Browsing by Subject "working memory capacity"

There has been little developmental research on individual differences in rationality and cognitive biases. Prior research shows that the same environmental factors predict the development of life history strategies as well as working memory capacity (WMC), a major determinant of capacity for rational reasoning. I hypothesized that those environmental factors would also predict cognitive miserliness – lazy reasoning accompanied by susceptibility to cognitive biases. In a laboratory study of 71 library-users, I measured life history strategy (K-factor), retrospective childhood unpredictability, WMC, cognitive reflection, belief-bias, denominator neglect, and outcome bias. My results did not support the hypothesis postulated. I did not observe an association between either life history strategy or unpredictable childhood and any of the cognitive variables. Due to limited sample size and methods, further research is warranted. Furthermore, a failure to conceptually replicate the previous findings that childhood adversity predicts lower working memory capacity suggests a need for conceptual clarification of these existing results.