Fluid intelligence predicts model fit of both exemplar-based memory and cue-abstractionand suggests a role for inferior parietal cortex in multiple-cue judgment

• We are often faced with judgment tasks that require the consideration of several sources of information. For example, a teacher that grades a student ́s exam question often integrates multiple sources of information (cues: details provided in the answer) into a single criterion dimension (the grade). Ample scientific work has focused on analytical processes and associative memory as two qualitatively distinct ways of addressing such a multiple-cue judgment task, and the inferior parietalcortex (IPC) has been suggested as a key brain region. Here, we combined information from individual differences in fluid intelligence, cognitive modeling and functional magnetic brain imaging to further evaluate the cognitive components of analytical and associative judgments. Participants spontaneously adopted cue-abstraction or exemplar-based memory during training with outcome feedback. Cognitive modeling of test-phase data revealed that model fit of both strategies was associated with fluid intelligence. A whole-brain correlation analysis of brain activation data during test-phase judgments revealed that fluid intelligence correlated with brain activity in IPC both during cue-abstraction and exemplar-based judgments. These findings provide novel evidence for a role of the IPC in multiple-cue judgment, and suggest that judgments with cue-abstraction and exemplarbased memory both draw on fluid intelligence and partly overlapping neural correlates. 

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Psychology

psykologi

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)