An Investigation on How Inhibition in Cognitive Processing Contributes to Fluid Reasoning

Abstract

This article reports an investigation of how inhibition contributes to fluid reasoning when it is decomposed into the reasoning ability, item-position, and speed components to control for possible method effects. Working memory was also taken into consideration. A sample of 223 university students completed a fluid reasoning scale, two tasks tapping prepotent response inhibition, and two working memory tasks. Fixed-links modeling was used to separate the effect of reasoning ability from the effects of item-position and speed. The goodness-of-fit results confirmed the necessity to consider the reasoning ability, item-position, and speed components simultaneously. Prepotent response inhibition was only associated with reasoning ability. This association disappeared when working memory served as a mediator. Taken together, these results reflect the inhomogeneity of what is tapped by the fluid reasoning scale on one hand and, on the other, suggest inhibition as an important component of working memory.

How Executive Processes Explain the Overlap between Working Memory Capacity and Fluid Intelligence: A Test of Process Overlap Theory

“…The path coefficients from inhibition ( β = −.11) and shifting ( β = −.08) to Gf were not significant. On the other hand, recent studies suggested that there were significant correlations between shifting ( Wang et al 2013 ) and inhibition ( Wang et al 2020 ) with Gf when EFs were represented by a different approach.…”

“…Recently, there have been considerable debates as to whether inhibition (or attention control) is related to WMC (e.g., Draheim et al 2020 ; Rey-Mermet et al 2019 ; Unsworth et al 2020 ; Wang et al 2020 ). On one hand, a large body of studies suggest a moderate to high correlation between inhibition and WMC ( Draheim et al 2020 ; Unsworth et al 2020 ).…”