Capturing Fluctuations in Gendered Cognition With Novel Intensive Longitudinal Measures

Abstract

Cognition is often assumed to be stable, but compelling evidence shows that some skills (e.g., working memory) vary. There is limited investigation, however, of variation in gendered cognition, such as spatial skills and verbal recall, potentially because there are no validated measures for intensive longitudinal assessment. The goal of this study was to introduce and validate new 75-occasion measures of three-dimensional mental rotations and delayed paired verbal recall. This was accomplished by studying cognitive fluctuations over 75 days in an intensive longitudinal study of 121 participants, focusing on 54 (27 women) who were matched for gender, age, and language. Results from psychometric analyses suggest that both measures show parallel forms reliability, including expected gender differences, and validity (i.e., performance with respect to a standard measure or item difficulty), although results are more consistent for mental rotations than verbal recall. Results also suggest there are significant daily fluctuations in both mental rotations and verbal recall. Findings encourage future clinical work on the antecedents and consequences of cognitive fluctuations with the newly developed, freely available measures.