Cognitive Ability: Multiple Cognitive Abilities

Introduction

There are some theories supporting the view of intelligence as a collection of separate cognitive abilities (Gardner, 1993; Guilford and Hoepfner, 1971). Those theories follow the often-called ‘Thurstone tradition’ (Gustafsson, 1984). Guilford's Structure-of-Intellect (SOI) model postulates 180 separate abilities resulting from the combination of three cognitive facets: operations, contents, and products. Cattell's Gf-Gc theory distinguishes culture-reduced (Gf) and culture-specific (Gc) abilities (Cattell, 1987). Horn expanded Gf-Gc theory to include other abilities [Page 215]like Gv (visualization capacity), Gps (general perceptual speed), Gm (general memory capacity), and Gr (general retrieval capacity) (Horn, 1994). Although the Gf-Gc theory can be considered as a hierarchical model covering many domains of intelligence, it does not provide a higher order factor (g) to account for correlations among the identified (second-order) general ...