scholarly journals How important is cognitive ability when adapting to changes? A meta-analysis of the performance adaptation literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 166 ◽  
pp. 110178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukasz Stasielowicz
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukasz Stasielowicz

Performance adaptation is required in many areas (e.g., dealing with emergencies or new software in the work and educational context). Therefore, predicting successful reactions to changes is important. Motivated by heterogeneous findings, the present meta-analysis examines to what extent individual differences in cognitive abilities are relevant to performance adaptation. A three-level meta-analysis based on 133 correlations (N = 37,963) was conducted in order to estimate the mean strength of the relationship. Furthermore, several moderator analyses were carried out (e.g., task complexity, subjective vs objective assessment of performance adaptation) to explain the variability of the effect sizes. As expected, cognitive ability was positively related to performance adaptation (r = .21). However, the relationship was stronger when objective performance adaptation scores (r = .25) rather than subjective ratings were used (r = .11). Furthermore, cognitive ability seems to be particularly relevant for highly dynamic tasks (r = .31). Overall, cognitive ability can be a useful predictor of actual performance adaptation, which has implications for the selection context (e.g., selection of students or employees with high adaptability). Furthermore, cognitive ability seems to be more relevant than other personality-based predictors of performance adaptation that have been examined meta-analytically (Big Five and goal orientation).


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 157-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip L. Roth ◽  
Allen I. Huffcutt

The topic of what interviews measure has received a great deal of attention over the years. One line of research has investigated the relationship between interviews and the construct of cognitive ability. A previous meta-analysis reported an overall corrected correlation of .40 ( Huffcutt, Roth, & McDaniel, 1996 ). A more recent meta-analysis reported a noticeably lower corrected correlation of .27 ( Berry, Sackett, & Landers, 2007 ). After reviewing both meta-analyses, it appears that the two studies posed different research questions. Further, there were a number of coding judgments in Berry et al. that merit review, and there was no moderator analysis for educational versus employment interviews. As a result, we reanalyzed the work by Berry et al. and found a corrected correlation of .42 for employment interviews (.15 higher than Berry et al., a 56% increase). Further, educational interviews were associated with a corrected correlation of .21, supporting their influence as a moderator. We suggest a better estimate of the correlation between employment interviews and cognitive ability is .42, and this takes us “back to the future” in that the better overall estimate of the employment interviews – cognitive ability relationship is roughly .40. This difference has implications for what is being measured by interviews and their incremental validity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 856-868 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miron Zuckerman ◽  
Chen Li ◽  
Shengxin Lin ◽  
Judith A. Hall

Zuckerman et al. (2013) conducted a meta-analysis of 63 studies that showed a negative intelligence–religiosity relation (IRR). As more studies have become available and because some of Zuckerman et al.’s (2013) conclusions have been challenged, we conducted a new meta-analysis with an updated data set of 83 studies. Confirming previous conclusions, the new analysis showed that the correlation between intelligence and religious beliefs in college and noncollege samples ranged from −.20 to −.23. There was no support for mediation of the IRR by education but there was support for partial mediation by analytic cognitive style. Thus, one possible interpretation for the IRR is that intelligent people are more likely to use analytic style (i.e., approach problems more rationally). An alternative (and less interesting) reason for the mediation is that tests of both intelligence and analytic style assess cognitive ability. Additional empirical and theoretical work is needed to resolve this issue.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Lam ◽  
W. David Hill ◽  
Joey W. Trampush ◽  
Jin Yu ◽  
Emma Knowles ◽  
...  

AbstractLiability to schizophrenia is inversely correlated with general cognitive ability at both the phenotypic and genetic level. Paradoxically, a modest but consistent positive genetic correlation has been reported between schizophrenia and educational attainment, despite the strong positive genetic correlation between cognitive ability and educational attainment. Here we leverage published GWAS in cognitive ability, education, and schizophrenia to parse biological mechanisms underlying these results. Association analysis based on subsets (ASSET), a pleiotropic meta-analytic technique, allowed jointly associated loci to be identified and characterized. Specifically, we identified subsets of variants associated in the expected (“Concordant”) direction across all three phenotypes (i.e., greater risk for schizophrenia, lower cognitive ability, and lower educational attainment); these were contrasted with variants demonstrating the counterintuitive (“Discordant”) relationship between education and schizophrenia (i.e., greater risk for schizophrenia and higher educational attainment). ASSET analysis revealed 235 independent loci associated with cognitive ability, education and/or schizophrenia at p<5×10−8. Pleiotropic analysis successfully identified more than 100 loci that were not significant in the input GWASs, and many of these have been validated by larger, more recent single-phenotype GWAS. Leveraging the joint genetic correlations of cognitive ability, education, and schizophrenia, we were able to dissociate two distinct biological mechanisms: early neurodevelopmental pathways that characterize concordant allelic variation, and adulthood synaptic pruning pathways that were linked to the paradoxical positive genetic association between education and schizophrenia. Further, genetic correlation analyses revealed that these mechanisms contribute not only to the etiopathogenesis of schizophrenia, but also to the broader biological dimensions that are implicated in both general health outcomes and psychiatric illness.


Intelligence ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 44-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Scharfen ◽  
Judith Marie Peters ◽  
Heinz Holling

Author(s):  
Frances M. Nilsen ◽  
Jazmin D.C. Ruiz ◽  
Nicolle S. Tulve

General cognitive ability, often referred to as ‘general intelligence’, comprises a variety of correlated abilities. Childhood general cognitive ability is a well-studied area of research and can be used to predict social outcomes and perceived success. Early life stage (e.g., prenatal, postnatal, toddler) exposures to stressors (i.e., chemical and non-chemical stressors from the total (built, natural, social) environment) can impact the development of childhood cognitive ability. Building from our systematic scoping review (Ruiz et al., 2016), we conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate more than 100 stressors related to cognitive development. Our meta-analysis identified 23 stressors with a significant increase in their likelihood to influence childhood cognitive ability by 10% or more, and 80 stressors were observed to have a statistically significant effect on cognitive ability. Stressors most impactful to cognition during the prenatal period were related to maternal health and the mother’s ability to access information relevant to a healthy pregnancy (e.g., diet, lifestyle). Stressors most impactful to cognition during the early childhood period were dietary nutrients (infancy), quality of social interaction (toddler), and exposure to toxic substances (throughout early childhood). In conducting this analysis, we examined the relative impact of real-world exposures on cognitive development to attempt to understand the inter-relationships between exposures to both chemical and non-chemical stressors and early developmental life stages. Our findings suggest that the stressors observed to be the most influential to childhood cognitive ability are not permanent and can be broadly categorized as activities/behaviors which can be modified to improve childhood cognition. This meta-analysis supports the idea that there are complex relationships between a child’s total environment and early cognitive development.


2007 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 920-932 ◽  
Author(s):  
DINO MUSLIMOVIĆ ◽  
BEN SCHMAND ◽  
JOHANNES D. SPEELMAN ◽  
ROB J. DE HAAN

A meta-analysis was conducted on 25 longitudinal studies involving 901 initially non-demented Parkinson's disease (PD) patients to examine the magnitude of decline across multiple cognitive domains associated with disease progression. Pooled effect sizes reflecting the standardized difference between baseline and follow-up neuropsychological performance were calculated for 8 cognitive domains using a random-effects model. Relatively small effect sizes were found across all cognitive domains (d= .00 − .40). During a mean follow-up interval of 29 months, significant declines were detected in global cognitive ability (d= .40), visuoconstructive skills (d= .32), and memory (d= .29). Age showed a significant relation with decline in global cognitive ability and memory. Lower educational level was associated with greater decline in all cognitive domains. Studies with longer follow-up intervals yielded larger effect sizes for global cognitive ability. In non-demented PD patients, changes in cognitive functions over time appear to be modest. Educational level, age, and length of the follow-up interval are likely to affect the magnitude of decline in several domains. Methodological flaws, such as selection bias and uncontrolled practice effects, may have caused underestimation of the true extent of decline (JINS, 2007,13, 920–932.)


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Qianqian Sun ◽  
Shurui Xu ◽  
Shuai Guo ◽  
Yue You ◽  
Rui Xia ◽  
...  

Background. Subjective cognitive decline (SCD) is recognized as the earliest prodromal stage of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Emerging studies explored the effects of combined physical activity and cognitive training interventions on cognitive ability, psychological well-being, and emotion of older adults with SCD, but the results are now still controversial. Objective. This study systematically evaluated the enhancement effects of the combined physical-cognitive interventions on memory self-efficacy, objective cognitive function, psychological well-being, and emotion of older adults with SCD. Methods. Data sources PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang degree and conference papers database, Chinese Science and Technology Periodical (VIP) databases from their inception to 28 February 2020, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (Cochrane Library, 2020, Issue 3), and the reference lists of all retrieved articles were searched. Data analysis and bias risk evaluation were conducted in 2020. Two reviewers (SG and YY) independently evaluated the risk of bias of the included studies using the RoB 2 tool. Results. Eleven RCTs involving 1713 participants with SCD (age 68.0 ± 6.1) were included for review and meta-analysis. The interventions in the included studies were physical activity combined with cognitive training. Multiple-modality exercise with mind-motor training, supervised strategy-based memory training sequentially after stationary cycling, Dejian Mind-Body intervention, and physical activity and cognitive stimulation were also practiced. Conclusions. Compared to the active or nonactive control groups, the combined interventions are effective in improving objective cognitive function in SCD which may show the potential value of combined physical-cognitive interventions in improving objective cognitive ability and preventing the conversion of SCD to MCI or AD and no adverse effects. However, owing to the limitations of the included studies, these findings should be interpreted cautiously.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukas Röseler ◽  
Astrid Schütz ◽  
Ulrike Starker

On a scale from 1 to 10, would you consider anchoring effects to be more or less important than a rating of 9? The seminal studies on anchoring effects are still surrounded by many mysteries regarding the question of how these effects come about. One of the mysteries is the influence of a person’s cognitive ability. Some studies found that cognitive abilities moderated participants’ susceptibility to anchoring, but others did not. We aimed to resolve these inconsistencies by making a distinction between informative and uninformative (e.g., random) anchors. In a preregistered online experiment, we tested the hypothesis that anchoring effects are weaker for people with higher cognitive abilities but that this relation only occurs if the anchors are perceived as random, and it vanishes if they are presented as informative. We found no support for the hypothesis. Results from a meta-analysis of 15 effects across our study and four other studies revealed no overall effect of cognitive ability on the susceptibility to anchoring, g = 0.003, 95% CI [-0.031, 0.037], Ntotal = 1165. Moreover, we observed that 10 items across three typical anchoring tasks had only very low internal consistency (α = .11). Our analysis of additional published and unpublished data confirmed that a person’s susceptibility to anchoring cannot be measured reliably. This explains why previous results on possible moderators of anchoring (e.g., studies on the Big Five or on fluid intelligence) have been highly inconsistent. We suggest that research on anchoring moderators needs to take a step back and develop a reliable measure for the susceptibility to anchoring.


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