Abstract
Scientists have studied the development of the human mind for decades and have accumulated an impressive number of empirical studies that have provided ample support for the notion that early cognitive performance during infancy and childhood is an important predictor of later cognitive performance during adulthood. As children move from childhood into adolescence, their mental development increasingly involves higher-order cognitive skills that are crucial for successful planning, decision-making, and problem solving skills. However, few studies have employed higher-order thinking skills such as complex problem solving (CPS) as developmental outcomes in adolescents. To fill this gap, we tested a longitudinal developmental model in a sample of 2,021 Finnish sixth grade students (M = 12.41 years, SD = 0.52; 1,041 female, 978 male, 2 missing sex). We assessed working memory (WM) and fluid reasoning (FR) at age 12 as predictors of two CPS dimensions: knowledge acquisition and knowledge application. We further assessed students’ CPS performance 3 years later as a developmental outcome (N = 1696; M = 15.22 years, SD = 0.43; 867 female, 829 male). Missing data partly occurred due to dropout and technical problems during the first days of testing and varied across indicators and time with a mean of 27.2%. Results revealed that FR was a strong predictor of both CPS dimensions, whereas WM exhibited only a small influence on one of the two CPS dimensions. These results provide strong support for the view that CPS involves FR and, to a lesser extent, WM in childhood and from there evolves into an increasingly complex structure of higher-order cognitive skills in adolescence.
Highlights
This quote from the Chinese philosopher Confucius offers an astonishingly accurate reflection of the central message found in current research on the development of human cognition: early performance levels on cognitive ability tests strongly predict later test performance, recognizing that cognitive skills in infancy provide a window into cognitive ability later (Bornstein et al, 2006, 2013; Rose et al, 2008)
This study set out to investigate the longitudinal relations between fluid reasoning (FR) and working memory (WM) measured at Time 1 as predictors of complex problem solving (CPS) knowledge acquisition and CPS knowledge application measured 3 years later at Time 2
The results of our test of Hypothesis 1 revealed that FR was a precursor of both CPS dimensions in a model that controlled for gender as covariate, whereas WM was related only to CPS knowledge application and not to CPS knowledge acquisition when considered together with FR
Summary
This quote from the Chinese philosopher Confucius offers an astonishingly accurate reflection of the central message found in current research on the development of human cognition: early performance levels on cognitive ability tests strongly predict later test performance, recognizing that cognitive skills in infancy provide a window into cognitive ability later (Bornstein et al, 2006, 2013; Rose et al, 2008). In the attempt to better understand the nomological network of CPS, cross-sectional studies have shown that CPS is related to but, at the same time, substantially different from other cognitive abilities, such as FR (Wüstenberg et al, 2012) and WM (Schweizer et al, 2013) Both FR and WM are usually considered hallmark indicators of human intellect (McGrew, 2009) and have frequently been used as developmental outcomes. Not much more is known about the antecedents of CPS and even less about the factors that influence its development To address this limitation, the present study aimed at providing new evidence for the development of CPS as a cognitive ability that is composed of several higher-order thinking skills (Wirth and Klieme, 2003; Griffin et al, 2012; Greiff et al, 2013b). Hypothesis 2 (H2): Compared with WM, FR will be a stronger longitudinal predictor of CPS knowledge acquisition and knowledge application
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