The present study examined individual differences in 3 cognitive abilities: attention control (AC), working memory capacity (WMC), and fluid intelligence (gF) as they relate the tendency to experience task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) and the regulation of arousal. Cognitive abilities were measured with a battery of 9 laboratory tasks, TUTs were…

Individuals encounter problems daily wherein varying numbers of constraints require delimitation of memory to target goal-satisfying information. Multiply-constrained problems, such as the compound remote associates, are commonly used to study this type of problem solving. Since their development, multiply-constrained problems have been…

The authors examined whether individual differences in fluid intelligence (gF) modulate the testing effect. Participants studied Swahili--English word pairs and repeatedly studied half the pairs or attempted retrieval, with feedback, for the remaining half. Word pairs were easy or difficult to learn. Overall, participants showed a benefit of…

This study examines students' exposure to print, vocabulary and decoding as predictors of spelling skills. Participants were 42 college students (Mean age 22.5, SD = 7.87; 31 females and 11 males). Hierarchical regression analyses showed that most of the variance in spelling was explained by vocabulary knowledge. When vocabulary was entered first…

We examine the joint effects of gender and experience on statistical reasoning. Participants with various levels of experience in statistics completed the Statistical Reasoning Assessment (Garfield, 2003), along with individual difference measures assessing cognitive ability and thinking dispositions. Although the performance of both genders…

In this study, we examined the factor structure, reliability, and external validity of scores from the Comprehensive Test of Nonverbal Intelligence-Second Edition (CTONI-2) using an independent sample of young adults currently enrolled in a postsecondary institution. Although the subtests appear to be measuring general intelligence, the aggregate…

Lexical access is a core component of word processing. In order to produce or comprehend a word, language users must access word forms in their mental lexicon. However, despite its involvement in both tasks, previous research has often studied lexical access in either production or comprehension alone. Therefore, it is unknown to which extent…

In order to understand variability in second language (L2) acquisition, this study addressed how individual differences in cognitive abilities may contribute to development for learners in different contexts. Specifically, we report the results of two short-term longitudinal studies aimed at examining the role of cognitive abilities in accounting…

A great deal of prior research has examined the relation between working memory capacity (WMC) and attention control. The current study explored the role of arousal in individual differences in WMC and attention control. Participants performed multiple WMC and attention control tasks. During the attention control tasks participants were…

A large part of the empirical research in the field of visual attention has focused on various concrete paradigms. However, as yet, there has been no clear demonstration of whether or not these paradigms are indeed measuring the same underlying construct. We collected a very large data set (nearly 1.3 million trials) to address this question. We…

In this article, I describe studies conducted over 25 years with secondary and post-secondary L2 learners in the United States. The evidence from these studies shows that there are important connections between students' early L1 skills and their L2 aptitude and L2 proficiency and that individual differences in students' L1 skills in elementary…

This study investigated whether a unitary elemental process or several independent processes underlie psychometric "g" (factor of general intelligence). Results with 101 college students administered 2 intelligence tests and a large battery of elementary cognitive tasks suggest that as many as 4 independent components make up…

Taking into account various models and findings pertaining to the nature of analogical reasoning, this study explored quantitative and qualitative individual differences in intelligence using latency and eye-movement data. Fifty-five university students were administered 14 selected items of the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices test. Results…

The results indicate that although relational concepts influence the cognitive aptitudes which are reflected in analogy item performance, success in solving analogies does not depend on individual differences in some major aspects of processing relationships. (Author/DEP)

Because they used an inappropriate statistical procedure, J. H. Kranzler and A. R. Jensen (1991) have not demonstrated that a factor of general intelligence ("g") depends on several independent factors. A factorial reanalysis of their data suggests that speed and efficiency of information processing are important in "g." (SLD)