Abstract
Previously, Evans and colleagues (2001) utilized simultaneous multiple regression to examine relations between Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC; Schneider & McGrew, 2012) broad and narrow cognitive abilities and reading achievement across the school age span. Although their findings suggest that many broad/narrow abilities had clinically significant effects on reading achievement they failed to account for the potential moderating effects of the general factor. To account for these effects, the current study employed hierarchical multiple regression analysis to reexamine the relationships between CHC dimensions and reading achievement after controlling for the effects of the general factor with 4,722 participants ages 6-18 from the Woodcock Johnson III Psychoeducational Battery (WJ III; Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001a). Results from the present study indicate that the full scale GIA composite (as a proxy for g) consistently accounted for large effects across the school age span for all of the reading achievement variables that were assessed. Among the broad and narrow abilities, only Gc consistently accounted for meaningful proportions of reading scores beyond g. As a consequence, researchers are encouraged to give greater consideration to the dimensionality of broad and narrow CHC measures when examining cognitive-achievement relationships or they may risk over-interpreting the predictive effects associated with these indices. Potential implications for clinical application of CHC theory are also discussed.
Highlights
In psychology and education, the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) model of human cognitive abilities has emerged as the consensus psychometric-based model for understanding the structure of human intelligence (McGrew, 2009)
The mean (99.05 to 101.12) and standard deviation ranges (11.09 to 14.89) for the cognitive-achievement variables generally reflect values that would be expected for normally distributed standard score variables
Subsequent structural and latent variable modeling studies conducted on the Woodcock Johnson III Psychoeducational Battery (WJ III) COG suggest that (a) many of the broad and narrow ability scores contain large portions of variance attributable to g (Dombrowski, 2013, 2014; Dombrowski & Watkins, 2013), (b) g exerts strong direct or indirect influence on reading achievement (Benson, 2007; Floyd et al, 2007; Floyd et al, 2012; Vanderwood, McGrew, Flanagan, & Keith, 2002), and (c) when the predictive effects g are controlled for, the aggregate incremental contributions of broad and narrow abilities may be small (McGill, 2015; McGill & Busse, 2015)
Summary
The Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) model of human cognitive abilities has emerged as the consensus psychometric-based model for understanding the structure of human intelligence (McGrew, 2009). CHC theory was developed as a synthesis of the Gf-Gc theory (Horn & Cattell, 1966) and Carroll’s (1993) three-stratum model. It conceptualizes cognitive abilities within a hierarchical taxonomy in which elements are stratified according to breadth. The most general ability resides at the apex of the model at Stratum III and is referred to as a general factor of intelligence or g. At the bottom of the model are over 70 narrow abilities (Stratum I) which are organized according to their mapping onto the Stratum II dimensions
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