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Why is working memory capacity related to matrix reasoning tasks?

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Abstract

One of the reasons why working memory capacity is so widely researched is its substantial relationship with fluid intelligence. Although this relationship has been found in numerous studies, researchers have been unable to provide a conclusive answer as to why the two constructs are related. In a recent study, researchers examined which attributes of Raven’s Progressive Matrices were most strongly linked with working memory capacity (Wiley, Jarosz, Cushen, & Colflesh, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37, 256–263, 2011). In that study, Raven’s problems that required a novel combination of rules to solve were more strongly correlated with working memory capacity than were problems that did not. In the present study, we wanted to conceptually replicate the Wiley et al. results while controlling for a few potential confounds. Thus, we experimentally manipulated whether a problem required a novel combination of rules and found that repeated-rule-combination problems were more strongly related to working memory capacity than were novel-rule-combination problems. The relationship to other measures of fluid intelligence did not change based on whether the problem required a novel rule combination.

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Notes

  1. We recently tried a within-subjects replication of Wiley et al.’s (2011) Study 2. With 99 subjects, we did not find that our novel-rule Raven’s subset correlated to WMC more highly than did our repeated-rule subset. For more details of this study, go to http://englelab.gatech.edu/.

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Author note

This work was supported by a grant from the Office of Naval Research (No. N0014-09-1-0129). We thank Kenny Hicks, Thomas Redick, Dakota Lindsey, and Robyn Marshall for their assistance in data collection and for helping with various drafts of this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 654 Cherry Street, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA

    Tyler L. Harrison & Randall W. Engle

  2. Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA

    Zach Shipstead

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  1. Tyler L. Harrison
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  2. Zach Shipstead
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  3. Randall W. Engle
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Correspondence to Tyler L. Harrison.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 3 Specific problems in Raven’s mixed
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Harrison, T.L., Shipstead, Z. & Engle, R.W. Why is working memory capacity related to matrix reasoning tasks?. Mem Cogn 43, 389–396 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-014-0473-3

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