Capacity, Control, or Both – Which Aspects of Working Memory Contribute to Children’s General Fluid Intelligence?

• Authors: Edward Nęcka , Agata Lulewicz
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

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.

Keywords

EN

working memory; intelligence; n-back; schoolchildren

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk
• Journal: Polish Psychological Bulletin
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 47
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 21-28

Dates

published

2016-04-01

online

2016-05-14

Contributors

author

Edward Nęcka

• Jagiellonian University in Kraków
• The University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw

author

Agata Lulewicz

• The University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/ppb-2016-0003