Graduation Semester and Year
Spring 2024
Language
English
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science in Psychology
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Matthew Robison
Second Advisor
Hunter Ball
Third Advisor
Tracy Greer
Abstract
Working memory (WM) capacity has remained a central topic of individual differences research due to its ability predict performance in various cognitive domains and higher-cognitive abilities. While studies performing individual differences research with WM capacity are common, there are comparatively few studies investigating individual differences with WM precision. The present study examined WM precision as an individual difference, by examining the psychometrics of the modeled precision parameter derived from the Standard Mixture Model, investigating the relationship between precision for different feature types (e.g., color and spatial location), and looking at the relationship between precision and a well-known correlate of WM capacity: fluid intelligence. In two research studies, we found a significant positive correlation between spatial WM precision and fluid intelligence, but not color WM precision. Additionally, we found no significant correlation between color and spatial WM precision and that a latent factor model which loads both precision parameters into one factor did not fit well. However, an examination of the intratask reliability of the WM precision estimate via split-half estimation of the parameters revealed low reliability for the color version of the task, but not the spatial version. WM capacity estimates from the continuous-report task were found to have significant positive correlations with each other, with fluid intelligence, with measures of capacity in other tasks, load well onto a single factor, and were reliable.
Disciplines
Cognitive Psychology
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Campbell, Stephen A., "Examining Working Memory Precision Estimates as an Individual Difference" (2024). Psychology Theses. 1.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/psychology_theses/1