COMPLEXITY OF INFORMATION-PROCESSING AND THE SPEED-ABILITY RELATIONSHIP

The effect of complexity, defined as a high number of cognitive operat ions in information processing, on the speed-ability relationship was investigated. Three reaction-time tasks and Wechsler's (1944) WAIS-R, as well as a reasoning scale, were administered to 76 university stude nts. In each task, reaction times were obtained for three treatment le vels, which required the participants to perform different numbers of cognitive operations: arithmetic operations, ordering operations of nu mbers, and ordering operations of figures. In all tasks the increase i n the number of cognitive operations led to a linear increase in mean reaction time. In contrast, substantial decreases in correlations of r eaction times and ability scales were observed when the number of cogn itive operations was increased. The researchers concluded that increas ing the complexity of cognitive operations did not cause performance t o reflect individual differences in cognitive ability.