Cognitive Ability

Modern psychological theory views cognitive ability as multidimensional while acknowledging that the many different abilities are themselves positively correlated. This positive correlation across abilities has led most psychometricians to accept the reality of a general cognitive ability that is reflected in the full scale score on major tests of cognitive ability or IQ. This entry provides an introduction to the history of cognitive testing and some of its major controversies. Evidence supporting the validity of measures of cognitive ability is presented and the nature and implications of group differences is discussed along with evidence on its malleability. Some people obviously and consistently understand new concepts quicker, solve unfamiliar problems faster, see relationships that others don’t and are more knowledgeable about a wider range of topics than others. We call such people smart, bright, quick, or intelligent. Psychologists have developed tests to measure this trait. Originally called IQ tests (for Intelligence Quotient because the measures were constructed as the ratio of mental age to chronological age multiplied by 100) that name has fallen out of favor. Instead, such tests are now often referred to as tests of cognitive ability. Although the term IQ is still sometimes used to refer to what such tests measure, none construct a ratio. History Spearman (1904) first popularized the observation that individuals who do well on one type of mental task also tend to do well on many others. For example, people who are good at recognizing patterns in sequences of abstract drawings are also good at quickly arranging pictures in order to tell a story, telling what three dimensional shapes drawn in two dimensions will look like when rotated, tend to have large vocabularies and good reading comprehension, and are quick at arithmetic. This pattern of moderate to strong positive correlations across the whole spectrum of mental abilities led Spearman to hypothesize the existence of a general mental ability similar to the common notion of intelligence. A person’s ability with any particular type of task would be equal to the sum of that person’s general ability plus considerations unique to that particular task. Thus general ability could be measured by constructing subtests of a number of similar items (individual tasks of the same type such as arithmetic problems) of differing complexity. Each subtest would present items of a different type and individual scores across subtests could be aggregated. Task specific factors would average out leaving the final score as mainly a measure of general ability or “g.” Using an approach like this Binet (1905) developed the first IQ test as a way of identifying student’s academic potential. That test was adapted for use in English by Terman and in 1916 became the Stanford-Binet IQ tests – still one of the most commonly administered tests of cognitive ability. Spearman’s hypothesis of a single general mental ability and many specific abilities was challenged by Thurstone (1935), who popularized the notion that people had a number of independent primary mental abilities rather than a single general mental ability. Both Spearman and Thurstone made contributions to the development of factor analysis as a way to identify the presence of unobserved variables (abilities) that affect a number of observable variables (sub-test or item scores). Today, the Spearman-Thurstone debate has been resolved with a compromise. The most common view among psychometricians who study cognitive ability is that there are a number of different abilities. Some people are better at solving problems verbally while others are good at solving problems that involve visualization. Some people who are good at both of these things may be only average at tasks that rely heavily on memory. However, there is a tendency for people who perform well in any of these broad areas to perform well in all others as well (Carroll 1993). Most modern tests of cognitive ability provide both a fullscale score that is most reflective of general intelligence, and a number of special ability specific sub-scores as well. Validity Binet’s is considered the first successful test of cognitive ability in that it was able to accurately predict teachers’ assessments of their long time students on the basis of a relatively short verbally administered test. Scores on tests of cognitive ability correlate well with common perceptions of how bright or smart someone is. They are also strongly correlated with measures of academic achievement such as achievement test scores, grades and ultimate educational attainment (typically .5 or better). They are less highly correlated (.5 or less) with many important life outcomes including reported annual income and job status. Performance on a wide range of jobs and work tasks is positively related to cognitive test scores with performance on more demanding jobs having higher correlations. Some have claimed that general cognitive ability is responsible for most of this explanatory power (Ree and Earls, 1992 and Ree et al. 1994). This was a major theme of the controversial best seller The Bell Curve (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994). Heckman (1995), in a review of that book, argues that even though g has significant explanatory power, many other factors, both cognitive and non-cognitive matter as well. Finally, test scores are correlated with a number of social behaviors including unwed motherhood, criminal activity, and welfare receipt (Jensen 1998, Chapter 9). While these correlations are substantial, and cognitive test scores are typically better predictors of most of these outcomes than any other single personal attribute, they still explain less than half the variance. Individuals’ scores on tests of cognitive ability also tend to be strongly correlated over time – much more so for adults than for children. A study of older adults found their full scale IQ scores to be correlated .92 when tested at two points in time three years apart (Plomin et al. 1994). In contrast, a study of children tested at two points in time roughly two years apart found correlations of only .46 for those who were less than 1 year old at first testing and .76 for those who were one at first testing (Johnson and Bradley-Johnson,