Influence of General and Crystallized Intelligence on Vocabulary Test Performance

Abstract

Summary: Vocabulary tests, part of most test batteries of general intellectual ability, measure both verbal and general ability. Newly developed techniques for confirmatory factor analysis of dichotomous variables make it possible to analyze the influence of different abilities on the performance on each item. In the testing procedure of the Computerized Swedish Enlistment test battery, eight different subtests of a new vocabulary test were given randomly to subsamples of a representative sample of 18-year-old male conscripts (N = 9001). Three central dimensions of a hierarchical model of intellectual abilities, general (G), verbal (Gc'), and spatial ability (Gv') were estimated under different assumptions of the nature of the data. In addition to an ordinary analysis of covariance matrices, assuming linearity of relations, the item variables were treated as categorical variables in the Mplus program. All eight subtests fit the hierarchical model, and the items were found to load about equally on G and Gc'. The results also indicate that if nonlinearity is not taken into account, the G loadings for the easy items are underestimated. These items, moreover, appear to be better measures of G than the difficult ones. The practical utility of the outcome for item selection and the theoretical implications for the question of the origin of verbal ability are discussed.