Relations between measures of Cattell‐Horn‐Carroll (CHC) cognitive abilities and mathematics achievement across the school‐age years

Cognitive clusters from the Woodcock‐Johnson III (WJ III) Tests of Cognitive Abilities that measure select Cattell‐Horn‐Carroll broad and narrow cognitive abilities were shown to be significantly related to mathematics achievement in a large, nationally representative sample of children and adolescents. Multiple regression analyses were used to predict performance on the Math Calculation Skills and Math Reasoning clusters from the WJ III Tests of Achievement for 14 age groups ranging in age from 6 to 19 years. Comprehension‐Knowledge (Gc) demonstrated moderate relations with Math Calculation Skills after the early school‐age years and moderate to strong relations with Math Reasoning. Fluid Reasoning (Gf), Short‐term Memory (Gsm), and Working Memory generally demonstrated moderate relations with the mathematics clusters. Processing Speed (Gs) demonstrated moderate relations with Math Reasoning during the elementary school years and moderate to strong relations with Math Calculation Skills. During the earliest ages of the analysis, Long‐term Retrieval (Glr) demonstrated moderate relations with the mathematics clusters, and Auditory Processing (Ga) demonstrated moderate relations with Math Calculation Skills. Visual‐Spatial Thinking (Gv) generally demonstrated nonsignificant relations with the mathematics clusters. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 40: 155–171, 2003.     

Cattell–Horn–Carroll cognitive ability profiles of poor comprehenders

This study examines cognitive ability profiles of children with specific age-based normative weaknesses in reading comprehension and compares those profiles to the profiles of (a) children with at least average achievement in reading comprehension, reading decoding skills, and mathematics and (b) children with low achievement across the 3 achievement areas. When compared across 9 cognitive ability composite scores derived from Cattell–Horn–Carroll theory and measured by the Woodcock–Johnson III [Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather (2001). Woodcock–Johnson. Itasca, IL: Riverside], groups differed in overall level of performance. When individual abilities were considered, the poor comprehenders scored significantly lower than the average achievement group on all nine composite scores and significantly lower than the normative population on all composite scores except Processing Speed and Long-Term Retrieval. In contrast, the poor comprehenders also scored significantly higher than the low achievement group on all composite scores except for Visual–Spatial Thinking and Phonemic Awareness. Although the poor comprehenders as a group scored lowest on composite scores measuring language- and knowledge-based abilities, review of the profiles of individual poor comprehenders revealed no consistent pattern of performance across cognitive ability composite scores.