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…

Contemporary creativity research views intelligence and creativity as essentially unrelated abilities, and many studies have found only modest correlations between them. The present research, based on improved approaches to creativity assessment and latent variable modeling, proposes that fluid and executive cognition is in fact central to…

Sex differences on the Attention Test (AC), the Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM), and the Brazilian Cognitive Battery (BPR5), were investigated using four large samples (total N=6780), residing in the states of Minas Gerais and Sao Paulo. The majority of samples used, which were obtained from educational settings, could be considered a…

We examined whether fluid intelligence (Gf) is better predicted by the storage capacity of active memory or by the effectiveness of executive control. In two psychometric studies, we measured storage capacity with three kinds of task which required the maintenance of a visual array, the monitoring of simple relations among perceptually available…

The relation between mental ability and the ability to detect violations of an abstract, third-order conjunction rule was examined using event-related potential measures, specifically mismatch negativity (MMN). The primary objective was to determine whether the extraction of invariant relations based on abstract conjunctions between two…

We examined how general intelligence, personality, and emotional intelligence--measured as an ability using the MSCEIT--predicted performance on a selective-attention task requiring participants to ignore distracting emotion information. We used a visual prime in which participants saw a pair of faces depicting emotions; their task was to focus on…

In the present study, speeded tasks with differing assumed difficulties of the trials are regarded as a special class of simple cognitive tasks. Exploratory latent growth modeling with data-driven shape of a growth curve and nonlinear structured latent curve modeling with predetermined monotonically increasing functions were used to analyze…

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…

Many aspects of cognition decline from middle to late adulthood, but the dimensionality and generality of this decline have rarely been examined. We analyzed 20-year longitudinal data of 6203 middle-aged to very old adults from Greater Manchester and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. Participants were assessed up to eight times on 20 tasks of fluid…

Three hundred and four participants in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 study took a validated IQ-type test at age 11 years and a battery of cognitive tests at age 70 years. Three tests of health literacy were completed at age 72 years; the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM), the Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults…

This study provides the first direct evidence of cognitive continuity for multiple specific information processing abilities from infancy and toddlerhood to pre-adolescence, and provides support for the view that infant abilities form the basis of later childhood abilities. Data from a large sample of children (N = 131) were obtained at five…

The present study examined whether various indices of interference control were related to one another and to other cognitive abilities. It was found that the interference control measures were weakly correlated and could form a single factor that was related to overall memory performance on the tasks as well as to measures of working memory…

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…

The study investigates the effects of intelligence, perceptual speed and age on intraindividual growth in attentional speed and attentional accuracy over the course of a 6-minute testing session. A sample of 193 subjects completed the Advanced Progressive Matrices and the Vienna Matrices Test representing intelligence, the tests Alertness and…

A latent variable analysis was conducted to examine the nature of individual differences in lapses of attention and their relation to executive and fluid abilities. Participants performed a sustained attention task along with multiple measures of executive control and fluid abilities. Lapses of attention were indexed based on the slowest reaction…