Modality matters: Three auditory conflict tasks to measure individual differences in attention control.

Early work on selective attention used auditory-based tasks, such as dichotic listening, to shed light on capacity limitations and individual differences in these limitations. Today, there is great interest in individual differences in attentional abilities, but the field has shifted towards visual-modality tasks. Furthermore, most conflict-based tests of attention control lack reliability due to low signal-to-noise ratios and the use of difference scores.

Processing speed and executive attention as causes of intelligence.

Individual differences in processing speed and executive attention have both been proposed as explanations for individual differences in cognitive ability, particularly general and fluid intelligence (Engle et al., 1999; Kail & Salthouse, 1994). Both constructs have long intellectual histories in scientific psychology.

Replication and extension of the toolbox approach to measuring attention control.

There is an increasing consensus among researchers that traditional attention tasks do not validly index the attentional mechanisms that they are often used to assess. We recently tested and validated several existing, modified, and new tasks and found that accuracy-based and adaptive tasks were more reliable and valid measures of attention control than traditional ones, which typically rely on speeded responding and/or contrast comparisons in the form of difference scores (Draheim et al. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 150(2), 242-275, 2021).

Nature and measurement of attention control.

Individual differences in the ability to control attention are correlated with a wide range of important outcomes, from academic achievement and job performance to health behaviors and emotion regulation. Nevertheless, the theoretical nature of attention control as a cognitive construct has been the subject of heated debate, spurred on by psychometric issues that have stymied efforts to reliably measure differences in the ability to control attention. For theory to advance, our measures must improve.

The Relevance of Attention Control, Not Working Memory, in Human Factors.

Objective: Discuss the human factors relevance of attention control (AC), a domain-general ability to regulate information processing functions in the service of goal-directed behavior.

Background: Working memory (WM) measures appear as predictors in various applied psychology studies. However, measures of WM reflect a mixture of memory storage and controlled attention making it difficult to interpret the meaning of significant WM-task relations for human factors.

The role of attention control in complex real-world tasks.

Working memory capacity is an important psychological construct, and many real-world phenomena are strongly associated with individual differences in working memory functioning. Although working memory and attention are intertwined, several studies have recently shown that individual differences in the general ability to control attention is more strongly predictive of human behavior than working memory capacity. In this review, we argue that researchers would therefore generally be better suited to studying the role of attention control rather than memory-based abilities in explaining real-world behavior and performance in humans.

Fluid intelligence and the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system.

The last decade has seen significant progress identifying genetic and brain differences related to intelligence. However, there remain considerable gaps in our understanding of how cognitive mechanisms that underpin intelligence map onto various brain functions. In this article, we argue that the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system is essential for understanding the biological basis of intelligence.

The visual arrays task: Visual storage capacity or attention control?

Extant literature suggests that performance on visual arrays tasks reflects limited-capacity storage of visual information. However, there is also evidence to suggest that visual arrays task performance reflects individual differences in controlled processing. The purpose of this study is to empirically evaluate the degree to which visual arrays tasks are more closely related to memory storage capacity or measures of attention control.

Is baseline pupil size related to cognitive ability? Yes (under proper lighting conditions).

There has been some controversy as to whether baseline pupil size is related to individual differences in cognitive ability. Previously, we had shown that a larger baseline pupil size was associated with higher cognitive ability and that the correlation to fluid intelligence was larger than that to working memory capacity (Tsukahara, Harrison, & Engle, 2016). However, other researchers have not been able to replicate our findings - though they only measured working memory capacity and not fluid intelligence.

A toolbox approach to improving the measurement of attention control.

Cognitive tasks that produce reliable and robust effects at the group level often fail to yield reliable and valid individual differences. An ongoing debate among attention researchers is whether conflict resolution mechanisms are task-specific or domain-general, and the lack of correlation between most attention measures seems to favor the view that attention control is not a unitary concept. We have argued that the use of difference scores, particularly in reaction time (RT), is the primary cause of null and conflicting results at the individual differences level, and that methodological issues with existing tasks preclude making strong theoretical conclusions.

Attention control: The missing link between sensory discrimination and intelligence.

Intelligence is correlated with the ability to make fine sensory discriminations. Although this relationship has been known since the beginning of intelligence testing, the mechanisms underlying this relationship are still unknown. In two large-scale structural equation-modelling studies, we investigated whether individual differences in attention control abilities can explain the relationship between sensory discrimination and intelligence.

Mitochondrial Functioning and Its Relation to Higher-Order Cognitive Processes.

One of the most replicated findings in psychology is the between cognitive ability measures (Jensen 1998; Spearman 1904) [...

Author Correction: A consensus-based transparency checklist.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

A consensus-based transparency checklist.

We present a consensus-based checklist to improve and document the transparency of research reports in social and behavioural research. An accompanying online application allows users to complete the form and generate a report that they can submit with their manuscript or post to a public repository.

The role of maintenance and disengagement in predicting reading comprehension and vocabulary learning.

This study uses a novel framework based on work by Shipstead, Harrison, and Engle (2016) that includes measures of both working memory capacity and fluid intelligence in an attempt to better understand the processes that influence successful reading comprehension at the latent level. Further, we extend this framework to a second educationally relevant ability: second-language vocabulary learning. A large sample of young adults received a battery of working memory, fluid intelligence, language comprehension, and memory updating tasks.

The role of proactive interference in working memory training and transfer.

Recent work on working memory training has produced conflicting results regarding the degree and generality of transfer to other cognitive processes. However, few studies have investigated possible mechanisms underlying transfer. The current study was designed to test the role of proactive interference in working memory training and transfer.

Reaction time in differential and developmental research: A review and commentary on the problems and alternatives.

Reaction time is believed to be a good indicator of the speed and efficiency of mental processes and is a ubiquitous variable in the behavioral sciences. Despite this popularity, there are numerous issues associated with using reaction time (RT), specifically in differential and developmental research. Here, we identify and focus on two main problems-unreliability and sensitivity to speed-accuracy interactions.

Working Memory and Executive Attention: A Revisit.

In this follow-up to my 2002 article on working memory capacity, fluid intelligence, and executive attention in Current Directions in Psychological Science, I review even more evidence supporting the idea that the ability to control one's attention (i.e., executive attention) is important to working memory and fluid intelligence.

Do the effects of working memory training depend on baseline ability level?

There is a debate about the ability to improve cognitive abilities such as fluid intelligence through training on tasks of working memory capacity. The question addressed in the research presented here is who benefits the most from training: people with low cognitive ability or people with high cognitive ability? Subjects with high and low working memory capacity completed a 23-session study that included 3 assessment sessions, and 20 sessions of training on 1 of 3 training regiments: complex span training, running span training, or an active-control task. Consistent with other research, the authors found that training on 1 executive function did not transfer to ability on a different cognitive ability.

What item response theory can tell us about the complex span tasks.

Working memory capacity is an important construct in psychology because of its relationship with many higher-order cognitive abilities and psychopathologies. Working memory capacity is often measured using a type of paradigm known as complex span. Some recent work has focused on shortening the administration time of the complex span tasks, resulting in different versions of these tasks being used (Foster et al.

Working Memory Capacity and Fluid Intelligence: Maintenance and Disengagement.

Working memory capacity and fluid intelligence have been demonstrated to be strongly correlated traits. Typically, high working memory capacity is believed to facilitate reasoning through accurate maintenance of relevant information. In this article, we present a proposal reframing this issue, such that tests of working memory capacity and fluid intelligence are seen as measuring complementary processes that facilitate complex cognition.

The relationship between baseline pupil size and intelligence.

Pupil dilations of the eye are known to correspond to central cognitive processes. However, the relationship between pupil size and individual differences in cognitive ability is not as well studied. A peculiar finding that has cropped up in this research is that those high on cognitive ability have a larger pupil size, even during a passive baseline condition.

Cognitive predictors of a common multitasking ability: Contributions from working memory, attention control, and fluid intelligence.

Previous research has identified several cognitive abilities that are important for multitasking, but few studies have attempted to measure a general multitasking ability using a diverse set of multitasks. In the final dataset, 534 young adult subjects completed measures of working memory (WM), attention control, fluid intelligence, and multitasking. Correlations, hierarchical regression analyses, confirmatory factor analyses, structural equation models, and relative weight analyses revealed several key findings.