The role of psychometrics in individual differences research in cognition: A case study of the AX-CPT

Investigating individual differences in cognition requires addressing questions not often thought about in standard experimental designs, especially regarding the psychometric properties of the task. Using the AX-CPT cognitive control task as a case study example, we address four concerns that one may encounter when researching the topic of individual differences in cognition. First, we demonstrate the importance of variability in task scores, which in turn directly impacts reliability, particularly when comparing correlations in different populations. Second, we demonstrate the importance of variability and reliability for evaluating potential failures to replicate predicted correlations, even within the same population. Third, we demonstrate how researchers can turn to evaluating psychometric properties as a way of evaluating the feasibility of utilizing the task in new settings (e.g., online administration). Lastly, we show how the examination of psychometric properties can help researchers make informed decisions when designing a study, such as determining the appropriate number of trials for a task

Should Intelligence Tests Be Speeded or Unspeeded? A Brief Review of the Effects of Time Pressure on Response Processes and an Experimental Study with Raven’s Matrices

Intelligence tests are often performed under time constraints for practical reasons, but the effects of time pressure on reasoning performance are poorly understood. The first part of this work provides a brief review of major expected effects of time pressure, which includes forcing participants to skip items, convoking a mental speed factor, constraining response times, qualitatively altering cognitive processing, affecting anxiety and motivation, and interacting with individual differences. The second part presents data collected with Raven’s matrices under three conditions of speededness to provide further insight into the complex effects of time pressure, with three major findings. First, even mild time pressure (with enough time available for all participants to complete the task at a leisurely pace) induced speeding throughout the whole task, starting with the very first item, and participants sped up more than was actually required. Second, time pressure came with lower confidence and poorer strategy use and a substantial decrease of accuracy (d = 0.35), even when controlling for response time at the item level—indicating a detrimental effect on cognitive processing beyond speeding. Third, time pressure disproportionately reduced response times for difficult items and participants with high ability, working memory capacity, or need for cognition, although this did not differentially affect ability estimates. Overall, both the review and empirical sections show that the effects of time pressure go well beyond forcing participants to speed or skip the last few items and make even mild time constraints inadvisable when attempting to measure maximal performance, especially for high-performing samples

Charting the diversity of strategic processes in visuospatial short-term memory

International audienceDespite the abundant literature on visuospatial short-term memory, researchers have devoted little attention to strategic processes: What procedures do subjects implement to memorize visuospatial material? Evidence for various strategies exists, but it is spread across a variety of fields. This integrative review of the literature brings together scattered evidence to provide an overview of strategic processes in visuospatial memory tasks. The diversity of strategies and their proposed operating mechanisms are reviewed and discussed. The evidence leads to proposing seven broad strategic processes used in visuospatial short-term memory, each with multiple variants. Strategies can vary across individuals, but the same subjects also appear to use multiple strategies depending on the perceptual features of to-be-remembered displays. These results point to a view of visuospatial strategies as a functional library of facilitatory processes on which subjects can draw to support visuospatial short-term memory performance. Implications are discussed for the difference between visual and spatial tasks, for the appropriate measurement of strategic behaviors, and for the interpretation of performance in visuospatial memory tasks

Modélisation GAMM de la variabilité intra-individuelle des comportements stratégiques sur les matrices de Raven

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Contrôle cognitif en mémoire de travail : une approche différentielle dans le cadre du modèle à Deux Mécanismes de Contrôle

The constructs of working memory and cognitive control are conceptually close; a high working memory capacity is hypothesized to be associated with an efficient cognitive control. This hypothetical association has large implications for human cognition and provides an elegant explanation for the frequently reported relationship between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence. However, the difficulty in operationalizing and measuring cognitive control makes this hypothesis hard to test. One model of cognitive control, the Dual Mechanisms of Control (DMC) framework, constitutes a possible solution to this problem: the model proposes two distinct mechanisms of cognitive control which can be efficiently operationalized and studied. There is reason to believe that one of these two mechanisms, proactive control, is specifically related to working memory capacity. The objective of the present research work was to assess the relationship between individual differences in working memory capacity and the tendency to use proactive control. This relationship was tested in four steps: 1) by using innovative measures of the tendency to use proactive control, based on newly developed paradigms, 2) with classic cognitive control tasks sensitive to proactive control, 3) with a neuroimaging approach using electro-encephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging, and 4) by testing whether the use of proactive control explains the relationship between working memory and fluid intelligence. Overall, our results did not support the idea that working memory capacity is uniquely related to the tendency to use proactive control; the data were more consistent with a general advantage of participants with a high working memory capacity in all situations.La mémoire de travail et le contrôle cognitif sont des construits proches ; on suppose généralement qu'une forte capacité en mémoire de travail est associée à un contrôle cognitif efficace. Cette hypothèse a des implications importantes pour la cognition humaine et apporte une explication élégante à la corrélation fréquemment reportée entre mémoire de travail et intelligence fluide. En revanche, les difficultés d'opérationnalisation et de mesure du contrôle cognitif rendent l'hypothèse difficile à tester. Un modèle récent du contrôle cognitif, le modèle à Deux Mécanismes de Contrôle (DMC), offre une solution à ce problème : ce modèle propose l'existence de deux mécanismes de contrôle cognitif distincts et permet de les opérationnaliser de façon efficace. La littérature prédit que l'un de ces deux mécanismes, le contrôle proactif, devrait être lié à la mémoire de travail. L'objectif de cette thèse était de tester l'existence d'une relation entre les différences inter-individuelles en mémoire de travail et la tendance à mettre en place un mécanisme de contrôle proactif. Cette relation a été testée sous quatre axes de travail : 1) en utilisant de nouveaux paradigmes expérimentaux pour mesurer la tendance à utiliser le contrôle proactif, 2) grâce à des tâches classiques de contrôle cognitif choisies pour leur sensibilité au contrôle proactif, 3) à travers une approche par imagerie cérébrale incluant électro-encéphalographie et imagerie par résonance magnétique fonctionnelle, et 4) en tant que facteur explicatif de la relation entre mémoire de travail et intelligence fluide. Dans l'ensemble, nos résultats n'ont pas permis de soutenir l'idée que la capacité en mémoire de travail est directement liée à la tendance à utiliser un mécanisme de contrôle proactif ; les données suggèrent plutôt un avantage général en faveur des participants à forte capacité en mémoire de travail dans toutes les situations

Cross-cultural differences in visuo-spatial processing and the culture-fairness of visuo-spatial intelligence tests: an integrative review and a model for matrices tasks

International audienceAbstract Visuo-spatial reasoning tests, such as Raven's matrices, Cattell's culture-fair test, or various subtests of the Wechsler scales, are frequently used to estimate intelligence scores in the context of inter-racial comparisons. This has led to several high-profile works claiming that certain ethnic groups have lower intelligence than others, presumably due to genetic inferiority. This logic is predicated on the assumption that such visuo-spatial tests, because they are non-verbal, must be culture-fair: that their solution process does not significantly draw on factors that vary from one culture to the next. This assumption of culture-fairness is dubious at best and has been questioned by many authors. In this article, I review the substantial body of psychological and ethnographic literature which has demonstrated that the perception, manipulation and conceptualization of visuo-spatial information differs significantly across cultures, in a way that is relevant to intelligence tests. I then outline a model of how these inter-cultural differences can affect seven major steps of the solution process for Raven's matrices, with a brief discussion of other visuo-spatial reasoning tests. Overall, a number of cultural assumptions appear to be deeply ingrained in all visuo-spatial reasoning tests, to the extent that it disqualifies the view of such tests as intrinsically culture-fair and makes it impossible to draw clear-cut conclusions from average score differences between ethnic groups

La variabilité des comportements stratégiques sur les matrices de Raven, et ses prédicteurs.

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Vous avez dit mémoire de travail ?

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Un excès de variabilité : cartographie des stratégies en mémoire visuo-spatiale.

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