Educational performance is determined by a large number of variables, but cognitive abilities are undoubtedly one of the primary predictors. However, the exact nature of this relationship is controversial. A standard approach to relate cognitive abilities to educational performance is to generate an aggregate score of abilities, such as IQ or General Cognitive Ability, and explore its relation either to indicators of school performance or to standardised measures of educational achievement (e.g. Canivez, 2013). This practice is controversial, as some researchers emphasize a profile-based approach as a more appropriate assessment of an individual’s cognitive abilities (Schultz et al., 2011). This latter approach allows for the exploration of individual patterns of strengths and weaknesses that also allow for the discovery of unique abilities’ relation to specific school subjects or specific areas of educational competence. Relatedly, a phenomenon of increased recent interest is the so-called ability tilt, the finding that verbal and nonverbal abilities differentially predict performance in different areas of achievement and expertise (Coyle, 2019).

The purpose of the current study was the exploration of specific broad cognitive abilities to specific areas of educational purpose. Abilities were measured with the Hungarian Edition of the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities IV on a nationally representative sample of students between 6 and 18. School grades were also obtained for the following subjects: Mathematics, Hungarian literature, History, Second language. Additionally, competency scores were obtained for reading and mathematics from the national competency assessment.

A particular advantage of the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities from the purpose of the present study is that it has solid theoretical foundation in the Cattell Horn Carroll model of cognitive abilities, the currently most accepted taxonomy of human cognitive abilities (McGrew, 2009). The  Cattell Horn Carroll model has three levels: at the lowest level there are so-called ’narrow specific abilities’ such as inductive reasoning. At the second level there are ’broad specific abilities’, such as fluid reasoning or comprehension/knowledge. On the highest level there is g for the general factor of intelligence. We focused our investigation on the level of specific abilities as these scores capture domain-specific variance unlike the general factor, but are more reliable than lower-order factors (Kovacs & Conway, 2020). The Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities are designed to provide accurate scores for seven broad cognitive abilities from the Cattell Horn Carroll model (see Methods for details).

Besides exploring the individual abilities’ role in predicting performance in different areas we also examined the role of tilt in competency scores in particular patterns of abilities and achievement.

The study examined the standardisation sample of the Hungarian adaptation of the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities IV. The adaptation took place between 2017 and 2021 (it was planned to last for 2 years, but was severely prolonged because of restrictions in schools due to the COVID pandemic). The standardisation sample consisted of 1314 students and was representative of the Hungarian population between the ages of 6 and 18 in terms of gender, location, type of school, and type of settlement. The test measured seven broad ability factors from the Cattell-Horn-Carroll model with two tests each: Comprehension/Knowledge (Gc), Fluid Reasoning (Gf), Short-Term Working memory (Gwm), Cognitive processing speed (Gs), Visual Processing (Gv), Auditory Processing (Ga), and Long-Term Retrieval (Glr). In order to demonstrate the validity of the Hungarian adaptation of the test we obtained grades from the schools participating in the standardisation for the following subjects for 400-500 students (differing for each subject): Mathematics, Hungarian literature, History, and Second language (the first foreign language students started to learn, typically English). Additionally, competency scores were obtained for reading and mathematics from the national competency assessment. Ability tilt was identified as a sufficient (at least 0.5 standard deviation) discrepancy between results of the mathematics and reading competency measures.

Thanks to delays due to the COVID pandemic the Hungarian adaptation project was only completed in December 2021. Therefore, the analysis of results is under progress. Preliminary results indicate that fluid reasoning is more strongly predictive of Mathematics grades, while crystallized ability (comprehension-knowledge) is more strongly predictive of History and Literature grades. We expect a differential predictive pattern of broad specific abilities on school grades and competencies. Additionally, we expect ability tilt (as defined by a discrepancy in mathematics and reading) to predict different patterns of Mathematics vs. Literature/History.

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