The Role of General and Specific Cognitive Abilities in Predicting Performance of Three Occupations: Evidence from Bifactor Models

Khalid Almamari,Anne Traynor

doi:10.3390/jintelligence9030040

Abstract

Cognitive abilities are related to job performance. However, there is less agreement about the relative contribution of general versus specific cognitive abilities to job performance. Similarly, it is not clear how cognitive abilities operate in the context of complex occupations. This study assessed the role of cognitive abilities on the performance of three aviation-related jobs: flying, navigation, and air battle management (ABM). Correlated-factor and bifactor models were used to draw a conclusion about the predictive relations between cognitive abilities and job performance. Overall, the importance of particular cognitive abilities tends to vary across the three occupations, and each occupation has different sets of essential abilities. Importantly, the interplay of general versus specific abilities is different across occupations, and some specific abilities also show substantial predictive power.

Highlights

The importance of general cognitive ability, g, as compared to specific abilities for job performance has been a subject of great debate (Kell and Lang 2018)
Intelligence researchers have long debated whether the general ability factor is the The effect size of bifactor g was large in the navigator sample, small in the pilot only factor that accounts for performance in cognitive tasks or if there might be other sample, and negligible in the air battle manager sample
The interplay of cognitive abilities as predictors of job performance in three aviationrelated occupations showed a pattern that is different from the body of evidence pertaining to the influence of general ability on performance criteria

Summary

Introduction

The importance of general cognitive ability, g, as compared to specific abilities for job performance has been a subject of great debate (Kell and Lang 2018). The “Not Much More Than g” series of Ree and his colleagues (Ree and Earles 1991, 1996; Ree et al 1994) is a reflection of the same standpoint that views g as the best construct for the prediction of job performance. One implication of such a hypothesis is that the focus in selection procedures should be directed, to a large extent, to applicants’ scores of general ability (or IQ) and, to a much lesser extent, to their narrower ability scores

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