Which working memory components predict fluid intelligence : the roles of attention control and active buffer capacity

This study tested which of two crucial mechanisms of working memory (WM): attention control, consisting of focusing attention on the proper task-set as well as blocking distraction, and the active buffer capacity, related to the number of chunks that can be actively maintained, plays a more important role in WM’s contribution to fluid intelligence. In the first study, the antisaccade task was used, the standard measure of attention control, in a modified variant which resulted in scores less sensitive to individual differences in the active buffer capacity, in comparison to the standard variant. In effect, attention control became a weak predictor of Gf, explaining less than one third of its variance accounted for by the capacity. In the second study, a variant of another attention control test, the Stroop task, was applied, which minimized the load on capacity, and no significant contribution of this task to Gf was found. Thus, when contribution of control and capacity were unconfounded, attention control mechanisms of WM contributed to fluid intelligence to a lesser extent than did the mechanisms related to the active buffer of WM

Fluid intelligence emerges from representing relations

Based on recent findings in cognitive neuroscience and psychology as well as computational models of working memory and reasoning, I argue that fluid intelligence (fluid reasoning) can amount to representing in the mind the key relation(s) for the task at hand. Effective representation of relations allows for enormous flexibility of thinking but depends on the validity and robustness of the dynamic patterns of argument-object (role-filler) bindings, which encode relations in the brain. Such a reconceptualization of the fluid intelligence construct allows for the simplification and purification of its models, tests, and potential brain mechanisms

High intelligence prevents the negative impact of anxiety on working memory

Using a large sample and the confirmatory factor analysis, the study investigated the relationships between anxiety, working memory (WM) and (fluid) intelligence. The study showed that the negative impact of anxiety on WM functioning diminishes with increasing intelligence, and that anxiety can significantly affect WM only in people below average intelligence. This effect could not be fully explained by the sheer differences in WM capacity (WMC), suggesting the importance of higher-level cognition in coping with anxiety. Although intelligence moderated the impact of anxiety on WM, it was only weakly related to anxiety. In contrast to previous studies, anxiety explained the substantial amount of WMC variance (17.8%) in less intelligent participants, but none of the variance in more intelligent ones. These results can be explained in terms of either increased motivation of intelligent but anxious people to cope with a WM task, or their ability to compensate decrements in WM

Analytic thinking outruns fluid reasoning in explaining rejection of pseudoscience, paranormal, and conspiracist beliefs

Around one third of people across populations hold beliefs in epistemically unwarranted claims and theories. Why this effect is so strong remains elusive. In three studies (total N = 827), we clarified the relationships of fluid reasoning ability, analytic thinking style (indexed by non-intuitiveness and open-mindedness), and unwarranted beliefs in pseudoscience, paranormal phenomena, and conspiracy theories. Fluid reasoning predicted about 11% of variance in rejection of pseudoscience, but only 4% - in paranormal beliefs, and less than 2.5% - in conspiracist beliefs. By contrast, analytic thinking substantially predicted rejection of all the three kinds of beliefs, explaining 37% variance in pseudoscience and around 20% variance in paranormal and conspiracist beliefs. A novel finding indicated that fluid reasoning and analytic thinking predicted rejection of pseudoscience in an over-additive interaction. Fluid reasoning and analytic thinking explained the common variance shared by unwarranted beliefs, but not the belief-specific variance. Their relationships with unwarranted beliefs were stronger for males than for females. Overall, the three studies suggest that analytic thinking is more important than cognitive ability for adopting epistemically supported world-view

The quadratic relationship between difficulty of intelligence test items and their correlations with working memory

Fluid intelligence (Gf) is a crucial cognitive ability that involves abstract reasoning in order to solve novel problems. Recent research demonstrated that Gf strongly depends on the individual effectiveness of working memory (WM). We investigated a popular claim that if the storage capacity underlay the WM-Gf correlation, then such a correlation should increase with an increasing number of items or rules (load) in a Gf-test. As often no such link is observed, on that basis the storage-capacity account is rejected, and alternative accounts of Gf (e.g., related to executive control or processing speed) are proposed. Using both analytical inference and numerical simulations, we demonstrated that the load-dependent change in correlation is primarily a function of the amount of floor/ceiling effect for particular items. Thus, the item-wise WM correlation of a Gf-test depends on its overall difficulty, and the difficulty distribution across its items. When the early test items yield huge ceiling, but the late items do not approach floor, that correlation will increase throughout the test. If the early items locate themselves between ceiling and floor, but the late items approach floor, the respective correlation will decrease. For a hallmark Gf-test, the Raven-test, whose items span from ceiling to floor, the quadratic relationship is expected, and it was shown empirically using a large sample and two types of WMC tasks. In consequence, no changes in correlation due to varying WM/Gf load, or lack of them, can yield an argument for or against any theory of WM/Gf. Moreover, as the mathematical properties of the correlation formula make it relatively immune to ceiling/floor effects for overall moderate correlations, only minor changes (if any) in the WM-Gf correlation should be expected for many psychological tests

Susceptibility to distraction during analogical reasoning in schizophrenia

Proportional analogies between four objects (e.g., a squirrel is to tree as a golden fish is to? aquarium) were examined in 30 schizophrenia patients and 30 healthy controls. Half of the problems included distracting response options: remote semantic associates (fishing rod) and perceptually similar salient distractors (shark). Although both patients and controls performed fairly accurately on the no-distraction analogies, patients’ performance in the presence of distractors was distorted, suggesting deficits in attention and cognitive control affecting complex cognition. Finally, although education, fluid intelligence, and interference resolution strongly predicted distractibility in the control group, in the schizophrenia group susceptibility to distraction was unrelated to these markers of general cognitive ability, implying an idiosyncratic nature of reasoning distortions in schizophrenia

Semantic conflict mobilizes self-control in a realistic task

The study tested a hypothesis, based on the cognitive dissonance theory, that not only stimulus and response conflicts, as studied to date on the grounds of the influential conflict monitoring theory of human self-control, but also semantic incompatibility between complex cognitive representations, can mobilize such self-control. In two experiments, we applied a realistic task (simulated web feed), and manipulated the amount of semantic conflict (contradictory text messages), as well as the amount of tempting distractors (jokes and erotic pictures) that were supposed to be ignored. Experiment 1 demonstrated that semantic conflict mobilized self-control, as evidenced by participants better ignoring distraction. Experiment 2 showed that semantic conflict yielded the self-control depletion effect, analogous to the effects caused by a prolonged resistance to distraction, most probably because it mobilized self-control. The results extend the conflict monitoring theory, by implying that the detection of cognitive dissonance between incoming messages can also serve to regulate the strength of self-control

Testing the dual-component account of working memory with a serial recognition task

This study tested the dual-component model of working memory (WM) against its unitary alternative. The former account predicts that WM consists of two functionally distinct mechanisms: a very accessible but capacity-limited primary memory (PM) and a less accessible secondary memory (SM). The latter account assumes only one long-term memory component. We used a novel version of the Sternberg serial recognition paradigm, which selectively impedes access to either early or late items, by asking participants about the location of a probe in relation to either the end or the start of encoded memory set, respectively. When locations matched probes, our manipulation harmed recognition of early items, while it left late items intact, in the case of both latency and accuracy. However, in trials in which locations did not match probes, such an effect regarded only latency but not accuracy. This result suggests that a way of access to WM may depend on the level of conflict among accessed memory items. Finally, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) revealed two distinct sources of variance in recognition accuracy. In total, our results are consistent with th e dual-component view of WM, and they implicate that early items were presumably held in SM, while late items benefited from being held in PM

How working memory capacity constrains the learning of relational concepts

We investigated the way in which working memory (WM) constrains the learning of relational concepts - categories defined by the way objects are assigned to roles in the structure of an underlying relation, and not by objects’ intrinsic features. By applying to a large sample a novel test of concept learning as well as the battery of WM tasks, we found that WM is a strong predictor of the scores on the test, but the WM-learning correlation decreases as the relational complexity of the to-be-learned concepts increases. Such results support those theoretical models of relational learning, which assume that learning of relational concepts (and relations in general) consumes more WM resources than just the processing of relations which have already been learned