Introduction to the special section on cognitive abilities: 100 years after Spearman's (1904) "'General intelligence,' objectively determined and measured"

The study of individual differences in cognitive abilities is one of the few branches of psychological science to amass a coherent body of empirical knowledge withstanding the test of time. There is wide consensus that cognitive abilities are organized hierarchically, and C. Spearman's (1904) general intelligence occupies the vertex of this hierarchy. In addition, specific abilities beyond general intelligence refine longitudinal forecasts of important social phenomena and paint a rich portrait of this important domain of psychological diversity. This opening article identifies and then reviews 5 major areas concerning the personological significance of cognitive abilities and the methods used to study them. In models of human behavior and important life outcomes, cognitive abilities are critical in more ways than social scientists realize.     

心理学对经济学的涉入——从理性自利到社会偏好的决策框架

理性认知能力与社会偏好存在紧密的关联。文章简要回顾了经济决策理论从理性模型到有限理性模型和社会偏好模型的发展进程,论述了人们理性的局限性及其根源,并进一步探讨理性认知能力与社会偏好的关系。对人类以及灵长目动物的研究显示,有限理性可能是由根源于演化的适应性机制所导致。人类不公平厌恶的起源、个体公平能力的发展规律和表征公平的大脑结构上的证据表明,理性认知能力能让人更好地抑制自私性,实现更高层次的公平。     

Cleaner fish <Emphasis Type="Italic">Labroides dimidiatus</Emphasis> discriminate numbers but fail a mental number line test

Several species of primates, including humans, possess a spontaneous spatial mental arrangement (i.e. mental number line MNL) of increasing numbers or continuous quantities from left to right. This cognitive process has recently been documented in domestic chicken in a spatial–numerical task, opening the possibility that MNL is a cognitive capacity that has been conserved across vertebrate taxa. In this scenario, fish might possess the MNL as well. Here we investigated whether cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus show evidence for MNL in two experiments. In Experiment I, we tested fish’s abilities in number discrimination, presenting simultaneously either small (2 vs 5) or large (5 vs 8) continuous quantities where one quantity was systematically rewarded. Experiment II used a protocol of an MNL task similar to the study on chickens. We trained cleaners with a target number (i.e. 5 elements), then we presented them with an identical pair of panels depicting either 2 elements or 8 elements, and we recorded their spontaneous choice for the left or right panel on each presentation. Cleaner fish showed high abilities in discriminating small and large numbers in Experiment I. Importantly, cleaners achieved this discrimination using numerical cues instead of non-numerical cues such as the cumulative surface area, density, and overall space. In contrast, cleaners did not allocate continuous quantities to space in Experiment II. Our findings suggest that cleaner fish possess numbering skills but they do not have an MNL. While similar studies on animals from various clades are needed to trace the evolution of MNL within vertebrates, our results suggest that this cognitive process might not be a capacity conserved across all vertebrate taxa.     

Decision-making competence in younger and older adults: which cognitive abilities contribute to the application of decision rules?

Older adults perform worse than younger adults when applying decision rules to choose between options that vary along multiple attributes. Although previous studies have shown that general fluid cognitive abilities contribute to the accurate application of decision rules, relatively little is known about which specific cognitive abilities play the most important role. We examined the independent roles of working memory, verbal fluency, semantic knowledge, and components of executive functioning. We found that age-related decline in applying decision rules was statistically mediated by age-related decline in working memory and verbal fluency. Our results have implications for theories of aging and decision-making.     

眼动技术在个体认知能力差异研究中的应用

本文从可能性和可行性两方面介绍和论述了眼动技术在个体认知能力差异研究中的应用。在可能性方面,个体眼动特征具有的良好的重测信度和内部一致性信度;在可行性方面,已有研究利用注视和眼跳相关指标、眼动轨迹和瞳孔直径这三类指标对该问题进行探索,结果均发现这些眼动特征与认知能力之间存在着密切关系。今后研究应继续深入探索两者关系的内在认知和神经机制,并尝试结合人工智能算法开发高信效度的眼动认知测验。     

Intelligence and the rest of cognition

Cognitive psychologists have become enamored with intelligence. Increasingly, the theories, findings, and methods of what is known as the information processing approach are being used in attempts to explain intelligence related phenomena. This article examines intelligence from a different perspective, which emphasizes domain-specific constraints on knowledge structures. It is argued that conceptions of what intelligence is and how it relates to the rest of cognition can vary considerably when viewed from the vantage points of these two perspectives. The constraints approach views intelligence as being closely related to a special subset of all of our cognitive abilities and as having unique distinguishing properties. It is also argued that the evaluation of any cognitive ability as being intelligent depends crucially on a prior specification of the formal constraints on the domain or domains of knowledge from which that ability originates.     

Individual Differences in Decision Making Depend on Cognitive Abilities,Monitoring and Control

Decision making is the process by which actions are constructed and initiated. Across many research streams, this can be explained in terms of three broad cognitive processes: cognitive abilities that construct judgements and potential courses of action, and interacting monitoring and control processes that determine when to initiate them as behaviour. The aim of this research was to investigate the generality of individual differences in these processes, and their power to predict patterns of decision behaviour identified in our previous research. Undergraduate participants (N = 364) completed nine tests assessing cognitive abilities, monitoring confidence, control thresholds and various patterns of decision behaviour. The tests differed in their cognitive ability requirements and the nature of the payoffs associated with decisions. Cognitive abilities were a strong predictor of individuals' decision competence and optimality, while monitoring confidence and control thresholds were strong and unique predictors of their overall decisiveness, and reckless and hesitant errors. These results were strongest when the measures of cognitive abilities and monitoring confidence were derived from tests with the same cognitive requirements as the tests used to derive the decision behaviours and when the control threshold measure was derived from tests with the same decision payoffs as the test used to derive the decision behaviours. This effect was particularly pronounced for control thresholds, highlighting the domain‐specific nature of cognitive control processes. These findings demonstrate how cognitive abilities, monitoring output and control thresholds interact with cognitive requirements and context‐specific payoffs to drive individual differences in decision‐making behaviour. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Beyond IQ: A latent state-trait analysis of general intelligence, dynamic decision making, and implicit learning

The present study investigated cognitive performance measures beyond IQ. In particular, we investigated the psychometric properties of dynamic decision making variables and implicit learning variables and their relation with general intelligence and professional success. N = 173 employees from different companies and occupational groups completed two standard intelligence tests, two dynamic decision making tasks, and two implicit learning tasks at two measurement occasions each. We used structural equation models to test latent state-trait measurement models and the relation between constructs. The results suggest that dynamic decision making and implicit learning are substantially related with general intelligence. Furthermore, general intelligence is the best predictor for income, social status, and educational attainment. Dynamic decision making can predict supervisor ratings even beyond general intelligence.     

Explaining brain size variation: from social to cultural brain

Although the social brain hypothesis has found near-universal acceptance as the best explanation for the evolution of extensive variation in brain size among mammals, it faces two problems. First, it cannot account for grade shifts, where species or complete lineages have a very different brain size than expected based on their social organization. Second, it cannot account for the observation that species with high socio-cognitive abilities also excel in general cognition. These problems may be related. For birds and mammals, we propose to integrate the social brain hypothesis into a broader framework we call cultural intelligence, which stresses the importance of the high costs of brain tissue, general behavioral flexibility and the role of social learning in acquiring cognitive skills.     

A Neuropsychological Approach to Intelligence

This paper proposes that current psychometric intelligence tests are limited in evaluating cognitive activity. From a neuropsychological perspective, they fail to measure some fundamental cognitive abilities such as executive functions, memory, and visuospatial abilities. The analysis of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale presented shows that the original rationale for selecting the specific subtests included in the WAIS was unclear. The concept of a g factor in cognition is also analyzed, with the conclusion that the g factor continues to be controversial. The value of intelligence tests in predicting school performance is also criticized. It is proposed that the psychometric concept of general intelligence should be deleted from cognitive and neurological sciences. Finally, it is proposed that, in the future, neuropsychological instruments sensitive to more specific cognitive abilities replace current psychometric intelligence tests.     

Goal neglect and knowledge chunking in the construction of novel behaviour

Task complexity is critical in cognitive efficiency and fluid intelligence. To examine functional limits in task complexity, we examine the phenomenon of goal neglect, where participants with low fluid intelligence fail to follow task rules that they otherwise understand. Though neglect is known to increase with task complexity, here we show that – in contrast to previous accounts – the critical factor is not the total complexity of all task rules. Instead, when the space of task requirements can be divided into separate sub-parts, neglect is controlled by the complexity of each component part. The data also show that neglect develops and stabilizes over the first few performance trials, i.e. as instructions are first used to generate behaviour. In all complex behaviour, a critical process is combination of task events with retrieved task requirements to create focused attentional episodes dealing with each decision in turn. In large part, we suggest, fluid intelligence may reflect this process of converting complex requirements into effective attentional episodes.     

Placing inspection time, reaction time, and perceptual speed in the broader context of cognitive ability: The VPR model in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936

The idea that information processing speed is related to cognitive ability has a long history. Much evidence has been amassed in its support, with respect to both individual differences in general intelligence and developmental trajectories. Two so-called elementary cognitive tasks, reaction time and inspection time, have been used to compile this evidence, but most studies have used either one or the other. Relations between speed and fluid intelligence have tended to be stronger than those between speed and crystallized intelligence, but studies testing this have confounded verbal abilities with crystallized intelligence and spatial/perceptual abilities with fluid intelligence. Questions have also been raised regarding whether speed contributes directly to general intelligence or to more specific cognitive abilities to which general intelligence also contributes. We used 18 ability and speed measures in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936, assessed at approximately age 70, to construct alternative versions of the Verbal-Perceptual-Image Rotation (Johnson & Bouchard, 2005a) model of cognitive ability to test different hypotheses regarding these issues. Though differences in the extents to which our models fit the data were relatively small, they suggested that reaction and inspection time tasks were comparable indicators of information processing speed with respect to general intelligence, that verbal and spatial abilities were similarly related to information processing speed, and that spatial, verbal, and perceptual speed abilities were more directly related to information processing speed than was general intelligence. We discuss the theoretical implications of these results.     

A computational analysis of general intelligence tests for evaluating cognitive development

The progression in several cognitive tests for the same subjects at different ages provides valuable information about their cognitive development. One question that has caught recent interest is whether the same approach can be used to assess the cognitive development of artificial systems. In particular, can we assess whether the ‘fluid’ or ‘crystallised’ intelligence of an artificial cognitive system is changing during its cognitive development as a result of acquiring more concepts? In this paper, we address several IQ tests problems (odd-one-out problems, Raven’s Progressive Matrices and Thurstone’s letter series) with a general learning system that is not particularly designed on purpose to solve intelligence tests. The goal is to better understand the role of the basic cognitive operational constructs (such as identity, difference, order, counting, logic, etc.) that are needed to solve these intelligence test problems and serve as a proof-of-concept for evaluation in other developmental problems. From here, we gain some insights into the characteristics and usefulness of these tests and how careful we need to be when applying human test problems to assess the abilities and cognitive development of robots and other artificial cognitive systems.     

Reciprocity of support in coatis (Nasua nasua)

Primate sociality has received much attention and its complexity has been viewed as a driving force for the evolution of cognitive abilities. Improved analytic techniques have allowed primate researchers to reveal intricate social networks based on the exchange of cooperative acts and services. Although nonprimates are known to show similar behavior (e.g., cooperative hunting, food sharing, coalitions) there seems a consensus that social life is less complex than in primates. Here the authors present the first group-level analysis of reciprocity of social interactions in a social carnivore, the ring-tailed coati (Nasua nasua). The authors found that support in aggressive conflicts is a common feature in coatis and that this behavior is reciprocally exchanged in a manner seemingly as complex as in primates. Given that reciprocity correlations persisted after controlling for the effect of spatial association and subunit membership, some level of scorekeeping may be involved. Further studies will be needed to confirm our findings and understand the mechanisms underlying such reciprocity, but our results contribute to the body of work that has begun to challenge primate supremacy in social complexity and cognition.     

Communicative and other cognitive characteristics of bottlenose dolphins

Scientists have tried to capture the rich cognitive life of dolphins through field and laboratory studies of their brain anatomy, social lives, communication and perceptual abilities. Encopheliration quotient data sugest a level of intelligence or cognitive processing in the large-brained dolphin that is closer to the human range than are our nearest primate relatives. Field studies indicate a fission-fusion type of social structure, showing social complexity rivaling that found in chimpanzee societies. Notably, cetaceans are the only mammals other than humans that clearly demonstrate vocal learning and parallels in stages of vocal learning have been reported for humans, birds and dolphins. The dolphin's vocal plasticity from infancy through adulthood, in what is probably an 'open' communication system, is likely to be related to their fission-fusion social structure and, specifically, to the fluidity of their short-term associations. However, conflicting evidence exists on the composition and organization of the dolphins whistle repertoire. In general, the level of dolphin performance on complex auditory learning and memory tasks has been compared with that of primates on similar visual tasks; however, dolphins have also demonstrated sophistrcated visual processing abilities. Laboratory studies have also provided suggestive, evidence of minor self-recognition in the dolphin, an ability previously thought to be exclusive to humans humans and apes.     

Reaction time and intelligence: Comparing associations based on two response modes

People who score highly on intelligence tests also tend to have faster and less variable reaction times. Effect size estimates for the reaction time–intelligence association are larger in samples that are more representative of the population. However, such samples have often been tested on a reaction time device that requires reading a number and processing its association with a specific response location (Cox, Huppert, & Whichelow, 1993). Here, we use this device and another reaction time device (Dykiert et al., 2010) that is similar, except that the responses require less processing; subjects simply press a button that is adjacent to the stimulus light. We focus on the possibility that lights as stimuli require less higher-order cognitive engagement than numbers, and then test whether parameters from these two tasks are highly correlated and similarly associated with age and higher cognitive abilities. Both tasks measured simple and choice reaction times and their intra-individual variation across trials. The parameters of the two tasks were very highly correlated and parameters from both tasks were similarly associated with age, social factors, and differences in higher cognitive abilities. The respective choice reaction time parameters from either task accounted for much of the age- and higher cognitive ability-associations of the other task's parameters. These findings are important in establishing that the effect sizes of higher cognitive ability associations with processing speed measures may be found when the processing demands are minimal.     

Implicit statistical learning in language processing: Word predictability is the key

Fundamental learning abilities related to the implicit encoding of sequential structure have been postulated to underlie language acquisition and processing. However, there is very little direct evidence to date supporting such a link between implicit statistical learning and language. In three experiments using novel methods of assessing implicit learning and language abilities, we show that sensitivity to sequential structure – as measured by improvements to immediate memory span for structurally-consistent input sequences – is significantly correlated with the ability to use knowledge of word predictability to aid speech perception under degraded listening conditions. Importantly, the association remained even after controlling for participant performance on other cognitive tasks, including short-term and working memory, intelligence, attention and inhibition, and vocabulary knowledge. Thus, the evidence suggests that implicit learning abilities are essential for acquiring long-term knowledge of the sequential structure of language – i.e., knowledge of word predictability – and that individual differences on such abilities impact speech perception in everyday situations. These findings provide a new theoretical rationale linking basic learning phenomena to specific aspects of spoken language processing in adults, and may furthermore indicate new fruitful directions for investigating both typical and atypical language development.     

Predicting the Development of Analytical and Creative Abilities in Upper Elementary Grades

In some models, intelligence has been described as a multidimensional construct comprising both analytical and creative abilities. In addition, intelligence is considered to be dynamic rather than static. A structural equation model was used to examine the predictive role of cognitive (visual short-term memory, verbal short-term memory, selective attention) and socio-emotional (motivation, self-concept, well-being) child characteristics in the development of analytical and creative abilities in 116 Dutch children over the course of 5th and 6th grade. Results showed increasing levels of both analytical and creative abilities over the grades with the 2 types of abilities developing more or less independently. The development of analytical abilities was predicted by visual and verbal short-term memory and self-concept, the development of creative abilities by visual short-term memory and well-being. These results show that analytical and creative abilities have highly independent developmental trajectories, each with specific cognitive and socio-emotional predictors.     

Selling points: What cognitive abilities are tapped by casual video games?

The idea that video games or computer-based applications can improve cognitive function has led to a proliferation of programs claiming to “train the brain.” However, there is often little scientific basis in the development of commercial training programs, and many research-based programs yield inconsistent or weak results. In this study, we sought to better understand the nature of cognitive abilities tapped by casual video games and thus reflect on their potential as a training tool. A moderately large sample of participants (n = 209) played 20 web-based casual games and performed a battery of cognitive tasks. We used cognitive task analysis and multivariate statistical techniques to characterize the relationships between performance metrics. We validated the cognitive abilities measured in the task battery, examined a task analysis-based categorization of the casual games, and then characterized the relationship between game and task performance. We found that games categorized to tap working memory and reasoning were robustly related to performance on working memory and fluid intelligence tasks, with fluid intelligence best predicting scores on working memory and reasoning games. We discuss these results in the context of overlap in cognitive processes engaged by the cognitive tasks and casual games, and within the context of assessing near and far transfer. While this is not a training study, these findings provide a methodology to assess the validity of using certain games as training and assessment devices for specific cognitive abilities, and shed light on the mixed transfer results in the computer-based training literature. Moreover, the results can inform design of a more theoretically-driven and methodologically-sound cognitive training program.