Intelligence最新文献

This study examined how general cognitive ability, g, is formed from preschool to late childhood and how it interacts with specific mental processes. A large sample (N = 401), about equally drawn from each of the age years 4 through 12 were examined with a large array of attention control, working memory, relational integration, Raven-like matrices, and awareness of perceptual and inferential origins of representations. Confirmatory Factor Analysis examined if g is a reflective construct causally affecting these processes or a formative construct gradually emerging from mastering these processes, and how it varies throughout this age period. We found that g is a reflective construct gearing on a core of relational integration and mental awareness, which changes in cycles: it is primarily based on attention control and perceptual awareness from 4 to 6, inferential awareness and working memory from 7 to 9, and inhibition, inferential awareness, and complex inductive reasoning from 10 to 12 years. The implications of the study for the century-old dispute about the nature and development of human general intelligence and modern theories of intelligence and cognitive development are discussed.

Generational IQ test score changes in the general population (i.e., the Flynn effect, typically reported as increases of 2–4 IQ points per decade) have recently been observed to behave inconsistently. It has been speculated that these inconsistencies may be attributable to the well-established negative relation of test score gains with psychometric g. Here, we provide the first direct empirical investigation of cross-temporal changes in the positive manifold of intelligence. In this cohort-comparison study, we examined performance changes in two population-representative Germanophone samples (N = 1267) across six measurement-invariant intelligence subscales from 2005 to 2024. Our analyses revealed substantial declines in single-factor analysis-based g assessments (ΔR² range: ‐.037 to -.066) from 2005 to 2024. Despite this decrease in the positive manifold strength, we observed meaningful test score increases in all domains (d range: 0.18 to 1.24), with the largest gains in the lower tail of the intelligence distribution (i.e., conforming to Rodgers', 1998, idea of narrowing ability distributions). Our findings provide direct evidence for a decreasing strength of the positive manifold of intelligence as a noticeable driver of the accumulating evidence for negative Flynn effects, which may be a consequence of increasing ability differentiation in the general population.

We studied trajectories of school achievement in England to determine sex differences in performance and changes in these differences throughout students' development. Using a sample of 5795 children from England born in 2000–2001, this secondary data analysis examined sex differences across a range of school subjects, including differences at the upper and lower tails of the distribution of performance grades. We expected trajectories to differ by subject and to find support for greater male variability in each subject. We found a small male advantage in mathematics at age 11 but no sex differences at ages 7 and 16. Girls achieved higher language grades at each age, but this advantage was notably wider at age 16. Unlike other educational data, there were no sex differences in science achievement at ages 7 and 11 and a small female advantage in science, biology, and chemistry at age 16. Boys' school grades were more variable than girls' in English, reading, and writing at each age. Boys' STEM grades were not consistently more variable than girls' STEM grades. Sex differences were larger at the lower tail in English and the upper tail in mathematics and more balanced in science after age 7. Trajectories of sex differences are age- and subject-specific. By age 16, fewer boys achieved the upper grades, and more boys achieved the lower grades in mathematics and language than at age 11, and we found a female advantage in most school subjects. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.