EXPANDING THE NEXUS OF COGNITIVE AND PSYCHOMOTOR ABILITIES

A study was conducted to expand the nexus of cognitive and psychomotor abilities. A cognitive aptitude battery and a psychomotor battery wer e administered to 429 military recruits. A confirmatory factor analysi s yielded higher-order factors of general cognitive ability (g) and ps ychomotor/technical knowledge (PM/TK). PM/TK was interpreted as Vernon 's (1969) practical factor (k:m). In the joint analysis of these batte ries, g and PM/TK each accounted for about 31% of the common variance. No residualized lower-order factor accounted for more than 7%. PM/TK influenced a broad range of lower-order psychomotor factors. The first practical implication of these findings is that psychomotor tests are expected to be at least generally interchangeable. A second implicati on is that the incremental validity of psychomotor tests beyond cognit ive tests is expected to be small. These findings should help guide te st developers and inform personnel selecting agencies regarding the ex pected utility of psychomotor tests.