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Jopp, D., & Hertzog, C. (2007). Activities, self-referent memory beliefs, and cognitive performance: Edvidence for direct and mediateed relations. Psychology and Aging, 22(4), 811-825.

Abstract

In this study, the authors investigated the role of activities and self-referent memory beliefs for cognitive performance in a life-span sample. A factor analysis identified 8 activity factors, including Developmental Activities, Experiential Activities, Social Activities, Physical Activities, Technology Use, Watching Television, Games, and Crafts. A second-order general activity factor was significantly related to a general factor of cognitive function as defined by ability tests. Structural regression models suggested that prediction of cognition by activity level was partially mediated by memory beliefs, controlling for age, education, health, and depressive affect. Models adding paths from general and specific activities to aspects of crystallized intelligence suggested additional unique predictive effects for some activities. In alternative models, nonsignificant effects of beliefs on activities were detected when cognition predicted both variables, consistent with the hypothesis that beliefs derive from monitoring cognition and have no influence on activity patterns.

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Hertzog, C., & Robinson, A. E.  (2005).  Metacognition and intelligence.  In O. Wilhelm & R. W. Engle (Eds.) Understanding and measuring intelligence. London: Sage, 101-123.

Abstract

The construct of metacognition, broadly defined as cognition about cognition, has played an increasingly prominent role in cognitive psychologists’ thinking about cognition (e.g., Hacker, Dunlosky, & Graesser, 1998; Metcalfe & Shimamura, 1994; Nelson & Narens, 1990). Metacognition has also been an important focus in domains of developmental psychology (e.g., Hertzog & Hultsch, 2000; Schneider & Pressley, 1997), social psychology (Ehrlinger & Dunning, 2003), educational psychology (Thiede, 1999; Schraw & Nietfeld, 1998; Winne, 1998), and applied cognitive psychology (Perfect & Schwartz, 2002). Metacognition, framed as a class of components of the architecture of executive functioning, has also been featured in at least some theories of intelligence (e.g., Naglieri, 1997; Sternberg, 1985). Given the importance of cognitive control for concepts of fluid intelligence, and the evidence for frontal lobe involvement in processes of achieving cognitive control (see Heitz, Unsworth, & Engle, this volume; Kane, this volume), the potential importance of metacognition as part of the architecture supporting intelligence and cognition should be apparent. It is reinforced by evidence that frontal damage impairs metacognition (Shimamura, 1994). However, with some important exceptions (e.g., Metcalfe & Wiebe, 1987; Stankov, 2000), the bulk of recent research on metacognition has been in the domain of learning and memory (e.g., Schwartz, 1994), and the methodological advances represented in this work have had little impact on theorizing about intelligence or studies of metacognition-intelligence relationships. Our chapter reviews some critical features and findings of recent empirical research on metacognition in these areas, and identifies relevant linkages to research on intelligence.

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Hertzog, C., Dunlosky (2003).  Encoding fluency is a cue used for judgements about learning. Journal of Experimetal Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29(1), 22-34.

Abstract

The authors used paired-associate learning to investigate the hypothesis that the speed of generating an interactive image (encoding fluency) influenced 2 metacognitive judgments: judgments of learning (JOLs) and quality of encoding ratings (QUEs). Results from Experiments 1 and 2 indicated that latency of a keypress indicating successful image formation was negatively related to both JOLs and QUEs even though latency was unrelated to recall. Experiment 3 demonstrated that when concrete and abstract items were mixed in a single list, latency was related to concreteness, judgments, and recall. However, item concreteness and fluency influenced judgments independently of one another. These outcomes suggest an important role of encoding fluency in the formation of metacognitive judgments about learning and future recall.

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Hertzog, C., & Bleckley, M .K. (2001).  Age differences in the structure of intelligence: Influences of information processing speed.  Intelligence, 29, 191-217.

Abstract

A battery of widely-studied psychometric ability tests, measuring 7 primary abilities, was administered to undergraduate students and a cross-sectional sample, ranging in age from 43 to 78. The battery included measures of how rapidly individuals could mark answer sheets when provided with booklets containing correct answers to test questions. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the ability factors could be identified in all age groups, but that the factor structure did not show (metric) invariance of factor loadings across age groups. Factor correlations increased with age, as did the ability tests’ communalities, indicating a type of dedifferentiation of the primary ability factor structure. Thurstone’s Primary Mental Abilities Verbal Meaning test was shown to have a strong relationship to answer-marking speed, independent of Verbal Ability, and this relationship was higher for older adults. Several ability factors had high correlations with a factor measuring answer sheet speed, and controlling for speed by removing the answer sheet-related variance attenuated the pattern of higher factor correlations for older adults. Findings were consistent with the view that speed of information processing can be both an important correlate of individual differences in rates of intellectual aging and a performance-specific confound that distorts estimates of age-related change in psychometric ability tests.

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Hertzog, C. (1991).  Aging, information processing speed, and intelligence. In K. W. Schaie (Ed.), Annual review of gerontology and geriatrics, 11, 55-79. New York: Springer.

Abstract

One of the most widely demonstrated findings in gerontology is the slowing of the information processing speed in adulthood (Birren, 1965, 1974; Birren, Woods, & Williams, 1980; Salthouse, 1985a, 1985b; Welford, 1977) Age-related slowing has been found in a large number of cross-sectional studies comparing young and old adults in performance on a wide variety of experimental tasks, including simple and choice reaction time (RT). Performance on virtually every information processing task measuring cognitive or perceptual mechanisms is slowed, on average, in old age, and gerontologists have concluded that the speed of execution of almost all psychological processes, including such constructs as pattern recognition, memory scanning, perceptual synthesis, and mental rotation, are affected. A number of studies conducted in the 1950s and 1960s indicate that there may be slowing of peripheral nerve conduction. The literature also indicates, however, that age differences in RT tasks probably reflect slowing in the central nervous system and its functioning and cannot be attributed merely to slowed perceptual or peripheral motor tasks (Birren, 1965). Moreover, accentuated age-related slowing is observed when tasks require cognitive transformations of stimuli in terms of meaning or implications for response behavior (Brinley, 1965).

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Hertzog, C. (1989).  The influence of cognitive slowing on age differences in intelligence.  Developmental Psychology, 25, 636-651.

Abstract

A large cross-sectional sample took a battery of psychometric tests measuring multiple primary abilities, including the Primary Mental Abilities (PMA) test used in Schaie's (1983) longitudinal studies. The battery also included measures in perceptual speed and speed in working with the PMA answer sheets. There were large age differences for several abilities. Regression analysis showed that (a) these differences were dramatically attenuated by partialing speed and (b) a substantial proportion of age-related variance is shared in common with speed. The PMA vocabulary test showed an age-related increase in its correlation with answer sheet speed, suggesting an age-related performance bias due to slowing. Substantial speed/intelligence relationships require renewed attention to the role of information-processing speed in age changes on psychometric test performance.