Previous research has linked working memory capacity (WMC) with enhanced proactive control. However, it remains unclear the extent to which this relationship reflects the influence of WMC on the tendency to engage proactive control, or rather, the ability to implement it. The current study sought to clarify this ambiguity by leveraging the Dual…

Background: Previous research has demonstrated that quizzing can improve self-regulation processes and learning performances. However, it remains unclear whether quizzes in multimedia material bring similar benefits, and whether interindividual differences such as working memory capacity (WMC) modulate quizzing effects. Aims: This study aimed to…

People vary in their performance on visual working memory tasks, and these individual differences covary with a wide range of higher-level cognitive processes including fluid intelligence. Performance also varies across study displays, purportedly driven by both low- and higher-level processes. Understanding what causes these sources of systematic…

Completing questionnaires is a complex task in which multiple cognitive processes play an important role. Despite critiques of the reliability of questionnaires, our research strived to gain more insight into the process of completing questionnaires by using eye-tracking. We investigated how both the question and the categories of answers were…

Stable individual differences in cognitive motivation (i.e., the tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activities) have been documented with self-report measures, yet convergent support for a trait-level construct is still lacking. In the present study, we used an innovative decision-making paradigm (COG-ED) to quantify the costs of…

In the cocktail party phenomenon, participants cannot attend to more than 1 stream of information, but sometimes detect their own name being presented in the irrelevant message during a selective listening task. Here we present a preregistered replication of the phenomenon, in which we also tested whether semantically unexpected words have a…

We explored the causal role of individual and age-related differences in working memory (WM) capacity in long-term memory (LTM) retrieval. Our sample of 160 participants included 120 children (6-13-years old) and 40 young adults (18-24 years). Participants performed a WM task with images of unique everyday items, presented at varying set sizes.…

It has been debated whether working memory (WM) performance is modulated by the valence of the stimuli that are being processed. A recent meta-analysis revealed that at the behavioral level and in individuals without mental health problems, mean-level performance differences in WM tasks with neutral versus affective conditions are small to…

Eight experiments (N = 2,003) assessed the relation between working memory capacity (WMC) and performance on the antisaccade task. Experiments 1-5 and 7 examined individual differences in aspects of goal management processes occurring during the preparatory delay of the antisaccade task. WMC tended to interact with delay interval suggesting that…

Stable individual differences in cognitive motivation (i.e., the tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activities) have been documented with self-report measures, yet convergent support for a trait-level construct is still lacking. In the present study, we use an innovative decision-making paradigm (COG-ED) to quantify the costs of…

This paper examines how research in second language acquisition has approached the study of cognitive individual differences in the process and product of L2 writing from a theoretical and empirical perspective, paying special attention to the three empirical studies included in this special issue. The paper is divided into three sections. The…

This article revisits the role of cognitive individual differences in creating synergies between second language (L2) writing and second language acquisition research that were proposed by Kormos (2012). It takes stock of the advances in research findings, in the past decade, on the role of working memory and language learning aptitude in L2…

Individual differences in cognitive decline during normal aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD) are common, but the molecular mechanisms underlying these distinct outcomes are not fully understood. We utilized a combination of genetic, molecular, and behavioral data from a mouse population designed to model human variation in cognitive outcomes to…

This study examined the unfolding in real time of original ideas during divergent thinking (DT) in five- to six-year-olds and related individual differences in DT to executive functions (EFs). The Alternative Uses Task was administered with verbal prompts that encouraged children to report on their thinking processes while generating uses for…

We used a technique known as reach tracking to investigate how individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) relate to the functioning of two processes proposed to underlie cognitive control: a threshold adjustment process that temporarily inhibits motor output in response to signals of conflict and a controlled selection process that…