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…

Executive functions (EF) and intelligence are of critical importance to success in many everyday tasks. Working memory, or updating, which is one latent variable identified in confirmatory factor analytic models of executive functions, predicts intelligence (both fluid and crystallised) in adults, but inhibition and shifting do not (Friedman et…

Measures of broad fluid abilities including verbal, quantitative, and figural reasoning are commonly used in the K-12 school context for a variety of purposes. However, differentiation of these domains is difficult for young children (grades K-2) who lack basic linguistic and mathematical literacy. This study examined the latent factor structure…

The relationship between learning ability and memory-monitoring performance was studied for 289 undergraduates in a 5-stage feeling of knowing (FOK) procedure with confidence of recognition (COR) judgments. Results show that fast and slow learners do not differ in magnitude of FOK and COR. (SLD)

A case is made for the construction of nomothetic theories that can also explain individual differences. The discussion uses examples from the memory area and presents an approach to memory that explains individual findings and individual differences in the context of a single model. (SLD)

Two studies involving 333 military recruits investigate individual differences in time-accuracy functions of inspection time (IT) in terms of psychological models. Two alternative interpretations of IT time-accuracy functions (processing-distraction and processing-speed, and pure processing-speed "cascade" models) are considered in…

To assess whether movement artifacts reported in visual inspection time (IT) tasks were under metacognitive control, 29 young adults in Edinburgh (Scotland) were tested on a dual-task paradigm in which IT was conducted along with a concurrent task. Reports of movement artifacts are not usually examples of metacognitive processing. (SLD)

Models of working memory were compared in 2 experiments as means of explaining variance in the comprehension of 95 skilled and 80 learning-disabled readers from grades 4 through 7. Results suggest that learning-disabled children's working memory problems are functionally related to higher order processes and not memory alone. (SLD)