Little empirical data are available concerning the cognitive abilities of gifted individuals in general and especially those who excel in mathematics. We examined visual processing abilities distinguishing between general giftedness (G) and excellence in mathematics (EM). The research population consisted of 190 students from four groups of 10th-…

Spatial ability, particularly the cognitive capacity for mental rotations, is a critical component of human cognition. Proficiency with mental rotation tasks is linked with educational performance in various Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines, and with more general tasks such as real world wayfinding. Spatial…

The present study explored the relation between language control and nonverbal cognitive control in different bilingual populations. We compared monolinguals, Dutch-French unbalanced bilinguals, balanced bilinguals, and interpreters on the Simon task (Simon & Rudell, 1967) and the Attention Network Test (ANT; Fan, McCandliss, Sommer, Raz,…

Both general (i.e., shared across different cognitive measures) and specific (i.e., unique to particular cognitive measures) influences can be postulated to contribute to the relations between adult age and measures of cognitive functioning. Estimates of general and specific influences on measures of memory, speed, reasoning, and spatial…

In order to achieve the present study's goal--to understand better the phenomenon of mathematical giftedness--we performed a multidimensional examination of the mental processing in students who exhibited mathematical expertise (EM) at the secondary school level. The study included participants from the three groups: students who excelled in…

The relationships between processing speed, intelligence, and school achievement were analyzed on a sample of 184 Russian 16-year-old students. Two speeded tasks required the discrimination of simple geometrical shapes and the recognition of the presented meaningless figures. Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices and the verbal subtests of…

People with autism spectrum condition (ASC) perform well on Raven's matrices, a test which loads highly on the general factor in intelligence. However, the mechanisms supporting enhanced performance on the test are poorly understood. Evidence is accumulating that milder variants of the ASC phenotype are present in typically developing individuals,…

The verbal overshadowing paradigm was used with 167 undergraduates to determine whether performance across all items on Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices was dependent on the same cognitive processes. Results clearly indicated that a subset of items was dependent on visuospatial processes, while another subset required verbal-analytic…