Educational achievement, working memory capacity, and physical fitness: A latent variable analysis

Author(s):

Kristof Kovacs(presenting / submitting)Boglarka Farago Mária Dávid

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

09. Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement

Format:

Paper

Session Information

09 SES 02 A, Investigating Conditions of and Influences on Test Performance

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-23

15:15-16:45

Room:

NM-F101

Chair:

Chris Freeman

Contribution

The relationship between working memory capacity (WMC), educational aptitudes, and school achievement is well established. Also, there are individual results demonstrating a link between WMC and physical activity. Our goal was to investigate the relationship between these constructs using structural equation modelling on a large sample (N = 428) of students (14 and 18 year olds).

Method

Participants completed five working memory tests online: Corsi (both forward and backward), Digit Span Test (forward and backward) and the N-back Test. We obtained students’ academic grades in maths, Hungarian language and literature, and in English as a foreign language; their PISA competency scores for mathematics and reading comprehension; and the result of the National Unified Student Fitness Test (NETFIT).

Expected Outcomes

We have found a moderate relationship between WMC and educational measures. Interestingly, the raw correlations of tasks measuring WMC were higher with PISA scores than with school grades. We have also found a weak relationship between physical fitness and WMC. Interestingly, a few individual measures of physical activity were more strongly related with the cognitive and educational measures than others. Our results replicate previous findings about the relationship between WMC and educational achievement with an additional and theoretically interesting link to physical activity.

References

Conway, A. R. A., Kane, M. J., Bunting, M. F., Hambrick, D. Z., Wilhelm, O., & Engle, R. W. (2005). Working memory span tasks: A methodological review and user’s guide. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12(5), 769–786. Conway, A. R. A., & Kovacs, K. (2013). Individual Differences in Intelligence and Working Memory. In Psychology of Learning and Motivation (Vol. 58, pp. 233–270) Daneman, M., & Carpenter, P. A. (1980). Individual differences in working memory and reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19(4), 450–466.

Author Information

Kristof Kovacs (presenting / submitting)

Eszterházy Károly College

Eger

Boglarka Farago

Eszterházy Károly College, Hungary

Mária Dávid

Eszterhazy Karoly University of Applied Sciences

Department of Psychology

Eger

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