Intelligence and parallel versus sequential organization of information processing in analogical reasoning

The construct of the organization of information processing (OIP) has been adopted as a possible cognitive mechanism responsible for human intelligent functioning. Participants (N = 77) were asked to solve an analogical reasoning task, a test of divided attention, a working memory capacity test, and Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices as a standard test of general fl uid intelligence. On the basis of the chronometric analysis of their performance in the analogy task, participants were divided into those preferring to use parallel or sequential modes of organization of information processing. It appeared that intelligent people using the parallel mode of processing obtained the best results in the analogical reasoning test. Other subgroups did not differ substantially from one another. It also appeared that intelligent people using the parallel mode of processing performed equally well regardless of their attentional resources and working memory capacity, whereas people using the sequential mode of processing were much more dependent on these basic cognitive limitations. A compensatory mechanism is suggested in order to account for this data: the parallel mode of processing probably helps to compensate for defi cient attention or impaired working memory, whereas the sequential mode cannot act in a compensatory way

Perceptual global processing and hierarchically organized affordances : the lack of interaction between vision-for-perception and vision-for-action

In visual information processing, two kinds of vision are distinguished: vision-for-perception related to the conscious identifi cation of objects, and vision-for-action that deals with visual control of movements. Neuroscience suggests that these two functions are performed by two separate brain neural systems – the ventral and dorsal pathways (Milner and Goodale, 1995). Two experiments using behavioural measures were conducted with the objective of exploring any potential interaction between these two functions of vision. The aim was to combine in one task methods allowing for the simultaneous capture of both perceptual global processing and affordance extraction and to check whether they infi uence each other. This aim was achieved by employing the paradigms of Navon (1977) and Tucker and Ellis (1998). A compound fi gure was created made up of objects with handles that might or might not have orientation congruent between levels. The results revealed that while the affordance effect occurred every time, the Navon effect appeared only when subjects focused their attention on object elements responsible for inconsistence within compound fi gure. Most importantly, even when these two effects occurred at once, they had no effect on each other. Results from the study failed to confi rm the hypothesis about interaction and gives support to the view that vision-for-perception and vision-for-action tend to act as separate systems

Working memory updating of emotional stimuli predicts emotional intelligence in females

Preliminary evidence concerning emotional intelligence (EI) and working memory (WM) showed that the relationship between them is dependent on the emotional content (‘hot’ or ‘cool’) of tasks involving WM. In this paper, we continue investigating the relationship between EI and WM, focusing on a crucial function of WM, i.e., the efficacy of updating its content. WM updating shows substantial correlations with general fluid intelligence (gF) and seems to be a significant predictor of cognitive performance and achievement. We assume that if updating is important for a wide range of higher-order processes, updating emotional content in WM could be essential for emotionally intelligent behavior. To test this hypothesis, we constructed two parallel versions of a task that requires WM updating: one with neutral and the other with emotional stimuli. In addition, performance-based measures of both gF and EI were used in the research. Using the structural equation approach, we sought to demonstrate that gF is dependent on the efficiency of WM updating for both emotional and neutral stimuli, whereas EI might depend only on the updating efficacy in the emotional context. The results are discussed in terms of the domain specificity of EI and the domain generality of gF. The main constraint of the study is its limited sample size (n = 123 for intelligence measures, n = 69 for WM updating tasks). Moreover, the study was based on a female sample; thus, the conclusions can be extrapolated only to women

Capacity, control, or both : which aspects of working memory contribute to children’s general fluid intelligence?

Starting from the assumption that working memory capacity is an important predictor of general fluid intelligence, we asked which aspects of working memory account for this relationship. Two theoretical stances are discussed. The first one posits that the important explanatory factor is storage capacity, roughly defined as the number of chunks possible to hold in the focus of attention. The second one claims that intelligence is explained by the efficiency of executive control, for instance, by prepotent response inhibition. We investigated 96 children at the age between 10 and 13. They completed a version of the n-back task that allows assessment of both storage capacity and inhibitory control. They also completed Raven’s Progressive Matrices as the fluid intelligence test and the Test for Creative Thinking - Drawing Production, for control purposes. We found that Raven’s scores correlated negatively with the number of unnecessary responses to irrelevant stimuli but they did not correlate with the number of signal detections. We conclude that children’s fluid intelligence depends on inhibitory control, with no relationship with storage capacity

Limitations of working memory capacity : the cognitive and social consequences

This paper aimed to explore, from the perspective of cognitive psychology, the natural limitations of human cognition that determine our capabilities to deal with information overflow. These limitations are related mainly to the working memory system. This system is conceived to be composed of the storage components, which are responsible for active maintenance, and executive control that supervises the storage units. People differ in their working memory capacities, and because virtually every complex cognitive activity requires the temporal availability of a certain amount of cognitive representations, these differences are predictive of many outcomes. In the area of "cold" cognition, these outcomes include intelligence and verbal reasoning, multitasking, language comprehension and verbal fluency, whereas in the area of ‘hot’ cognition, they include mentalising, stereotyping and self-control. Natural limitations in working memory capacity may be overcome (to some extent) through the training of working memory skills or the application of processing strategies (e.g. task simplification, using external environment as in situated or distributed cognition, changing a code of mental representation)

Task conditions and short-term memory search : two-phase model of STM search

Short-term memory (STM) search, as investigated within the Sternberg paradigm, is usually described as exhaustive rather than self-terminated, although the debat concerning these issues is still hot. We report three experiments employing a modified Sternberg paradigm and show that whether STM search is exhaustive or self-terminated depends on task conditions. Specifically, STM search self-terminates as soon as a positive match is found, whereas exhaustive search occurs when the STM content does not contain a searched item. Additionally, we show that task conditions influence whether familiarity- or recollection-based strategies dominate STM search performance. Namely, when speeding up the tempo of stimuli presentation increases the task demands, people use familiarity-based retrieval more often, which results in faster but less accurate recognition judgments. We conclude that STM search processes flexibly adapt to current task conditions and finally propose two-phase model of STM search