Working memory capacity and fluid abilities: the more difficult the item, the more more is better

Abstract

The relationship between fluid intelligence and working memory is of fundamental importance to understanding how capacity-limited structures such as working memory interact with inference abilities to determine intelligent behavior. Recent evidence has suggested that the relationship between a fluid abilities test, Raven's Progressive Matrices, and working memory capacity (WMC) may be invariant across difficulty levels of the Raven's items. We show that this invariance can only be observed if the overall correlation between Raven's and WMC is low. Simulations of Raven's performance revealed that as the overall correlation between Raven's and WMC increases, the item-wise point bi-serial correlations involving WMC are no longer constant but increase considerably with item difficulty. The simulation results were confirmed by two studies that used a composite measure of WMC, which yielded a higher correlation between WMC and Raven's than reported in previous studies. As expected, with the higher overall correlation, there was a significant positive relationship between Raven's item difficulty and the extent of the item-wise correlation with WMC.

Working memory and reasoning benefit from different modes of large-scale brain dynamics in healthy older adults

“…In keeping with this line of reasoning, psychologists have emphasized the demands that both working memory and reasoning tasks place on executive control (7, 8). The high correlation between inter-individual differences in working memory and complex reasoning scores (4, 5) and observations that these tasks elicit similar functional brain activity in the frontoparietal control network (CN) (8-14) are also consistent with this idea. Yet there are reasons to believe that cognitive processes other than working memory ability are involved in complex reasoning.…”

“…Fluid intelligence is central to solving complex reasoning tasks; that is, to identifying common patterns and applying logic to extrapolate them to novel problems. The cognitive processes that determine performance in such tasks have been a matter of debate for decades (1-5). Task analyses have led some researchers to propose that reasoning ability depends on and is almost isomorphic with the capacity to maintain and manipulate information in working memory (5, 6).…”

“…The cognitive processes that determine performance in such tasks have been a matter of debate for decades (1-5). Task analyses have led some researchers to propose that reasoning ability depends on and is almost isomorphic with the capacity to maintain and manipulate information in working memory (5, 6). In keeping with this line of reasoning, psychologists have emphasized the demands that both working memory and reasoning tasks place on executive control (7, 8).…”

Assessment of executive functioning in binge‐eating disorder independent of weight status

“…Previous neuropsychological research suggests that statistically controlling for age is unnecessary when using age-adjusted standard scores (Agbayani & Hiscock, 2013;Salthouse, 2013 there is a strong positive correlation between years of education and IQ (Lange et al, 2010;Matarazzo & Herman, 1984). In addition, there is there is an overlap in measures of fluid intelligence tests and working memory and processing speed tasks, due to the memory maintenance required on fluid intelligence tests (Conway, Cowan, Bunting, Therriault & Minkoff, 2002;Fry & Hale, 1996;Little, Lewandowsky & Craig, 2014). Given this, we chose to control for years of education and minority status in all subsequent analyses.…”

When high working memory capacity is and is not beneficial for predicting nonlinear processes

“…The involvement of WMC is particularly high when more cues need to be considered or more complex rules need to be abstracted (Karlsson, Juslin, & Olsson 2008;Mata et al, 2012). WMC is also associated with accuracy in a prototypical rule-induction task-Raven's Progressive Matrices-particularly for items requiring complex rules (D. R. Little, Lewandowsky, & Craig, 2014;Wiley, Jarosz, Cushen, & Colflesh, 2011). Despite these compelling connections, there is only one study directly assessing how WMC affects the prediction of continuous processes: McDaniel et al (2014) suspected that higher WMC allows participants to actively maintain a range of cue-criterion values and to concurrently compare them over trials to abstract a functional rule.…”