Elsevier

Intelligence

Volume 26, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 123-151
Intelligence

Article
Three paper-and-pencil tests for speed of information processing: Psychometric properties and correlations with intelligence

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0160-2896(99)80058-0Get rights and content

Abstract

After more than 15 years of research efforts there is strong empirical evidence for an association of high psychometric intelligence with a high speed of information processing in Elementary Cognitive Tasks (ECTs). A wider application of this mental speed approach to human intelligence, also to other areas of basic and applied psychology, could be largely facilitated through the availability of paper-and-pencil (PP) tests for mental speed. This paper describes the development and empirical investigation of two new PP ECTs based on rationales of Sternberg's short term memory scanning and Posner's letter matching, as well as findings for the already established PP test for mental speed, the so-called Coding Test. In three empirical studies the PP ECTs proved reliable, they are substantially correlated with diverse measures of psychometric intelligence (up to -.70) and they displayed convergent validity with respect to other PP tests of mental speed but showed only medium relationships with computerized ECTs. We conclude that these PP tests allow an economical assessment of elementary speed of information processing as an important basis of individual differences in psychometric intelligence.

References (49)

  • A.C. Neubauer et al.

    Intelligence and reaction times in the Hick, Sternberg and Posner paradigms

    Personality and Individual Differences

    (1997)
  • L Stankov et al.

    Mental speed is not the ‘basic’ process of intelligence

    Personality and Individual Differences

    (1997)
  • P.A. Vernon

    Der Zahlen-Verbindungs-Test and other trail-making correlates of general intelligence

    Personality and Individual Differences

    (1993)
  • P.A. Vernon et al.

    Predicting intelligence with multiple speed of information-processing tests

    Personality and Individual Differences

    (1993)
  • R. Brickenkamp

    Test d 2-Aufmerksamkeits-Belastungs-Test

    (1978)
  • J.A. Buckhalt

    Reaction time measures of processing speed - Are they yielding new information about intelligence

    Personality and Individual Differences

    (1991)
  • W.S. Cleveland et al.

    The many faces of a scatterplot

    Journal of the American Statistical Association

    (1984)
  • H. Düker

    Der Konzentrations-Leistungs-Test (KLT)

    (1965)
  • P. Eppich

    Konstruktion und empirische Überprüfung eines Papier-Bleistift-Tests für Informationsverarbeitungsgeschwindigkeit: Das “letter matching” Paradigma

    (1995)
  • B. Fetsch

    Das “letter matching” Paradigma: Äquivalenz einer Papier-Bleistift-Version und einer Computer-Version

    (1996)
  • W. Frearson et al.

    Intelligence, reaction time (RT) and a new odd-man-out RT paradigm

    Personality and Individual Differences

    (1986)
  • W.E. Hick

    On the rate of gain of information

    Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

    (1952)
  • W. Horn

    Leistungsprüfsystem

    (1962)
  • E. Hunt

    Intelligence as an information processing concept

    British Journal of Psychology

    (1980)
  • Cited by (34)

    • Decomposing the relationship between mental speed and mental abilities

      2015, Intelligence
      Citation Excerpt :

      The aim of the present study was to address this question and to provide a rationale for a more refined analysis of the relationship between mental abilities and mental speed that may allow for a better understanding of the neuro-cognitive processes driving this association. Almost all studies on the relationship between mental abilities and mental speed employ so-called elementary cognitive tasks (ECTs) when measuring reaction times (for a notable exception using pencil-and-paper tests see Neubauer & Knorr, 1998). These ECTs are tasks with very low cognitive demands that maximize the empirical control of task complexity and minimize unwanted sources of variance in individual differences.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text