Assessment of Processing Capacity

Abstract

Research over the last 10 years on Latin square tasks (LST) suggests a significant potential for their use in assessing fluid cognition. In the current work, we outline the LST and the more complex Greco-Latin square task (GLST). The objectives were (1) to validate the appropriateness of LST as measures of fluid cognition in business managers and (2) to demonstrate the separation of the LST into working memory and deductive reasoning components. Participants were 264 midlevel managers from four large international companies. Consistent with expectations, SEM analyses indicated that the GLST and the LST are highly correlated with fluid intelligence (Gf), and that working memory load could be differentiated from reasoning load in the LST and provided incremental predictive validity of Gf. Results are supportive of our expectations and provide evidence that LST are appropriate for psychological assessment as they are based on a strong theory of fluid cognition, have sound psychometric properties, and have substantial pragmatic utility in terms of the capacity for rapid item generation.