Mental abilities and school achievement a test of a mediation hypothesis
- This study analyzes the interplay of four cognitive abilities - reasoning, divergent thinking, mental speed, and short-term memory - and their impact on academic achievement in school in a sample of adolescents in grades seven to 10 (N = 1135). Based on information processing approaches to intelligence, we tested a mediation hypothesis, which states that the complex cognitive abilities of reasoning and divergent thinking mediate the influence of the basic cognitive abilities of mental speed and short-term memory on achievement. We administered a comprehensive test battery and analyzed the data through structural equation modeling while controlling for the cluster structure of the data. Our findings support the notion that mental speed and short-term memory, as ability factors reflecting basic cognitive processes, exert an indirect influence on academic achievement by affecting reasoning and divergent thinking (total indirect effects: beta=.22 and .24. respectively). Short-term memory also directly affects achievement (beta=.22).
| Author details: | Miriam VockORCiDGND, Franzis Preckel, Heinz Rolling |
|---|---|
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2011.06.006 |
| ISSN: | 0160-2896 |
| Title of parent work (English): | Intelligence |
| Publisher: | Elsevier |
| Place of publishing: | New York |
| Publication type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Year of first publication: | 2011 |
| Publication year: | 2011 |
| Release date: | 2017/03/26 |
| Tag: | Academic achievement; Divergent thinking; Grades; Mental speed; Prediction; Reasoning; Short-term memory |
| Volume: | 39 |
| Issue: | 5 |
| Number of pages: | 13 |
| First page: | 357 |
| Last Page: | 369 |
| Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Psychologie |
| Peer review: | Referiert |
| Institution name at the time of the publication: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Psychologie |
