Individual Differences In Cognitive Skills Research Articles

Individual differences and the transposed letter effect during reading.

When a preview contains substituted letters (SL; markey) word identification is more disrupted for a target word (monkey), compared to when the preview contains transposed letters (TL; mnokey). The transposed letter effect demonstrates that letter positions are encoded more flexibly than letter identities, and is a robust finding in adults. However, letter position encoding has been shown to gradually become more flexible as reading skills develop. It is unclear whether letter position encoding flexibility reaches maturation in skilled adult readers, or whether some differences in the magnitude of the TL effect remain in relation to individual differences in cognitive skills. We examined 100 skilled adult readers who read sentences containing a correct, TL or SL preview. Previews were replaced by the correct target word when the reader's gaze triggered an invisible boundary. Cognitive skills were assessed and grouped based on overlapping variance via Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and subsequently used to predict eye movement measures for each condition. Consistent with previous literature, adult readers were found to generally encode letter position more flexibly than letter identity. Very few differences were found in the magnitude of TL effects between adults based on individual differences in cognitive skills. The flexibility of letter position encoding appears to reach maturation (or near maturation) in skilled adult readers.

Associations between the resting EEG aperiodic slope and broad domains of cognitive ability.

Recent studies suggest that the EEG aperiodic exponent (often represented as a slope in log-log space) is sensitive to individual differences in momentary cognitive skills such as selective attention and information processing speed. However, findings are mixed, and most of the studies have focused on just a narrow range of cognitive domains. This study used an archival dataset to help clarify associations between resting aperiodic features and broad domains of cognitive ability, which vary in their demands on momentary processing. Undergraduates (N = 166) of age 18-52 years completed a resting EEG session as well as a standardized, individually administered assessment of cognitive ability that included measures of processing speed, working memory, and higher-order visuospatial and verbal skills. A subsample (n = 110) also completed a computerized reaction time task with three difficulty levels. Data reduction analyses revealed strong correlations between the aperiodic offset and slope across electrodes, and a single component accounted for ~60% of variance in slopes across the scalp, in both eyes-closed and eyes-open conditions. Structural equation models did not support relations between the slope and specific domains tapping momentary processes. However, secondary analyses indicated that the eyes-open slope was related to higher overall performance, as represented by a single general ability factor. A latent reaction time variable was significantly inversely related to both eyes-closed and eyes-open resting exponents, such that faster reaction times were associated with steeper slopes. These findings support and help clarify the relation of the resting EEG exponent to individual differences in cognitive skills.

As easy as cake or a piece of pie? Processing idiom variation and the contribution of individual cognitive differences.

Language users routinely use canonical, familiar idioms in everyday communication without difficulty. However, creativity in idiom use is more widespread than sometimes assumed, and little is known about how we process creative uses of idioms, and how individual differences in cognitive skills contribute to this. We used eye-tracking while reading and cross-modal priming to investigate the processing of idioms (e.g., play with fire) compared with creative variants (play with acid) and literal controls (play with toys), amongst a group of 47 university-level native speakers of English. We also conducted a series of tests to measure cognitive abilities (working memory capacity, inhibitory control, and processing speed). Eye-tracking results showed that in early reading behaviour, variants were read no differently to literal phrases or idioms but showed significantly longer overall reading times, with more rereading required compared with other conditions. Idiom variables (familiarity, decomposability, literal plausibility) and individual cognitive variables had limited effects throughout, although more decomposable phrases of all kinds required less overall reading time. Cross-modal priming-which has often shown a robust idiom advantage in past studies-demonstrated no difference between conditions, but decomposability again led to faster processing. Overall, results suggest that variants were treated more like literal phrases than novel metaphors, with subsequent effort required to make sense of these in the way that was consistent with the context provided.

Studying Individual Differences in Language Comprehension: The Challenges of Item-Level Variability and Well-Matched Control Conditions.

Translating experimental tasks that were designed to investigate differences between conditions at the group-level into valid and reliable instruments to measure individual differences in cognitive skills is challenging (Hedge et al., 2018; Rouder et al., 2019; Rouder & Haaf, 2019). For psycholinguists, the additional complexities associated with selecting or constructing language stimuli, and the need for appropriate well-matched baseline conditions make this endeavour particularly complex. In a typical experiment, a process-of-interest (e.g. ambiguity resolution) is targeted by contrasting performance in an experimental condition with performance in a well-matched control condition. In many cases, careful between-condition matching precludes the same participant from encountering all stimulus items. Unfortunately, solutions that work for group-level research (e.g. constructing counterbalanced experiment versions) are inappropriate for individual-differences designs. As a case study, we report an ambiguity resolution experiment that illustrates the steps that researchers can take to address this issue and assess whether their measurement instrument is both valid and reliable. On the basis of our findings, we caution against the widespread approach of using datasets from group-level studies to also answer important questions about individual differences.

Breaking Into Language in a New Modality: The Role of Input and Individual Differences in Recognising Signs

A key challenge when learning language in naturalistic circumstances is to extract linguistic information from a continuous stream of speech. This study investigates the predictors of such implicit learning among adults exposed to a new language in a new modality (a sign language). Sign-naïve participants (N = 93; British English speakers) were shown a 4-min weather forecast in Swedish Sign Language. Subsequently, we tested their ability to recognise 22 target sign forms that had been viewed in the forecast, amongst 44 distractor signs that had not been viewed. The target items differed in their occurrence frequency in the forecast and in their degree of iconicity. The results revealed that both frequency and iconicity facilitated recognition of target signs cumulatively. The adult mechanism for language learning thus operates similarly on sign and spoken languages as regards frequency, but also exploits modality-salient properties, for example iconicity for sign languages. Individual differences in cognitive skills and language learning background did not predict recognition. The properties of the input thus influenced adults’ language learning abilities at first exposure more than individual differences.

Study of variability of cognitive performance in captive fallow deer (Dama dama) through g and c factors

Psychometric studies reveal a variability that ranges between 30 and 75 % for different cognitive processes, both in humans and non-human animals. This variability has been ascribed to a “general intelligence” factor (g). Current studies implemented in non-human animals to identify individual differences in cognitive skills are still far from those applied in humans. We tested for cognitive performance in a fallow deer herd using a test battery of eight tasks based on measures for cognitive development in untamed confined wild animals: motor control, spatial memory, colour and tone discrimination and inversion, inhibitory control and symbol discrimination tests. g factor explained 60 % of the variability in cognitive performance. Significant correlations, both positive and negative, were found between the different cognitive processes studied. Likewise, the cognitive performance of the group was affected by a “collective intelligence” factor (c), inferred through variables describing the hierarchical structure of the studied population but which, however does not affect individual intelligence quotient of the members of the group.

Morphosyntactic Development in First Generation Arabic—English Children: The Effect of Cognitive, Age, and Input Factors over Time and across Languages

This longitudinal study examined morphosyntactic development in the heritage Arabic-L1 and English-L2 of first-generation Syrian refugee children (mean age = 9.5; range = 6–13) within their first three years in Canada. Morphosyntactic abilities were measured using sentence repetition tasks (SRTs) in English and Syrian Arabic that included diverse morphosyntactic structures. Direct measures of verbal and non-verbal cognitive skills were obtained, and a parent questionnaire provided the age at L2 acquisition onset (AOA) and input variables. We found the following: Dominance in the L1 was evident at both time periods, regardless of AOA, and growth in bilingual abilities was found over time. Cognitive skills accounted for substantial variance in SRT scores in both languages and at both times. An older AOA was associated with superior SRT scores at Time−1 for both languages, but at Time-2, older AOA only contributed to superior SRT scores in Arabic. Using the L2 with siblings gave a boost to English at Time−1 but had a negative effect on Arabic at Time-2. We conclude that first-generation children show strong heritage-L1 maintenance early on, and individual differences in cognitive skills have stable effects on morphosyntax in both languages over time, but age and input factors have differential effects on each language and over time.

The effect of individual differences in cognitive skills on teacher efficacy in Teacher training university students

The effect of individual differences in cognitive skills on teacher efficacy in Teacher training university students

Education and Cognitive Functioning Across the Life Span

Cognitive abilities are important predictors of educational and occupational performance, socioeconomic attainment, health, and longevity. Declines in cognitive abilities are linked to impairments in older adults’ everyday functions, but people differ from one another in their rates of cognitive decline over the course of adulthood and old age. Hence, identifying factors that protect against compromised late-life cognition is of great societal interest. The number of years of formal education completed by individuals is positively correlated with their cognitive function throughout adulthood and predicts lower risk of dementia late in life. These observations have led to the propositions that prolonging education might (a) affect cognitive ability and (b) attenuate aging-associated declines in cognition. We evaluate these propositions by reviewing the literature on educational attainment and cognitive aging, including recent analyses of data harmonized across multiple longitudinal cohort studies and related meta-analyses. In line with the first proposition, the evidence indicates that educational attainment has positive effects on cognitive function. We also find evidence that cognitive abilities are associated with selection into longer durations of education and that there are common factors (e.g., parental socioeconomic resources) that affect both educational attainment and cognitive development. There is likely reciprocal interplay among these factors, and among cognitive abilities, during development. Education–cognitive ability associations are apparent across the entire adult life span and across the full range of education levels, including (to some degree) tertiary education. However, contrary to the second proposition, we find that associations between education and aging-associated cognitive declines are negligible and that a threshold model of dementia can account for the association between educational attainment and late-life dementia risk. We conclude that educational attainment exerts its influences on late-life cognitive function primarily by contributing to individual differences in cognitive skills that emerge in early adulthood but persist into older age. We also note that the widespread absence of educational influences on rates of cognitive decline puts constraints on theoretical notions of cognitive aging, such as the concepts of cognitive reserve and brain maintenance. Improving the conditions that shape development during the first decades of life carries great potential for improving cognitive ability in early adulthood and for reducing public-health burdens related to cognitive aging and dementia.

Spatial knowledge impairment after GPS guided navigation: Eye-tracking study in a virtual town

Abstract There is a vibrant debate about consequences of mobile devices on our cognitive capabilities. Use of technology guided navigation has been linked with poor spatial knowledge and wayfinding in both virtual and real world experiments. Our goal was to investigate how the attention people pay to the GPS aid influences their navigation performance. We developed navigation tasks in a virtual city environment and during the experiment, we measured participants’ eye movements. We also tested their cognitive traits and interviewed them about their navigation confidence and experience. Our results show that the more time participants spend with the GPS-like map, the less accurate spatial knowledge they manifest and the longer paths they travel without GPS guidance. This poor performance cannot be explained by individual differences in cognitive skills. We also show that the amount of time spent with the GPS is related to participant’s subjective evaluation of their own navigation skills, with less confident navigators using GPS more intensively. We therefore suggest that despite an extensive use of navigation aids may have a detrimental effect on person’s spatial learning, its general use is modulated by a perception of one’s own navigation abilities.

Evidence of an association between sign language phonological awareness and word reading in deaf and hard-of-hearing children

Background and aimsChildren with good phonological awareness (PA) are often good word readers. Here, we asked whether Swedish deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children who are more aware of the phonology of Swedish Sign Language, a language with no orthography, are better at reading words in Swedish. Methods and proceduresWe developed the Cross-modal Phonological Awareness Test (C-PhAT) that can be used to assess PA in both Swedish Sign Language (C-PhAT-SSL) and Swedish (C-PhAT-Swed), and investigated how C-PhAT performance was related to word reading as well as linguistic and cognitive skills. We validated C-PhAT-Swed and administered C-PhAT-Swed and C-PhAT-SSL to DHH children who attended Swedish deaf schools with a bilingual curriculum and were at an early stage of reading. Outcomes and resultsC-PhAT-SSL correlated significantly with word reading for DHH children. They performed poorly on C-PhAT-Swed and their scores did not correlate significantly either with C-PhAT-SSL or word reading, although they did correlate significantly with cognitive measures. Conclusions and implicationsThese results provide preliminary evidence that DHH children with good sign language PA are better at reading words and show that measures of spoken language PA in DHH children may be confounded by individual differences in cognitive skills.

Exploring relationships between working memory and writing: Individual differences associated with gender

Gender differences in the relationships between working memory (short-term storage and combined storage and processing) in both the visuo-spatial and verbal domains and children's alphabet transcription and text writing abilities were investigated. Data from 81 children (43 males) aged between 5;2 to 8;5 revealed no significant group differences between boys and girls in working memory or writing performance. However, individual difference analyses demonstrated variation associated with age and gender in the memory skills underpinning writing. Regression analyses revealed that verbal short-term memory abilities predicted the alphabet transcription skills of boys but not girls. Although visuo-spatial short-term memory predicted writing quality in both genders, predictors of writing fluency differed with verbal working memory skills predicting boys' writing fluency and visuo-spatial short-term memory predicting writing fluency in girls. The need to consider gender differences more critically from the perspective of individual differences in cognitive skills underpinning writing development and the strategic application of these skills during writing is discussed.

The influence of inhibitory skill on phonological representations in production and perception☆

Inhibition is known to play a role in speech perception and has been hypothesized to likewise influence speech production. In this paper we test whether individual differences in inhibitory skill can lead to individual differences in phonological representations in perception and production. We further examine whether the type of inhibition that influences phonological representation is domain-specific or domain-general. Native French speakers read aloud sentences with words containing a voiced stop that either have a voicing neighbor (target) or not (control). The duration of pre-voicing was measured. Participants similarly performed a lexical decision task on versions of these target and matched control words whose pre-voicing duration was manipulated. Lastly, participants performed linguistic and non-linguistic inhibition tasks. Results indicate that the lower speakers' linguistic or non-linguistic inhibition is, the easier it is for them to recognize words with a voiceless neighbor when these words have a shorter, intermediate, pre-voicing rather than a longer one. Inhibitory skill did not predict recognition time for control words, indicating that the effect was due to the greater activation of the voiceless neighbor. Inhibition did not predict pre-voicing duration in production. These results indicate that individual differences in cognitive skills can influence phonological representations in speech perception.

The Role of Individual Differences in Cognitive Skills in Children’s Learning Through Film

This study examines the role of individual differences in cognitive skills in children’s learning through educational films. A total of 40 children, half of them aged 6, the other half 8, were shown a film about sugar production. After one week, the children took part in a memory test on the film’s content with free recall, cued recall, and recognition. In a second session, four working memory and attention tasks were administered. Results reveal that individual differences in domain-specific working memory skills account for substantial variance in the learning outcome, whereas children’s age was no significant predictor. Findings are discussed in terms of cognitive processes underlying learning through films.

Raise your hand if you’re spatial

Individuals differ greatly in how often they gesture when they speak. This study investigated relations between speakers’ verbal and spatial skills and their gesture rates. Two types of verbal skill were measured: semantic fluency, which is thought to index efficiency with lexical access, and phonemic fluency, which is thought to index efficiency with organizing the lexicon in novel ways. Spatial skill was measured with a visualization task. We hypothesized that individuals with low verbal skill but high spatial visualization skill would gesture most often, due to having mental images not closely linked to verbal forms. This hypothesis was supported for phonemic fluency, but not for semantic fluency. We also found that individuals with low phonemic fluency and individuals with high phonemic fluency produced representational gestures at higher rates than individuals with average phonemic fluency. The findings indicate that individual differences in gesture production are associated with individual differences in cognitive skills.

Effects of tactile training on visual speechreading: performance changes related to individual differences in cognitive skills.

We report on a follow-up study of the Rönnberg, Andersson, Lyxell, & Spens (1998) speech tracking training study. The purpose was to examine, initially and after training, the effects of different tactile aids on tasks of visual speechreading. We also examined cognitive prerequisites for initial baseline speechreading and posttraining speechreading performance. Compared with speechreading alone, tactile aids impaired sentence-based speechreading at first, although performance improved with training. No effects of vibrotactile aids or training were obtained for visual word-decoding. Initial baseline speechreading performance and posttraining performance correlated with cognitive skills, but the size of the correlations changed. The size of the correlations also varied with the different tactually mediated speechreading conditions.

Mental chronometry and individual differences in cognitive processes: Common pitfalls and their solutions

Three general problem areas are illustrated for the use of Chronometrie data and modeling techniques in the domain of basic mathematics performance. The focus of the article is on appropriate and inappropriate uses of latency data to determine which strategies govern an individual's performance on a set of specific mathematics basic facts problems. The three general problem areas in applying Chronometric methods are (1) data aggregation and model fitting, (2) covariance and relationships among models, and (3) strategy mixture. All three problem areas render it difficult to analyze latency data from the perspective that there is a single best model that characterizes an individual's performance. Solutions to this dilemma are provided in the form of methods of data collection and/or analysis procedures that explicitly examine strategy mixture. Consideration is given to the utility of analyzing multiple strategies in addressing issues of individual differences in cognitive skills.

Normal Variation in Reading Acquisition

Visual, linguistic, reading, and spelling tests were administered to the same 45 children at the end of kindergarten and of first grade. Normal variation, i.e., diversity not related to pathology, was found in the visual and linguistic skills and was shown to be related to reading and spelling achievement for a sample of suburban children of similar socioeconomic status. Individual differences in three visual skills—selective attention to letter information (RT), memory for a component letter (accuracy), and memory for a whole word (accuracy)—and two linguistic skills—phonemic analysis and vocabulary understanding—were reliable over the first year of formal reading instruction and had concurrent validity in that they were correlated with achievement in word decoding/encoding at the end of kindergarten and of first grade. Of these five skills, phonemic analysis accounted for more variance in achievement (52% to 64%, depending upon achievement measure) than any other single skill. Significantly mote variance in achievement was accounted for when both a visual skill (memory for a sequence) and a linguistic skill (phonemic analysis) were considered than when either alone was at end of first grade. The predictive validity of quantitatively defined “disabilities” (at or more than a standard deviation below the mean) was investigated; disabilities in both visual and linguistic skills at the end of kindergarten were associated with low achievement in word decoding/encoding at the end of first grade. Two pairs of identical twin girls (each co-twin taught by a different teacher) were not mote congruent on several achievement measures than two pairs of unrelated girls, taught by the same teacher and matched to each other and a twin pair on verbal ability and age. Normal variation in acquisition of word decoding/encoding probably results from an interaction between genetic individual differences in cognitive skills and the processes of assimilation and accommodation during environmental transactions proposed by Piaget.

Patterns of cerebral organization

An analysis of the concurrent incidence of aphasia and spatial disorder in 270 patients with unilateral brain damage suggests that the two functions are statistically independent. These data can also be used to estimate the distribution of left, right, and bilateral representation of linguistic and spatial functions in the population. In right-handers, sex affects the pattern of cerebral asymmetries, while the familial history of sinistrality has a stronger effect on the pattern of cerebral asymmetries in left-handers. These findings suggest that complementary specialization exists only as a statistical norm: It is suggested that differences in complementary and noncomplementary specialization may underlie individual differences in cognitive skills.

Building theories of reading ability: On the relation between individual differences in cognitive skills and reading comprehension

To date most theories of reading ability have emphasized a single factor as the major source of individual differences in performance. However there has been little agreement on what that factor is. However, candidates have included visual discrimination, phonological and semantic recoding, short-term memory, and utilization of linguistic knowledge and context. The single- factor theories are summarized. Literature is then reviewed to show that no single-factor theory is likely to be right, because a very wide range of component skills and abilities has in fact been shown to correlate with reading success. Among them are discrimination of letter location and letter order during perceptual recognition, use of orthographic regularity as an aid to visual code formation, use of spelling-to-sound regularity in phonological recoding, memory for word order, spontaneous identification of syntactic relations, flexibility in prediction from syntactic and semantic context, and context-specificity in semantic encoding. It is concluded that more complex, multifactor models of reading ability are required, and some recent attempts to collect data conducive to such a model are described. In the process, three different approaches to identifying factors relevant to reading success are delineated. These are general abilities assessment, learning potential assessment, and component skills analysis. Two methods of conducting component skills analysis are presented, and it is recommended that they be used as converging operations. Finally, the results of a component skills analysis are used to construct a tentative example of a class of hierarchical models of reading ability that can be pursued developmentally.