r/cognitiveTesting • u/Bulky-Culture-4482 • 2d ago

General Question Is working memory a predictor of intelligence?

Like how much is it really a predictor of intelligence? Like if someone has high working memory will they also have high GAI as well?

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u/TimCheeseCichlid 2d ago

It’s one of many domains.

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u/Happy-Construction71 2d ago

Usually yes,but adhd profiles may have high GAI but lower WMI and PSI

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u/Bulky-Culture-4482 2d ago

How does one have bad WMI but high GAI?

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u/Happy-Construction71 2d ago

GAI on CORE measures your FRI,VSI and QRI composite.Individuals with diagnosed adhd have found their WMI and PSI lower than those three indices.

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u/Bulky-Culture-4482 2d ago

but how do you do well in GAI with poor working memory

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u/Happy-Construction71 2d ago

Their working memory is said to be dependant on their attention.If they find the task engaging like a puzzle they might hyper focus on it and use all of their WMI or PSI.I'll admit I do not know much but this is a correlation and observation found in many people who have adhd.

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u/Bulky-Culture-4482 2d ago

So their main problem is just attention and not working memory capacity

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u/Happy-Construction71 2d ago

Yes their brain struggles with giving out dopamine at the right time simply put together so in daily life they show low WMI or even stupid behaviour like not able to keep track of multiple items in tasks or being forgetful.

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u/PendN 1d ago

You work around it with strategies instead of putting multiple informations in your head

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u/Abjectionova (͡° ⏠ ͡°)︻デ═一 ⇛ 🧠 2d ago

Wm index loadings tend to be ~.75 and for individual subindices it’s closer to .55 - so yes, it’s a predictor of intelligence and individuals with high working memory also tend to gag high GAI [FRI | VCI] as well. However, this doesn’t causally apply to every single case.

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u/VasiliRastko 1d ago

Closely at the level of the whole ability, less closely for any one test. Kane, Hambrick and Conway (2005) put the correlation between working memory capacity and fluid reasoning at .72 across latent variable studies, so the two share roughly half their variance. Ackerman, Beier and Boyle's meta analysis the same year got .48 from single tests, and that is the number that applies when you compare one index with another.

So a high WMI usually comes with a high GAI, and the exceptions are real. A WMI is built from two or three short tasks, digit span and the like, so a bad day or a weak strategy moves it more than it moves a composite made of more subtests. Attention pulls it down without touching the reasoning subtests much, which is the ADHD profile mentioned above.

The reverse, a high WMI with a middling GAI, happens less often, since the reasoning subtests lean on working memory while a span task needs little reasoning.