Ability factors and cognitive processes

Several measures of the speed of information processing were related to ability factors derived from the Cattell-Horn theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence. Ninety-one college students took a battery of paper and pencil tests designed to measure four ability factors: fluid intelligence (Gf), crystallized intelligence (Gc), spatial visualization (Gv), and clerical perceptual speed (CPS). They also performed paper and pencil and computerized versions of three information processing tasks: mental rotations, letter matching, and sentence verification. Correlations among the ability measures, among the information processing measures, and between the two domains were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis. The four ability factors were found to be largely independent in this college population. Speed of letter-matching and sentence verification were highly correlated, but neither was related to speed of mental rotation. Mental rotation speed was strongly correlated with Gv; letter matching speed was correlated with CPS; and sentence verification speed was correlated with both Gc and CPS.