Abstract
The worst performance rule (WPR) is a robust empirical finding reflecting that people’s worst task performance shows numerically stronger correlations with cognitive ability than their average or best performance. However, recent meta-analytic work has proposed this be renamed the “not-best performance” rule because mean and worst performance seem to predict cognitive ability to similar degrees, with both predicting ability better than best performance. We re-analyzed data from a previously published latent-variable study to test for worst vs. not-best performance across a variety of reaction time tasks in relation to two cognitive ability constructs: working memory capacity (WMC) and propensity for task-unrelated thought (TUT). Using two methods of assessing worst performance—ranked-binning and ex-Gaussian-modeling approaches—we found evidence for both the worst and not-best performance rules. WMC followed the not-best performance rule (correlating equivalently with mean and longest response times (RTs)) but TUT propensity followed the worst performance rule (correlating more strongly with longest RTs). Additionally, we created a mini-multiverse following different outlier exclusion rules to test the robustness of our findings; our findings remained stable across the different multiverse iterations. We provisionally conclude that the worst performance rule may only arise in relation to cognitive abilities closely linked to (failures of) sustained attention.
Highlights
Adults who score higher on intelligence tests tend to respond faster in simple and choice response time (RT) tasks (Doebler and Scheffler 2016; Jensen 1992; Sheppard and Vernon 2008).different parts of the RT distribution are more predictive of cognitive ability: the worst performance rule (WPR; Coyle 2003a; Larson and Alderton 1990) describes the empirical finding that subjects’ longest RTs correlate more strongly with cognitive ability than do their shortest or their average RTs
We focused our analyses on tasks where RT was the primary dependent measure from Kane et al (2016): The Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART), Number Stroop, Spatial Stroop, Arrow Flanker, Letter Flanker, and Circle Flanker tasks
Our main results assess latent-variable models for RT ranked bins and their correlations with working memory capacity (WMC) and TUTs. We follow these results with latent-variable models using ex-Gaussian parameters to assess the WPR
Summary
Adults who score higher on intelligence tests tend to respond faster in simple and choice response time (RT) tasks (Doebler and Scheffler 2016; Jensen 1992; Sheppard and Vernon 2008). Different parts of the RT distribution are more predictive of cognitive ability: the worst performance rule (WPR; Coyle 2003a; Larson and Alderton 1990) describes the empirical finding that subjects’ longest RTs (e.g., the slowest 20% of responses) correlate more strongly with cognitive ability than do their shortest or their average RTs. The WPR appears in a variety of RT tasks (Baumeister and Kellas 1968; Jensen 1982, 1987) and across the lifespan (Coyle 2001, 2003b; Fernandez et al 2014).
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