This meta-analysis examined the validity of an alternative to traditional assessments called the Wonderlic which is a brief measure of general mental ability. Our results showed significant, positive correlations between Wonderlic scores and academic performance in general ([r-bar] = 0.26), between Wonderlic scores and undergraduate GPA in…

Understanding of preterm infant cognitive competences across the first year of life is limited regarding the developmental constructs of continuity, stability, coherence, and predictive validity as well as how they manifest by age and country of origin. This prospective longitudinal study examined and compared mean-level continuity,…

This study investigates the validity of syntactic priming as a measure of implicit language aptitude. Syntactic priming refers to the tendency to reproduce a linguistic structure due to a previous exposure to the structure. The validity of the construct was verified by collating evidence for divergent validity--whether it is dissociable from…

This article discusses the conceptualization, measurement, and validity of a recently emerged construct in the field of second language acquisition (SLA)--implicit language aptitude (alternatively "implicit aptitude"). Implicit aptitude is a set of cognitive abilities that enable learners to make unconscious computations of the…

Cognitive abilities are related to job performance. However, there is less agreement about the relative contribution of general versus specific cognitive abilities to job performance. Similarly, it is not clear how cognitive abilities operate in the context of complex occupations. This study assessed the role of cognitive abilities on the…

Racial/ethnic bias in the prediction of students' educational potential was questioned in the Larry P. Vs. Riles case. The construct and predictive validity of the Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Cognitive Abilities (WJ IV; Schrank et al. 2014b) have not been examined for racial/ethnic bias. This study extended Keith's (1999) examination of bias…

Executive functions (EFs) are a set of high-level cognitive processes that enable children to perform a goal-directed behaviour. During the preschool years, EFs undergo significant developmental changes. Therefore, it is crucial to have reliable measures that accurately evaluate preschoolers' EFs in preschool-aged children. The present study aimed…

Background: Mental capacity assessments currently rely on subjective opinion. Researchers have yet to explore the association between key cognitive functions of rational decision making and mental capacity classifications for people with intellectual disabilities. Method: Sixty-three adults completed the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which…

Many Flynn effect (FE) studies compare scores across different editions of Wechsler's IQ tests. When construct changes are introduced by the test developers in the new edition, however, the presumed generational effects are difficult to untangle from changes due to test content. To remove this confound, we use the same edition of Wechsler…

A meta-analysis was conducted to examine the construct validity of language aptitude by synthesizing the existing research that has been accumulated over the past five decades. The study aimed to provide a thorough understanding of the construct by aggregating the data reported in the primary research on its correlations with other individual…

The present study investigated to what degree teachers' personality traits, cognitive abilities, and academic abilities (high school GPA), which were assessed at the end of high school as well as grades from the first and second state examinations of teacher education, predict later instructional quality. The study combined ratings of…

The first-year grade point average (FYGPA) is the predominant measure of student success in most studies on university admission. Previous cognitive achievements measured with high school grades or standardized tests have been found to be the strongest predictors of FYGPA. For this reason, standardized tests measuring cognitive achievement are…

This study is an examination of the incremental validity of Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) broad clusters from the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities (WJ III COG) for predicting scores on the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement (WJ III ACH). The participants were children and adolescents, ages 6-18 (n = 4,722), drawn from the WJ…

Compared with admissions test scores, why are high school grades better at predicting college graduation? We argue that success in college requires not only cognitive ability but also self-regulatory competencies that are better indexed by high school grades. In a national sample of 47,303 students who applied to college for the 2009/2010 academic…

Educational video games can impose high cognitive demands on its users. Two studies were conducted to examine the cognitive process involved in playing an educational digital game. Study 1 examined the effects of users' working memory capacity and gaming expertise on attention and comprehension of the educational messages. The results showed that…