Abstract
Contemporary conceptions of intelligence (Eysenck, Hunt, Jensen, Vernon) describe general mental ability in terms of speed of information processing, measured by various reaction time tasks. It is argued that mental processes responsible for efficient thinking and intelligent behavior are performed by some central executive mechanism (like attention or working memory), characterized by limited capacity and therefore unable to deal with great amounts of information at the same time. Speed of processing is conceived as a means to execute appropriate mental operations before the system is overloaded and loses vital information. This line of theorizing, however convincing, has not yet produced any direct validation of the hypothesis that capacity of working memory is one of the relevant sources of individual differences on the behavioral and psychometric level. The paper presents results of two experiments in which subjects were given tasks assessing three parameters: (1) speed of short term memory scanning; (2) capacity of working memory; and (3) retention capability of working memory. The data suggest that there are at least three elementary cognitive bases of intelligence connected with working memory functioning. Speed of processing is only one of them, and appears less important if other characteristics are taken into account.
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