Cognitive variables in series completion

Studied the cognitive determinants of number series completion performance by presenting a systematic set of problems to 18 college adults and to 36 average- and high-IQ 4th- and 5th-graders. In each group, a combination of process and content-knowledge variables accounted for more than 70% of the variance in solution difficulty. Solution difficulty was most affected by the amount of information to be coordinated in working memory while assembling and applying the pattern description rule for the sequence. Adults could effectively coordinate more information than children, but IQ levels did not differ on this component ability. Skill in dealing with unusual, hierarchical relations and arithmetic computation also affected performance and discriminated between age and IQ levels. Comparisons with results from other types of rule-induction tasks suggest some general abilities of importance to rule induction. (34 ref)