Incremental validity of specific cognitive abilities beyond general intelligence for the explanation of students’ school achievement

ABSTRACT

The incremental validity of specific cognitive abilities beyond general intelligence has been investigated in studies using hierarchical multiple regression analyzes (HMR). In the present study, we investigated whether the incremental validity of specific cognitive abilities (i.e., verbal, figural, and numerical ability) for the explanation of school grades varied as a function of students’ general ability level. Data comprised the standardization sample (N = 1371, ages 12.5–16.5) of the Berlin structure-of-intelligence test (BIS-HB; Jäger et al., 2006). Results of HMR analyses revealed that the specific cognitive abilities had little incremental validity in the low- and mid-IQ group. However, they provided significant benefit for the explanation of school grades in the high-IQ group. The results suggest that the interpretation of intelligence tests may benefit from a differential weighting of different test information, depending on general ability of the tested individual.

KEYWORDS:

• Intelligence tests
• Spearman’s law of diminishing returns
• threshold theory
• incremental validity
• academic achievement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

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Notes

1. The BIS model comprises two orthogonal facets (i.e., operations and content) that both cover all subtests of the BIS-HB. Including the index scores of both facets would mean including each test item twice in the analyses, since the facets are conceptualized as orthogonal to each other. The content facet scores were used because they are conceptually closest to the WJ-III COG broad cluster scores used by McGill (2015b).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Moritz Breit

Moritz Breit is a PhD student at the University of Trier in the Department of Psychology, Giftedness Research and Education. His research interests center on the nature and development of cognitive ability. His current research focusses on ability differentiation, particularly Spearman’s law of diminishing returns. Moritz obtained his BA and MA in Psychology at the University of Trier.

Franzis Preckel

Franzis Preckel, Dr., is Full Professor (W3) for Giftedness Research and Education at the Department of Psychology of the University of Trier, Germany. Her main research interests are psychological assessment, intelligence and giftedness, a factor influencing talent development (e.g., need for cognition and self-concept). Dr. Preckel has published 14 books (five as first author, four as editor), 75 articles in peer reviewed journals and 17 book chapters. She is (co-)author of four intelligence tests and two self-report scales on need for cognition. She presented her research in more than 150 talks and is on the editorial board of Diagnostica and Gifted and Talented International.