. A total of 348 participants completed a set of 6 working memory tasks that systematically varied in storage target contents and type of information…

The working memory (WM) construct is conceptualized similarly across domains of psychology, yet the methods used to measure WM function vary widely. The present study examined the relationship between WM measures used in the laboratory and those used in applied settings. A large sample of undergraduates completed three laboratory-based WM measures…