TY - JOUR
T1 - The role of higher-order cognitive abilities as mediators of deficits in academic performance
AU - Little, Todd D.
AU - Das, J. P.
AU - Carlson, Jerry S.
AU - Yachimowicz, David J.
N1 - Funding Information:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: This project was sponsored by the Hemet Unified School District through the California Educational Research Council (CERC) at the University of California, Riverside and jointly directed by Jerry Carlson and J. P. Das. David
Funding Information:
Yachimowicz, Ted Sneed, Mary Beth Davidson, and Todd Little assisted the directors in various aspects of completing the project and in the preparation of the reports. The cooperation and support of the Faculty, Staff, and Administrators at the Hemet Unified School District is most gratefully acknowledged and appreciated. The contribution between the first two authors was equivalent; order was determined by the kindness of the second author. Partial support for this work comes through grants HD-21056 and HD-22953 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to Richard Eyman and Keith Widaman and by grants GO08530208 and H023C80072 from the U. S. Office of Education to Donald MacMillan. We acknowledge most gratefully the insightful comments made by Keith Widaman, John Nesselroade, Ulman Lindenberger, John Carroll, Richard Wagner, I’. A. Vernon, and two anonymous reviewers to previous versions of this article.
PY - 1993
Y1 - 1993
N2 - The questions in this study were three-fold. The first question, suggested by the work of Das and Naglieri (e.g., Naglieri & Das 1987, 1988), addressed the hypothesis that a higher-order structure underlies performance on a battery of cognitive tests. The second question, concerned with external validity, addressed how well the higher-order cognitive ability factors predict two criterion-related measures of ability. Academic Achievement and Word Skills. The third question, also concerned with external validity, addressed whether differences between students classified as low or normal in reading achievement were mediated by individual differences in the higher-order ability factors. That is, do the hypothesized higher-order cognitive abilities play a mediating role in predicting deficits in academic achievement and reading competence? Structural equation modeling techniques were used to test these research hypotheses on a stratified random sample of 135 third grade students. The first stratum contained a random selection of 69 students classified as low in reading achievement based on the Chapter 1 entitlement assignments made by the school district the year prior to the study and the second stratum contained 66 students selected from the normal achieving population. The results showed that (a) two higher-order factors, Planning/Attention and Successive Processing, explained the relations among six lower-order ability constructs, (b) the higherorder ability factors predicted individual differences in the two criterion measures of Academic Achievement and Word Skills, and, (c) low achieving students showed significant deficits only in the two higher-order factors, suggesting a mediating role for the cognitive skills represented by the higher-order factors.
AB - The questions in this study were three-fold. The first question, suggested by the work of Das and Naglieri (e.g., Naglieri & Das 1987, 1988), addressed the hypothesis that a higher-order structure underlies performance on a battery of cognitive tests. The second question, concerned with external validity, addressed how well the higher-order cognitive ability factors predict two criterion-related measures of ability. Academic Achievement and Word Skills. The third question, also concerned with external validity, addressed whether differences between students classified as low or normal in reading achievement were mediated by individual differences in the higher-order ability factors. That is, do the hypothesized higher-order cognitive abilities play a mediating role in predicting deficits in academic achievement and reading competence? Structural equation modeling techniques were used to test these research hypotheses on a stratified random sample of 135 third grade students. The first stratum contained a random selection of 69 students classified as low in reading achievement based on the Chapter 1 entitlement assignments made by the school district the year prior to the study and the second stratum contained 66 students selected from the normal achieving population. The results showed that (a) two higher-order factors, Planning/Attention and Successive Processing, explained the relations among six lower-order ability constructs, (b) the higherorder ability factors predicted individual differences in the two criterion measures of Academic Achievement and Word Skills, and, (c) low achieving students showed significant deficits only in the two higher-order factors, suggesting a mediating role for the cognitive skills represented by the higher-order factors.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0040287246&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/1041-6080(93)90004-C
DO - 10.1016/1041-6080(93)90004-C
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0040287246
SN - 1041-6080
VL - 5
SP - 219
EP - 240
JO - Learning and Individual Differences
JF - Learning and Individual Differences
IS - 3
ER -