Intelligence and Cognitive Control

Abstract

We aim to support the idea that intelligent people are characterized by more efficient control they can exert over information processing. Firstly, we precisely define the construct of cognitive control and aim to identify its main attributes and functions. Then, we review existing data on the role of cognitive control in general (especially, fluid) intelligence; we also present our new findings concerning this issue. We report two recent experiments clarifying the ambiguous issue of the relation between general mental ability and both accuracy and latency indices of dual tasking. Our goal is to provide the evidence that such a relation exists but the extent to which cognitive control is involved in dual tasking is very susceptible to aspects of experimental conditions involving the demand on cognitive control. Small procedural changes related to these aspects may make the Gf-dual tasking link disappear. In general, we adopted a so-called quasiexperimental or microanalytic approach (Hambrick, Kane, & Engle, 2005). In this approach, the correlation between a measure of an elementary cognitive function and a measure of efficacy of higher-order cognition (or an analogous difference between means in basic performance for people performing high vs. low in high-level tasks) is treated as a dependent variable. The goal is to use appropriate experimental manipulations influencing elementary functions in order to make this correlation (or a respective difference) appear and disappear. If we are able to influence a correlational link in this way, we may assume that the crucial aspect of such a manipulation is also crucial for the relation between investigated low- and high-level constructs. 139 students from several colleges in Lodz, Poland, participated in Experiment 1 (53 females, mean age 22.1 years, age ranged from 18 to 31 years). 171 students from several colleges in Lodz and in Cracow, Poland, as well as young men recruited with newspaper ads in Lodz participated in Experiment 2 (97 females, mean age 23.6 years, age ranged from 17 to 36 years). The quasiexperiments showed that cognitive control in dual tasking is required only in very specific conditions, namely when precise coordination and scheduling of mental operations is needed, but when the control is exerted then it assures high accuracy of processing, especially in the case of highly intelligent people. The study indicated that when cognitive control is involved to a lesser extent, the dual tasking situation did not differentiate between low- and high-Gf participants. Finally, some future directions for research on cognitive control and intelligence will be proposed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)(chapter)