Types of Intelligence and Academic Performance: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

The concept of intelligence has been extensively studied, undergoing an evolution from a unitary concept to a more elaborate and complex multidimensional one. In addition, several research studies have focused their efforts for decades on the study of intelligence as a predictor of academic performance of students at different educational stages, being a stable and highly relevant predictor along with other variables such as executive functions, social context, culture or parental guardianship. Thus, the present study, based on a systematic review and meta-analysis, includes 27 studies with a total sample of 42,061 individuals. The main objective was to analyse the relationship between intelligence and academic performance using different predictive models that include moderating variables such as country of origin, type of intelligence, gender and age. The findings of this research highlight the significant, positive and moderate relationship between intelligence and academic performance (r = 0.367; p < 0.001), highlighting the predictive capacity on school performance when the type of intelligence (general and implicit; 35%) or the country of origin (45%) is taken as a moderating variable, with the explanatory models on age or sex not being significant. Therefore, it can be concluded that intelligence, in addition to being a good predictor of academic performance, is influenced depending on the type of intelligence or theoretical model taken as a reference, and also depending on the country or culture of origin.